Radiant 0.6.6 was released over the weekend, shortly after the release of Radiant 0.6.5.  Obviously, 0.6.6 of this built with Ruby on Rails CMS was released to fix some bugs in 0.6.5.  So instead of focusing on the bugs, let's focus on what is new in 0.6.5/6 since Radiant 0.6.4 was released in November 2006.

Since Radiant 0.6.4, the latest versions of the software introduced two major changes:

• Rails 2.0.2 included (0.6.4 used Rails 1.2.5)
• RSpec 1.1.4 is used in core and supported in extensions

"Ryan Heneise, of Art of Mission, has just launched a new service built on Radiant. It’s called Radiant Factory. Basically, Ryan is offering professional assistance to anyone who needs help getting up and running with Radiant."

Complete Story

Just a brief note that Radiant 0.6.4 a Ruby on Rails based content management system, has been released. Radiant 0.6.4 contains a few major changes as well as numerous bug-fixes and enhancements.

As mentioned in the official announcement, included in the release are:

• Rails 1.2.5, Prototype 1.6 and script.aculo.us 1.8.
• Significant refactoring has been done to the administrative user interface Javascripts.
• Better support for MS SQL Server via Rails ticket/patch #8886
• Stricter XHTML compatibility.

Be sure to check RadiantCMS.org for further details.

• conversion to using ActiveRecord-based sessions and storing the id of the logged-in user in the session instead of the complete user object
• addition of the ability to specify the loading-order (and inclusion/exclusion) of extensions in environment.rb
• automatic loading of Rails plugins included in extensions upon activation."

"This release contains an important security update. Passwords since 0.5 have been written straight into the log files without filtering of any kind. This could enable a malicious user with read permissions on the log files to discover other users’ passwords. We’ve repaired the problem in 0.6.1. It is recommended that everyone upgrade immediately. You should also delete production.log and development.log.

This release also includes a few minor bug fixes:

• Migrations have been repaired so that it is easier to upgrade from 0.5.x
• The expanded state of the site map is now preserved more accurately
• The documentation has been corrected for the Radius date tag"

Last night the core team finished polishing off the rough edges of the latest release of Radiant. This is the first serious release in well over 6 months. The big news in this release is that we have created a first-class extension system to make it easier for you to tailor Radiant to meet your needs. A lot of people have already started using the extension system to create a number of useful third party add-ons. There are also numerous bug-fixes and improvements in other areas of the application. If you are still on the 0.5.x series this upgrade is a must. Core team member Sean Cribbs has compiled a complete list of the changes over on his blog.

End users and site managers will notice improvements and new features:

Philippe Archambault wrote to us that he is working on a PHP version of Radiant CMS. Radiant CMS is based on the Ruby language. Mr. Archambault has appropriately named his CMS, phpRadiant. If imitation is a sincere form of flattery, then lets hope the Radiant CMS folks are blushing!

Mr. Archambault isn't the first person to suggest taking what they liked in Radiant CMS and migrating it from the Ruby language to one that is PHP based. However, his project is the first one that I know about which has actually seen the light of day.

I always find these type of stories ironic. Last week, I had someone make a comment to an old article I wrote on the Radiant CMS. For those liking Radiant, the commenter remarked "give cakePHP a trial run if you want a cms similar to this but in PHP". One of the reasons I chosen to discuss Radiant was that it was built with Ruby on Rails.

So where is the irony? Follow this, if you can and hopefully I won't confuse you. The article I wrote was titled, "Radiant, A Ruby CMS and PHP alternative". In other words we've gone full circle. CakePHP is being suggested as an alternative PHP content management system for the Ruby-based Radiant CMS which was originally suggested by me as an alternative for those that have tired with PHP Web applications!

Second irony, CakePHP is actually not a CMS but a framework. As Daniel Hofstetter points out below, think of CakePHP is to PHP as Ruby on Rails is to Ruby.

Third irony, regardless of the commenter calling CakePHP a CMS, the intention is the same. Everyone seems to want a Web application written in a particular language to be written in another language of their choosing. This desire to have a CMS written in another language appears to be a common theme here at CMS Report. I've always pointed out that when applications are written in another language, sometimes the elegance of that application is lost in the translation. Sort of like recording English over Japanese in a Godzilla movie. Somehow, I don't think Japanese producers ever intended the English version of the movie to be as humorous of a movie as it is when heard in here in the United States.

One day, one day...I pormise I will learn more about Ruby and the Raidant CMS.  Until then I'll just have to read about the excitement.  John Long writes:

I feel like this was the best of the Radiant presentations I have done to date...The presentation seems to have perked a lot of interest here at the conference. I’ve also spoken with many people who are already using Radiant on their own sites or are planning to use Radiant on a site in the near future. It’s always interesting to hear feedback and ideas about Radiant.

You can read more from Mr. Long through his post,   Ruby Conf Presentation.  He also provides a link to his presentation in PDF format.