Content Management

Wordpress users have been encouraged to update to to the latest version of Wordpress, currently at 2.8.4. It appears there is a nasty worm going around attacking Wordpress sites.

Several weeks ago, I mentioned the Wordpress for BlackBerry client which allows you to submit articles to your WordPress blog remotely. Recently, CMS Report, was pointed to a Joomla! client for the iPhone, the J Admin Mobile! application.

Similar to Wordpress for BlackBerry, J Admin Mobile! (JAM!) allows you to manage many of the core features of your Joomla! 1.5 site remotely. We can only conclude that the smarter and more Web capable our phones become the more established this trend of moving the CMS client over to mobile devices will become.

JAM! 1.4.0 was recently submitted to the Apple App store with the developers expecting to see the updated version available soon. Some of the new features in JAM! 1.4.0 include:

• Inserting images into articles
• Adding users
• Ability to change the user type (Registered, Author, etc)
  

Although you wouldn't expect an application with the version number of 2.3.1.5 to contain anything but bug fixes, in the world of mojoPortal almost every release contains new features for the CMS. mojoPortal 2.3.1.5 is no different with a number of changes centered around rich text editors (WYSIWYG). TinyMCE has replaced FCKeditor as mojoPortal's primary text editor.

TinyMCE Editor Rises To The Top

For a long time now the FCKeditor has been the best editor available out of the box in mojoPortal. It was the only one with the ability to browse and upload images and files, it was the only one with integration for our Content Template System and Content Style System, and it was the only one with a spelling checker. Not anymore! I had not upgraded the Tiny MCE editor in a long time, I had tried to once and it broke and I was busy so I reverted to the working version. But recently we've been having some issues with FCKeditor so I decided to give the Tiny MCE upgrade another try.

Joe Audette, mojoPortal developer, writes that FCKeditor fans shouldn't feel like they're being left behind. mojoPortal also supports the CKEditor. The makers of FCKeditor realizing that the code base for their RTE was more than six years old and needing improvements began CKEditor as its replacement. CKEditor focuses on features such as accessibility and performance improvements that weren't quite there for FCKeditor.

Besides changes for TinyMCE and CKEditor, mojoPortal 2.3.1.5 also includes these enhancements:

• New Permissions Tab in site settings
• NeatUpload 1.3.18 upgrade
• The DOCTYPE changed to Html 5 for included skins
• The default 90 days allowed to comment on a new post post can be changed
• Removed Site Office
• New translations include Hebrew and Polish. The German translation has been updated.
  

Although Plone 3.3 is a minor release in the Plone 3 series, it does offer several refinements. Highlights of the 3.3 release include the ability to localize navigation, tabs, sitemaps and searches within folders. According to an announcement by Steve McMahon "this makes it much easier to develop autonomous sub-sites within a Plone site". The new Lineage add-on provides management facilities to exploit the new feature.

Some additional new features and refinements include:

Kentico CMS 4.1 for ASP.Net was recently released. Kentico, the software vendor, announced that this version of the CMS contains a new enterprise-class search engine and several usability improvements.

The new search engine is based on the Lucene.NET search engine which is already known to provide excellent performance and search results. The new Smart Engine can be used side-by-side with existing SQL-based search engine. The main features of Kentico's search engine includes:

Maidenhead, UK, 13th August 2009 – SDL Tridion, leader in Web Content Management (WCM) and part of SDL, leader in Global Information Management (GIM), today announces that Butlins’ new website has resulted in significant net benefits, notably a 21% increase in web traffic.  Working with Building Blocks to implement SDL Tridion’s content management platform, combined with a site re-design, has provided Butlins with a significantly more robust online environment.  Butlins can now take new, competitive offers to market quicker, increase the frequency of such offers, handle the subsequent spike in online traffic, and ultimately convert more sales.

Chris Cagle asked me to talk about his newly launched GetSimple CMS which is geared toward small-business use. I suppose I must be a sucker in talking and promoting new CMS projects as I get a lot of these type of requests. I know there are folks from the enterprise content management perspective that wish I wouldn't because a brand spanking new CMS isn't something they would ever consider. However, there is always a place for these niche applications.

I was just thinking the other day how nice it would be to find a list of places for free stock images that could be used to spice up things at my sites. Then comes along this article at Mashable, 26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog. I love it when things work out this way.

After five years of development, the MODx CMS has finally went to version 1.0. Late last week, the project leaders for MODx made the following announcement:

To say we're excited about this release would be a bit of an understatement. Far, far more than just a new Manager theme and some bugfixes here and there, Evolution 1.0.0 represents a ton of work by a lot of people. Our classic code base is no where close to outdated or obsolete, on the contrary it just took a huge leap forward and sets the stage for continuing development and improvements to our classic code base.

Boatloads of bugfixes and feature requests aside, our 1.0 release focuses on a few key areas. The international communities deserve a huge "thank you" for all their hard work in getting their languages updated, too

MODx Evolution is actually one of two branches of development for the CMS. The release based on legacy code-MODx Evolution-has existed since 2004. There is also a completely rewritten MODx Revolution release that will occur in late 2009. In fact the release candidate for MODx Revolution is due later this summer.

Some of the new features and changes in MODX 1.0 Evolution include:

• Many updates to Manager and Installer language translations
• Now handles RSS, Word, Excel, XML, HTML, CSS, JS, PDF and plain documents with custom icons in the Site Tree
• Remove legacy code no longer needed
  

The last significant version of MiaCMS was released this week. As I wrote several weeks ago, except for bug fixes and security updates, MiaCMS 4.9 will be the last version to be released by the developers. The MiaCMS core developers will now begin focusing all new development efforts on the Aliro platform.

I think the MiaCMS developers' attention toward the Aliro platform is a good strategic move. The developers likely recognized that the space for a content management system with Mambo roots was a little crowded. When I reviewed MiaCMS last year, I couldn't help but think it was going to be an uphill battle for MiaCMS.