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CMS Report as a Wikipedia reference

Occasionally, I see a post that I have written as a reference in a white paper, a book, or somewhere else online.  I actually started CMSReport.com as a place for me to learn more about Web content management systems and information systems.  Whenever someone references CMS Report it signals that we have gone full circle where someone is also learning from me.  There is not a more awesome feeling than this.

One thing I have yet to achieve is being a legitimate reference at Wikipedia.  Until now!  CMS Report is being referenced on the wiki page for Frog CMS.

Something bad going on with PHP-Fusion

Yesterday, PHP-Fusion announced that someone had hacked into their site and changed the download link for PHP-Fusion Version 7.

Hello all,

We had an issue a few days ago where a malicious person gained
access to our site as a super administrator via a weak account/gained
password. They apparently changed the download link of PHP-Fusion
version 7 to spendspace and it was packaged as a .rar file.

If you downloaded one of these files, please reinstall your entire site using a fresh copy from SourceForge.

While this isn't a good thing, it is a positive that PHP-Fusion disclosed the possibility that the link led to a version of PHP-Fusion that may have been maliciously changed.  I can recall a number of other projects (open source and propriety) that have found their source code made vulnerable by someone intruding into their servers.  What is always important to customers in these cases is disclosure and transparency.  So far, PHP-Fusion seems to be doing the right thing.

However, as of this Thursday morning...it looks like PHP-Fusion's hosting company has suspended their account. At the time of this writing, there is no words given as to the reasons for the suspension.  I suspect the suspension is likely to be security related.  Perhaps, we'll see an announcement at SourceForge on the status of PHP-Fusion if their home site doesn't come back online soon.

Linux available on the Dell Mini 12 Netbook

Early Tuesday morning, Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP joined Windows Vista as available operating systems for the Dell Inspiron Mini 12.  By Tuesday evening, I found myself ordering the Ubuntu version of the Mini 12 with the 6-cell battery and 80GB hard drive.  Despite having installed Linux on countless systems, this will be the first time I've ordered Linux pre-installed for the client PC.  I'm eager to find out how well Dell supports their Linux systems.

While the Mini 12 tops the end of the scale for netbooks due to its 12.1 inch widescreen, I believe the Mini 12 will be a perfect Linux replacement for my aging Averatec notebook.  Although I wouldn't have minded a smaller netbook, the Mini 12 with its 1280x800 screen resolution and comfortable keyboard was just too enticing.  Plus the thought of constantly needing to use the browser's scroll bars with the lower resolution (1024x600) of the smaller netbooks was a concern of mine.

Mailbag: Two SilverStripe Websites

Sigurd Magnusson sent us an email to let us know that "SilverStripe has now split its company and open source projects into two totally revamped and beautiful websites".  The two SilverStripe websites will of course have different purposes.

Head on over to the SilverStripe.com site if you want to know more about our company and the business side of things. But if you're looking for the SilverStripe community, developer documentation, or the roadmap for the future of the product, you're in the right place [SilverStripe.org].

MediaWiki plus FCKeditor: WYSIWYG for the wiki

A couple years ago we decided to use MediaWiki for a wiki implementation at work.  Wikipedia uses MediaWiki for their wiki application so we felt it was the right choice for our needs.  One concern my team had was that MediaWiki didn't come with a rich text editor (no WYSIWYG).

While a number of us may be fine with using wikitext or HTML to edit our wiki pages, I believe the majority in any organization prefers to edit their pages with a friendly user interface similar to that found on their word processor. At the time, we tried a number of solutions but found neither the suggested TinyMCE or FCKeditor implementation integrated that well with mediaWiki.  So for our project we settled with wikEd, an editor that still required users to work with wiki syntax but surprising a very good tool for most users.

During a lunch conversation last week with Deane Barker of Gadgetopia and Blend Interactive, I mentioned my frustrations with MediaWiki not having available a good WYSIWYG solution.  Deane suggested that I look at a more recent implementation of MediaWiki plus FCKeditor. This project is being supported by the developers of FCKeditor themselves.

A new approach to collaboration and ECM?

Andrew Conry-Murray has written a good article in InformationWeek about the integration of collaboration software with enterprise content management.  The article is titled, A New Approach To Collaboration And Enterprise Content Management. The article focuses specifically on Microsoft's Sharepoint and Alfresco's Share being utilized with or sometimes replacing the traditional ECM products.

 

ECM products like Documentum have come a long way from their origins moving certain content through specific business processes, such as loan origination or check processing. This is still their primary role, but ECM vendors are broadening their scope to help companies manage new content types and encourage collaboration. Where does that leave your choices?
 
Companies will always have a mishmash of content repositories to deal with, so it makes sense to build a software layer that can reach into all them to apply uniform policies

 

I have only one complaint about the article, the article is poorly titled.  The process and workflows being described are not a new approach for enterprises, but rather an ongoing approach for bringing collaboration tools into an enterprise's content management system.

Many of us had originally thought that bringing Enterprise 2.0 into our organizations would be as easy as installing software on the server.  What we're finding is that for many of our workers, collaboration of content within an organization sometimes requires signficant changes to our business culture.  New ideas and new approaches are always welcomed.  However if you really want to see true collaboration in the enterprise, it is not always new approaches that are needed but a recommitment to the Enterprise 2.0 projects you started months ago.

Improvise with WordPress 2.7

Earlier today, Matthew Mullenweg announced the official release of Wordpress 2.7.  This new version of WordPress is a dandy with significant improvements made to the WordPress administrative interface and dashboard.  The choices you now have to customizing our blogging workflow is almost endless.

While we could start reading off from the changelogs for all the new features in WordPress 2.7, It's probably just as easy to show you the video.