A new version of CMS Made Simple was released this past weekend. CMS Made Simple 1.8 offers a number of new features to enhance performance not only of the website itself, but to make doing some mundane tasks faster and easier.
Some of the more significant changes in CMS MadeSimple include:
"You could say, as many do, that shipping jobs overseas is no big deal because the high-value work—and much of the profits—remain in the U.S. That may well be so. But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work—and masses of unemployed?"
Andy Grove, Intel CEO 1987-2005, Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs, BusinessWeek, July 1, 2010
I continue to hear great things about EPiServer from Blend Interactive's Dean Barker and other folks in the CMS industry. Their accolades for this CMS is one of the reasons I decided to begin focusing on EPiServer here at the site.
Honestly, I don't know enough about EPiServer which is why some of the EPiServer fanboys have promised getting together with me sometime to talk about this platform. Until my education is complete, I'm going to resort to cheap writing by using press releases and blogs to get some of my information out to you about EPiServer. For instance, lets see if this product announcement by EPiServer's marketing gets you interested to hear more about their products:
EPiServer announces the release of EPiServer Relate+2 , a product package for EPiServer CMS 6, which containsEPiServer Community 4 and EPiServer Mail 5. It also includes a sample website which shows how to combine these three products to build a powerful online community. In today’s conversation economy the ability to get involved in websites where users are free to create, organize and share know-how and experiences in the form of words, pictures and videos is becoming more prevalent and Relate+ makes it a seamless experience for community members, community owners and moderators.
Included is support for Open ID where users can use an existing login ID to sign into multiple websites. The same rich text editor found in EPiServer CMS, TinyMCE, is now used for writing blog posts and the MetaWeblog API is also supported, so users can use their favorite blog applications, such as iBlogger for the iPhone or Live Writer for Windows, when creating or editing blog posts. In combination with blog syndication and ping/ pingbacks, Relate+ is a full-fledged blog engine.
A new version of our favorite Ruby on Rails CMS has been released, Radiant CMS 0.9.0. Obviously, I spoke a little too soon last October when I announced that 0.9.0 was coming soon. Each open source community has their own pace and time-line for releasing the release candidates of their software. In retrospect, I should have noted that Radiant CMS developers like to take their time in making sure the Radiant releases are at a level of quality and stability they're comfortable with before releasing the final versions to the general public.
In case you haven't heard, WordPress 3.0 was released last week. This is probably the first time I've been behind in blogging about the official release of a new major version of WordPress. However, since I told you all about WordPress 3.0 coming soon a couple weeks ago, I felt there wasn't a need to rush and tell you to go get WordPress 3.0 and try out all it's new features including taxonomy and multiuser integration. Instead, I spent this past week seeing how others reacted to WordPress 3.0.
As a fan of open source content management systems, its been rather pleasing to see some of the larger technology publications spend more time talking about applications like Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress. For the tech press, WordPress 3.0 was no exception with some of the major players such as Computerworld, PCWorld, and TechCrunch all making sure they spin out an article reviewing this latest version of WordPress.
What may surprise you though, is that open source CMS is just not an interest of computer geeks. Slowly but surely, open source CMS is the talk of business folks too. For example, both Fast Company and BusinessWeek made sure that they included articles this past week on WordPress 3.0. In the Fast Company article, Francine Hardaway writes some classic things to why business should pay attention to WordPress. Some of my favorite lines from her article, "6 Reasons Small Businesses need WordPress":
These are all some fantastic words from Hardaway and I think they show that applications such as WordPress are making a significant impact in the business world. I wouldn't call WordPress an ECM, but it most definately walks and talks like a CMS for the small business folks. If you haven't taken a look at WordPress in quite awhile, I'd encourage you to take a new look at this application.
Below is the summary video from the WordPress folks introducing you to WordPress 3.0. Enjoy.
Umbraco, an open source CMS based on Microsoft's ASP.NET, has announced the availability of Umbraco 4.1RC. The Umbraco Core Team of developers calls this version of their CMS as "the biggest update to Umbraco" ever. This release candidate for Umbraco 4.1 is packed with a laundry list of improvements in performance and stability as well as some new features.
New and improved features:
Local Florida government delivers innovative Web services via open source CMS
Local governments throughout the country are under continuous pressure to do more with less, and Manatee County, Florida is no exception. They have a tiny IT budget compared to state and national governments, yet they are responsible for the bulk of everyday citizen services. In tight financial straits, the county could ill afford a costly proprietary system plus stiff maintenance fees for their new website IT. They turned their sights to open source alternatives, and found that Magnolia CMS fit the bill.
About Manatee County