ComputerWorld: "Probably the simplest and most effective change that will come with PHP 5.3 is a modification to the way that $_REQUEST superglobal variables are handled. After several years of known vulnerability, it seems that the PHP developers are finally addressing one of the most risky elements of the scripting language."

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Smashing Magazine has posted a couple articles to help web developers and designers with their Wordpress and Drupal sites.  Some great suggestions and resources are listed in these articles.

1. WordPress Developer’s Toolbox
2. Drupal Developer's Toolbox

The articles don't include everything, but it's a wonderful start for those just beginning to learn about Drupal or Wordpress.  Link found via Nick Lewis' blog.

Tim Wilson, the site editor for Dark Reading, recently posted an article about recent at the AARP.org website.  In the colorfully titled article, "Porn Operators Hijack Pages on AARP Website", Wilson interviews Jeremy Yoder of MX Logic about why AARP.org's site was vulnerable.  In brief, the explanation given is that the site deployed a number of Web 2.0 features including user profile submissions which the site didn't properly filter out JavaScript redirected code.  Yoder than explains that the site's security or lack of security was due to it using a custom or in-house built content management system.

The AARP site is particularly susceptible to this sort of multi-pronged attack because it appears to be driven by a home-grown content management system, Yoder says. "It appears to be a custom system that's missing some baseline-level security capabilities. This site is accepting JavaScript code submissions, which are something that most off-the-shelf content management systems would have no trouble blocking."

AARP may have fallen into the trap that snares many sites when they seek to add Web 2.0-type capabilities, Yoder explains. "They choose their content management system based on its features, without giving much thought to its security capabilities," he says. "That can be a big mistake, especially if you are a site with a lot of visibility that might make a good target, like AARP."

Organizations that seek to build collaborative capabilities into their Websites should consider using systems that have been vetted by others, rather than a custom system, Yoder advises. "An open source solution has the benefit of a community behind it," he says. "WordPress has absorbed a lot of attacks, but now it's a lot stronger because of it."

This article brings back a lot of memories on past discussions we have had here at CMS Report.  A couple years ago, I posted an article that focued on a SitePoint article titled, I Have Never Met a Boxed CMS I Like.  The SitePoint article argued that a custom CMS would be a better option due to the fact that boxed CMS, whether open source or propriety, are too generic to be of value.  I argued that boxed systems cost less in both money and time, yet offered you more features than a custom CMS could provide.  After my post, a number of people commented for and against boxed systems.  Ironically, no one really talked about whether custom or in-house CMS were less or more secure than boxed systems.

In the world of IT, two years can make quite a difference.  It was not long ago that most Web applications would promote their security as an added feature to their product.  However, I think as time has moved on we realize that a secure site is not a feature of a CMS, but a basic requirement of the application.  In this respect, I can't help but think Yoder is correct that boxed CMS, whether open source or I'll argue a well-supported propriety package, is likely to be more secure than a custom CMS.  I think Sepeck's comment still holds true to why an "out of the box" CMS is the way to go.

If you want to 'write your own' then you are going to want to be locking your customer into you as a solution. I have met more developers convinced that they knew more then 'those other guys' about 'everything important' that end up leaving the customer with a virtually unsupportable system or so completely reliant on them, that when they leave, the customer has to spend as much or more on fixing or upgrading their sites later.

The 'out of the box' systems exist to fill a need because no one person (or small team for that matter) can be an expert on everything (web, rss, mail, design, information architecture). No one person should be able to lock a customer into them as a solution. That doesn't build a healthy eco-system for their customers or themselves.

The more eyes you have on the code behind the CMS, the more likely there is for someone to catch a potential security vulnerability.  When someone does find a way to hack into your system, the more hands you have working on the code the quicker the issue will likely be resolved to provide a security patch.  It isn't always true that boxed systems are more secure than a custom in-house CMS, but I'll argue that the odds are in the favor of the boxed CMS.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Wordpress 2.6 is more than a blog and is quickly evolving into a full-fledged Web content management system.  While they're a little late, some of my competitors (CMS Watch, InformationWeek) also recently noted the trend of blogging applications such as Wordpress taking on more CMS-like duties.

I wish I would have expanded on my own thoughts about blogging tools continuing to add more CMS functions into their software.  However, I'm not so sure I could have written it better than Irina Guseva's post at CMS Wire.  She takes the story even further by asking whether the trend from blog to CMS is a good thing or not.

ComputerWorld: Corporate developers should take a cue from Web 2.0 companies by making users a key partner in software development processes.

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Learning Drupal 6 Module Development is a new book from Packt, which acts
as a practical tutorial for creating Drupal 6 modules with PHP. Written by Matt
Butcher, this book will help users to walk through the development of complete
Drupal 6 Modules.

Drupal is a free and open-source modular web
application framework and content management system (CMS) written in PHP. It
can run in many environments, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD.
It's a modular system, with an elegant hook-based architecture, and great code.
These are a few of the perks that make Drupal a choice platform for developers
who want the power of an established CMS, but the freedom to make it work for
them. From social networking to AJAX to e-commerce, the hundreds of existing
modules attest to Drupal's flexibility.

IBM developerWorks: Discover
PHP's new features and syntax improvements and see how they will take
this already-popular scripting language to the next level. Learn how
Unicode support, Web 2.0 features, and other changes make PHP V6 more
robust, as well as more international.

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Google Code: "Google Summer of Code 2008 is on! Over the past three
years, the program has brought together over 1500 students and
2000 mentors from 90 countries worldwide, all for the love of
code. This year, we're welcoming 1125 student contributors and 175
Free and Open Source projects into the program. You can find out more
about each participating organization and abstracts of their accepted
students' proposals by visiting each organization's page, below. We'll
be posting regular news about the program to the Google Open Source Blog."

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