Bryan Ruby

Elgg 1.7 was released this week. Elgg is an open source social platform and is made for individuals, groups and institutions to create their own fully-featured social environment. This new version of Elgg introduces some new features but much of the development time was spent improving the core API to make Elgg a stable platform for future development.

Some of the significant changes in Elgg 1.7 include:

For 40 years, scientists have searched for a way to bring nuclear fusion to the masses. If successful in bringing fusion online, we all could have an inexhaustible form of power to meet our world's energy needs. The promise of fusion is a dream that many have hoped to see become a reality in their lifetime.

Perhaps not for as noble of cause, Drupal users have sought better themes for their Drupal sites. Four years ago, it seemed to me that creating a good theme for Drupal was almost done as an afterthought. There simply were not too many places for a user to go for a quality Drupal theme. I recall spending a lot of wasted time maintaining my own (boring) themes for Drupal sites. The Drupal days of version 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 and even 4.7 for themes were dark days indeed. Luckily, Drupal 5 introduced us to a new theme called Garland. Garland may not have been a perfect theme but in my opinion the theme marked the beginning of an era for a new style of Drupal themes.

In the past few years, the number of Drupal themes provided under open source or via private companies have exploded. Along with that explosion, various starter and base themes have been introduced too. On the top of my head I can think of Zen, Genesis, Basic, and AdaptiveTheme. These starter/base themes offer theme developers opportunities for everyone to build or use professional sub-themes. In fact, this site used Zen in the theme's early years and today we're currently using a Genesis based theme called Extreme Updates (slightly modified). With each passing year, the theme offerings for Drupal has steadily improved in quality and quantity. This year is no exception and brings us a new official base theme to carry us over into the next generation of themes made for Drupal.

The year 2010 brings us Drupal's newest base theme, Fusion.  Currently, there probably isn't a Drupal theme that offers site owners more control over layout and style than a Fusion based theme. Fusion has the support and backing of well-known Drupal theme shop, TopNotchThemes. TopNotchThemes appear to be serious enough about Fusion revolutionizing the way themes are done in Drupal. This week they publicly announced their new line of themes and a website called Fusion Drupal Themes. Most of the themes offered at the site are for a price, but there are a couple free themes also being offered that should give you a chance to see what Fusion is all about.

Last week, CMS Report received an email regarding a new CMS that focuses on managing multimedia content. The application is written in Python so naturally we're going to talk to let our readers know about this new platform.

Rita McGrath at Harvard Business Review has written a blog post on why she hates micropayments.  Micropayments are financial transactions involving very small sums of money (see Wikipedia). For online publishing, a small fee would allow you to view the content for a certain period of time or for a certain number of articles.

Personally, I'm not sold on the concept of micropayments for content which is probably why I was lured to Ms. McGrath's article in the first place.

The idea has been around a long time — at least since the mid-to-late 90s — with both supporters and detractors weighing in. Millions have been lost by companies seeking to capitalize on streams of micropayments, almost all of which eventually crashed and burned. Myself, when confronted with a request to chip in 99 cents for a one-time glimpse at an article or $2.99 for a week's worth (as some of my local newspapers are doing) — well, I close that window and go away.

The author of the article discusses further the importance for any payment system adopted to consider "how the payment link of customers' consumption chains fits into their total experience". Micropayment systems have a tall order in that they need to be seamless, transparent, and achieve inevitability. Even grimmer for publishers, it's not only the micropayment experience that needs to be improved but also the non-micropayment systems too.

For the past few years, I've paid a yearly subscription to the Wall Street Journal for the print publication and the online subscription. With my yearly renewal coming up very soon, I've decided to discontinue my online subscription to the WSJ. Why would I do that? There are some very basic reasons to why I'm dropping WSJ.com. I rarely find myself reading the online content of the WSJ. I either already read the stories in the print version of the WSJ or I have found myself already familiar with the news story because I read a similar story posted elsewhere online. Stopping by the WSJ.com, unlike CNN or FoxNews, never became a daily ritual for me.

A new version of mojoPortal was released today, version 2.3.3.9. The most significant change for this release is the introduction by the developers for their support in using html templates generated by Artisteer to make skins for mojoPortal. Two new skins made with Artisteer templates are included in this release as well.

The new version of mojoPortal also includes additional changes:

Rob Larsen shows you how to create cross-browser, HTML5 enhanced WordPress themes using nothing more than a little extra JavaScript, basic WordPress knowledge and some knowledge of the new elements.

Earlier this week, I announced a new site that I'm working on under the domain SocPub.com. What I didn't say in the announcement was which CMS I was going to use for the site. I also didn't say that my choice in the CMS version could be considered by some as risky. I have decided to use the alpha/beta/release candidates of Drupal 7 for the SocPub site.

ocPortal 4.3 was released this week. The new version of ocPortal introduces a number of "bug fixes, performance improvements, and usability improvements". However, ocPortal also introduces some new features to make upgrading to the new version more enticing.

The new features that have been implemented in ocPortal 4.3 include:

Last week, I announced the addition of three CMSs to CMS Focus. CMS Focus is my top 30 list of content management systems that interest me the most. Because I limit the list to only 30 CMSs, there are obviously a good number of quality Web applications that are missing from this list. A CMS that arguably should be on the list is the Kentico CMS.

Kentico's PR Manager recently sent me an email to make his case for why Kentico should be included in the CMS Focus list. I likely will not be making any new changes to my top 30 list until June, however I will definitely consider Kentico the next time I update CMS Focus.

Hi Bryan,

I remember that Kentico CMS hasn't quite made it on your CMS Focus list.

Today, I would like to briefly comment on the criteria for selecting CMS on the list you published:
 
1. First, the application has to add something I haven't seen in a CMS before.

In case of a Kentico CMS it’s a set of its features that makes it unique. There are plenty of CMS that offers source code, hundreds that have multisite and multilingual support, dozens with open and well documented API, some that are SEO friendly, few that are fully rebrandable... And now will there any remain if you add 200+ web parts and 36 modules to cover the needs for building either Corporate Web Site, E-shop, Social Network or Intranet (=simply to allow your web site to grow in any direction)?  How many CMS vendors have 7 days bug fixing policy? Highly responsive support is something hard to prove, but please go ahead and do some “Mystery Mailing”, I’m sure that our support team won’t disappoint you (evaluators have right for 10 support tickets – so really please try this).