Bryan Ruby

This week I have been thinking a lot about how poorly we manage data and information. The quality of the data and the lack of needed data has historically been an issue at work. We have focused a lot of our time on data mining but never really recognized that one day there would be too much data and information for our staff to sift through. Recently, our managers proposed two new data sources for the operational staff to review and I decided that it was time to hit the panic button that we're currently giving out more information to our workers than they can handle.

When a business presents too much information to their staff it is a lot like catching deer in your headlights. If the deer is too overwhelmed to run and you don't steer the car out of the way then no good can come to both car and deer. This is where I think we are at work and we're needing to slow things down a bit to give both driver and deer time to think about their next move. For the moment at least, I'm personally at a lost on how best to solve our issues with information overload.

I usually stay clear of search engine optimization (SEO) discussions, but I think this video is worth your time. In the video, Corey Eulas teaches SEO tips, tricks, and best practices found to increase traffic from search engines. This talk includes examples with a look “under the hood” of a few actual sites owned by members of the audience. You will "discover how to enhance user experience and usability while making your site more search engine friendly".

This past week, the MODx Team released an update of their MODx Evolution CMS, version 1.0.3. This update is a security, bugfix and enhancement release.

The MODx Team considers Evolution 1.0.3 a mandatory update for all MODx Evolution users as it closes some potential vectors that could lead to security compromises with prior MODx releases.

MODx Evolution 1.0.3 also offers more than 45 bugfixes including fixes for IE8 compatibility and the Manager Datepicker and more than 20 enhancements or improvements including adding Templates and TVs capability for custom installer builds, a better organized context menu, core add-on and language updates—all to make the MODx experience better for developers and users.

A new version of mojoPortal was released this week. This new version of the CMS, mojoPortal 2.3.4.1, includes the following significant changes:

• Support for Artisteer 2.4
• New Time Zone System
• Improvements for the forum
• Skin/Template Changes
• Webstore improvements

Details and additional changes in mojoPortal 2.3.4.1 can be found in the release announcement at mojoPortal.com.

eZ Systems announced yesterday the release of eZ Publish 4.3. Lots of new features and improvements in this new version of the open source CMS. The most significant changes include:

MODx CMS, a open source Web content management system, has announced it has published the first release candidate for its upcoming flagship product, MODx Revolution. Over three years in the making, this release candidate moves MODx CMS Revolution 2.0 out of beta and brings it one step closer to the final General Release.

Nuxeo announced the release of a new version of their Nuxeo Enterprise Platform as well as their Nuxeo Document Management application. Nuxeo version 5.3.1 brings improvements and bug fixes to the software.

Some of the major improvements in this new version of Nuxeo includes:

Over the weekend, version 1.7 of CMS Made Simple (CMSMS) was released. One of those most significant changes in this version of CMSMS is the drop of support for PHP 4 in favor of PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3. 

Additional significant features in CMSMS 1.7 also include:

Who really defines what is a CMS?

You do.

I'm more convinced than ever that CMS experts aren't really in the driver's seat when defining the content management system. Experts in the field of content management are more or less observant passengers that are there to help you not get lost and to point out the significant landmarks on the way. This journey takes you to places while you the customer remain in the driver seat with all the privileges and responsibilities of being the driver.

Over the past few years I've realized that my work preference is to keep things as simple as possible. Sometimes when defining information systems keeping things simple works while other times the system is new and remains too complicated to define. Thanks to my reply in a productive rant against CMS by Laurence Hart I'm not only understanding my aversion to being called a CMS expert but also my philosophy and role in defining what is a CMS. This personal philosophy is developing...

Scott Abel convinced me a few years ago on my own blog that the definition of a CMS is never static and always changing. We’re chasing our own tail when we get nit picky in our definitions of a CMS. Somewhere in all the marketing that has been done for terms such as CMS, ECM, and WCM…we have forgotten the difference between information system and information technology.