Content Management

Development teams have quickened up the pace with the release of Mambo 4.6.2. The release marks the completion of the complete revision of the Language Manager that began with the initial 4.6 release.  The Mambo core is now fully translatable.

Other features introduced in this minor version release include:

• Stability & security improvements
• Lighter database footprint
• A number of bug fixes
• Improved compatibility with older 3rd party extensions
• Added support for 4.5.x style SEF URLs
• Updates to many of the internal extensions
• MOStlyCE WYSIWYG editor enhancements (cross browser compliance issues addressed via an update to TinyMCE v2.1.0)

This may surprise regular visitors to my site, but I'm an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal.   Why is it surprising for some that I read the WSJ?  Well, probably because after all the links and excerpts to stories I have provided from CMS Report, this is the very first time I have ever mentioned an article from the WSJ in one of my blog posts.  The sad truth is that about every article found at WSJ.com can only be fully read if you are a subscriber of the online newspaper.  I have wanted to avoid frustrating readers the issues with providing a link to an article they can't access unless they're ready to hand over their cr

It was announced at RadiantCMS.org that the latest version of their CMS was released, Radiant 0.6 (Lapidary).

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:

For some time I have wanted to promote and write about a new Drupal site that went online recently.  The site carries a similar mission I've tried to have with my own sites where those from competing projects, products, and organizations can come together for discussion.  In this case, a site with the desire to build a "place for those of us interested in open source solutions and community issues".  The site is OpenSourceCommunity.org.

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?

This past week saw updates for both Wordpress and Wordpress MU.  While both open source packages are blogging applications they are not quite the same software.  Wordpress MU is intended to run up to hundreds of thousands of blogs with a single install of WordPress. Hence the MU in Wordpress MU stands for Multi-User.

A security update is available in both branches of  Wordpress as 2.1.3 and 2.0.10.

"Less and less, we're competing based on terms of functionality (open source CMS or not). Not features but ease of use, aesthetics, support, security, community, and documentation...will be critical differentiators."

- Dries Buytaert, "State of Drupal", 2007 Open Source CMS Summit and DrupalCon, Yahoo! Campus
 

Kshipra Singh from Packt Publishing sent me an e-mail the other day asking us to publish another one of their sample chapters here at CMS Report.   If you recall, we posted an article on one of the sample chapters from a book on Alfresco.  The book this time around is Mastering TypoScript: TYPO3 Website, Template, and Extension Development.  Long name for a title so why don't we dig a little deeper and find out what this book is really about.

TypoScript is a declarative programming language that offers developers, administrators, and designers full control over the configuration of TYPO3 and its template engine. Only with a good command of TypoScript can you leverage the powerful capabilities of the TYPO3 engine, to customize and control all aspects of your TYPO3 sites. If you're serious about TYPO3 as your content platform, you need to master TypoScript.

As before, I don't have the book in front of me and this should not be considered a review of the book.  Instead, I'm only allowing Packt Publishing through this post to give you a taste of what the book has to offer.  You need to decide for yourself if you want to buy the book.  The following is what the book intends for the reader to learn:

Jaws 0.7.0 was released this week.  Jaws is a framework and content management system for building dynamic web sites.  New features in Jaws 0.7.0 include:

• Support for 12 languages
• Database support for: MySQL(i), PostgreSQL, MSSQL and SQLite!
• AJAX in all of the gadgets
• Better antispam support: Captchas (simple and mathematician), Akismet and extra tools
• Friendly URLs

Links for downloading Jaws 0.7.0 is available on the official Jaws download page.