Content Management

Even though I've wanted to focus more on MODx in this blog, I have to say I haven't done a very good job bringing this CMS and content management framework up for discussion. With the release of MODx Evolution 1.0 and the upcoming release of MODx Revolution 2.0 I have no doubt we'll be seeing more headlines for MODx.

Last week, MODx Evolution 1.0.1 was released. This release contains enough security improvements and bug fixes that the MODx developers consider the update a "mandatory upgrade" for any site running previous releases of MODx Evolution/0.9.X.

By now, many of us are excited to see the finalists for this year's Packt Publishing Open Source CMS (Content Management System) Award competition, the annual contest in which dozens of companies compete to be highlighted as the year's finest Content Management System.

Entering its fourth year, this competition has grown nearly five-fold and is widely regarded as the most prestigious award available in the CMS industry. But as successful as the competition has become, it sadly suffers from inherent issues which prevent it from truly presenting today's gamut of CMS choices in a valuable way.

Mike Stefanello wrote to us earlier this month to talk about OfficeMedium. OfficeMedium is a web-based service that provides intranet and collaboration software for businesses and work groups. In a very competitive market, OfficeMedium appears set to try and win customers over by providing enriched business tools at a low reasonable price. OfficeMedium is pricing their services at a monthly rate of $8 per user plus $1 per Gigabyte used.

OfficeMedium utilizes the open source Drupal CMS. A case study for how Drupal was used to build OfficeMedium can be found at Drupal.org. Below is a copy of Mike's email talking about OfficeMedium.

We offer a brand-new web application that we believe your readers will be interested to hear about.

OfficeMedium: Web-based Intranet and Collaboration Software

OfficeMedium is a recently launched startup that offers on-demand, web-based intranet and collaboration software for businesses and work groups. The private and secure networks offer a wide array of features meant to centralize and streamline important information and data, unlike other applications which seem to focus on single, often over-detailed and confusing, offerings, such as project management, contact relationships, or "enterprise twitters".

Within a sleek, extremely simple and easy-to-use interface, OfficeMedium offers:

• Task and Event Management
• Personal and Group Calendars
• File Sharing, Storage, and Organization
• Contact and Company Information Management
• Automated Organization and Archiving
• Client Integration
• Social and Communication Features (such as private messaging, status updates, micromessaging, user profiles, shared blogging, poll creation, activity feeds, and more)

My inbox is just full of emails from companies and people requesting that I take a look at their CMS. To be honest, it's a little overwhelming to have so many requests because although time is my enemy I really do want to respond to everyone. For now though, I'm currently focused on reviewing this year's finalists in Packt's Best Open Source CMS. In other words, I have a long waiting list of CMS to review.

However, there are a few of these emails that I don't want to just sit on my computer and go nowhere. One of those emails include a sales pitch for the Kentico CMS. Kentico is a CMS that hasn't quite made it on my CMS Focus list but possibly should be.

A new version of Radiant, a Ruby on Rails content management systems, is coming soon. Radiant 0.9.0 has just been released as a release candidate.

In this release the interface for the CMS has been updated to make Radiant more stylish and compact. Apart from the stylistic changes, there are a few other significant changes to the user interface worth mentioning:

I do my best to keep my two IT world's separated. One of those worlds of course is my obsession with content management systems which includes this blog and numerous discussions with almost anyone interested in CMS. The second world is my IT position as a federal employee for a small government field office. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, rarely do I allow those two worlds to cross one another. You'll find very little mention on this blog of my work for the federal government. At the same time, very few people in my agency are even aware of my CMS side hobby.

Earlier this week, Lullabot's Jeff Robbins posted an article about his company giving Drupal on-site training to employees within the Department of Commerce. In his post Jeff discusses the interest those employees have in Drupal as well as mentioning that the door continues to widen for Drupal in the federal government.

We had a great week of on-site training at the Department of Commerce in Washington, DC last week. They've already launched recovery.commerce.gov in Drupal and they're currently in the process of rebuilding Commerce.gov as a Drupal site. We spent the week with their team making sure that they understood not only how to build and present a Drupal site, but also the benefits of the Drupal community. They're a smart bunch and it's always fun to watch the synapses sparking as people realize all of the ways that they can snap together Drupal's pieces to create interesting web functionality.

There seems to be quite a buzz around Drupal in the government and as the Commerce team walked around the building with Drupal books under their arms, they got lots of comments from people in other bureaus, saying, "Oh! Drupal! We're thinking about using Drupal." Word is starting to get around about Drupal as a great platform for government websites.

Jeff Robbins is correct in saying that until recently, there was a lot of hesitation to using open source CMS such as Drupal for government portals and content delivery. I know earlier this decade my agency's Webmaster had considered using Drupal before deciding to build the agency's own CMS in-house. During this time period Drupal 4.5 was available but while my interest in information systems was growing, I had never really looked into Drupal (Mambo was in the open source CMS headlines back then) . However, just the possibility of my agency considering the use of Drupal during that time helped motivate me to learn more about Drupal.

I have only now started paying attention to the Umbraco CMS. While they may call Umbraco the "friendly CMS", I'm not sure I'm aware of a single CMS that doesn't self-describe itself as the CMS to use. This is why I enjoy blog posts from actual users new to a CMS describing what they have learned about the software. In learning Umbraco, I'm glad I came across Lee Messenger's "A Complete Newbie's Guide To Umbraco CMS".

This week, eZ Systems announce the immediate release of eZ Publish 4.2, the new version of its Open Source Content Management System. The new release brings important improvements to the heart of eZ solutions, the eZ Publish engine, as well as major advances and new features for eZ Flow and eZ Find. A new extension, eZSI, makes its debut in the 4.2 package providing full support for the Edge Side Include standard to eZ Publish.

Bård Farstad, CTO and Founder of eZ Publish, described the motivation underlying the new release: "Our team focused on Usability for both end-users and editors, as well as Scalability and Performance for customers using eZ Publish in extremely high-traffic installations ". Farstad emphasized that "in those two focus areas, eZ Find (the enterprise-grade search plugin for eZ Publish) has become a key element for achieving the best results".

The 4.2 release was developed by eZ Systems with contributions from eZ Publish partners and trusted community members, and is immediately available as certified software, which benefits from eZ System's Premium support and maintenance services, including the unlimited bugfix guarantee.

mojoPortal 2.3.1.9 has been released. A number of image related features went into this new release. Some of the new features found in mojoPortal 2.3.1.9 include:

This is one of those rare posts where I post an article about a change in the executive ranks of a CMS company. However, thanks to Jon Marks and his CMS gurus on Twitter list I've been a Twitter follower of this person.  Cheryl McKinnon is moving from Open Text to Nuexo as their Chief Marketing Officer. Nuxeo is one of the leading provider of open source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software and services.