Blogging

This is a tough time for blog reading junkies like me. I like to spend some of my time in the evenings winding down by reading CMS related blogs. Well, it seems some of my favorite blogs have decided to take a vacation. For example, many of the working group blogs found at Joomla.org are down.

Serendipty 1.3 has been released. This new version of the blogging applications introduces 41 changes. Not only are enhancements and additional features introduced, but also changes to address a nasty cross site scripting issue (security exploit).

Some of the more significant features and enhancements for Serenditpity 1.3 include:

• The karma rating plugin has been upgraded to support nice, CSS-based rating graphics and an overall rehaul on the its coding.
• Make the Spartacus plugin be able to use FTP upload, a workaround for SafeMode PHP restrictions. Also add a remote backend for plugin update checks.
• Import scripts for phpNuke and lifetype.

Simple PHP Blog 0.5.0.1, a maintenance release, went public on Tuesday of this week.  I know I don't talk too much about it here, but I still like to keep at least one eye open on this particular blogging application.  For you see, I consider Simple PHP Blog my very first Web content management system (WCMS).

John Newton, Alfresco co-founder, is a man I have never met.  Regardless of this important fact, I feel like I have gotten to know a small part of him through his blog.  While Newton's blog may focus on Alfresco, his posts offers a wide range of insights on subjects such as commercial open source, content management,  enterprise software,  business processes, and information technology.  So if you have any idea of who I am through my own writings  it should be no surprise to you that I enjoy giving thought to some of

A new version of the blogging application Serendipity is now at the beta stage, Serendipity 1.2 Beta 1.  The most significant changes in this new version of Serendipity is the authentication and session scheme for easier plug-in interaction.  Also support for theming/template authoring has been improved using Smartyfield.

The following is a list of some of the new enhancements according to the Serendipity 1.2-beta1 announcement since Serendipity 1.1:

• Templates for Backend (Entry Editor, Master Template) via Smarty
• New session/login system
• Improved database support for SQLite3 and PDO::Postgresql
• IPv6 support

So you want to write a successful blog?  Or perhaps just have a successful Website that people actually visit?  Lorelle reminds us just how to make your blog of interest to others.

I have many friends raised within countries which still play by these rules, where you are and do what your father or mother did, and maybe your grandparents before you, not what you want to do. Where apprenticeship programs are the only way into a trade. Where you are tested and found competent for a specific job, not because your heart leads the way.

By golly, I have been so busy the past couple weeks that I didn't even had a chance to check out a beta of Wordpress 2.2.  Now it's too late for me because Wordpress 2.2 has been officially released.  Not only does this release include over 200 bug fixes, but it also has some new nifty features.

• WordPress Widgets allowing you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity.
• Full Atom support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement the XML-RPC interface.
• A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.

"If you think you need filtering technologies to be sure your employees aren't damaging your reputation, that's a management problem, not a technology one.  If employees can't be trusted, technology is the least of your problems."

- Tim Bray, Director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems Inc., "Keeping Secrets in a WikiBlogTubeSpace World", ComputerWorld, March 19, 2007

At first I was skeptical that this article was without bias regarding Wordpress.com since it was Matt Mullenweg's own blog that referred me to the story.  I was pleased to discover that the author, Jonathan Bailey, helped erased my skepticism in his well written article, Wordpress.com is Virtually Spam Free.  The first two paragraphs should get you interested in reading more.

This excerpt reminds me of long debates I had in my meteorology days over which is sunnier, "partly cloudy" or "partly sunny"?  I like Movable Type's answer to the long standing IT question...can just a blog be a full CMS?

There are often debates about this sort of thing — if you’re using a tool like Movable Type, which is platform designed for blogging, but it’s being used as a general content management system, is the output still a blog? Our answer: Who cares?