Bryan Ruby

This week we added three Web applications to our CMS Focus top 30 list.  The CMSs and ECMs listed in CMS Focus are not necessarily the most popular in content management and are not meant to meet everyone's requirements for a CMS. Instead the content management systems that make up this top 30 are what I consider content management "game changers" or "attention getters". New to CMS Focus are the following CMS/ECM: EPiServer, Umbraco, and an unknown CMS called Omeka.

Since the early days of CMSReport.com, I have been providing a list of the top 30 Web applications that interest me the most. This list is called CMS Focus. If you take a close look at this list, you will find that I currently need three additional content management systems to complete the list of thirty. Which CMS/ECM would you recommend be placed on my list?

Copyright Criminals, which airs its documentaries on PBS, has an upcoming show on the rise of sampling in hip-hop music. While, the documentary focuses on copyright laws covering music it's not too difficult to apply lessons learned for other content including text found on web sites.

A few years ago, I had developed an online store for a buddy of mine using osCommerce. I had hoped to use Joomla! or Drupal for the site but at the time wasn't satisfied with the shopping cart extensions or modules that were available for either CMS. Shortly after developing that site a new eCommerce module for Drupal became available called Ubercart. I've never had taken on the task of building another online store (it was a lot of work) but I've always kept my eye on Ubercart just to stay informed.

Alfresco Software today announced the availability of Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.2, the latest version of its enterprise content management (ECM) product. With this release, Alfresco enables cloud-based deployments, streamlines email management and archiving and enhances team-based content collaboration. In addition, the Alfresco Enterprise 3.2 Records Management module is the only supported open source solution to have been certified to the 5015.02 standard.

This release builds on Alfresco’s ability to deliver low-cost, innovative and interoperable open source ECM solutions. New features and benefits included in Alfresco Enterprise 3.2 are listed below.

Enables efficient and easy ECM in the cloud:

• Multi-Tenancy – Alfresco natively supports multi-tenancy, a critical component of multi-company cloud implementations as it maximizes use of hardware and simplifies administration of multiple instances of Alfresco.
• Cloud-deployable – Alfresco now supports multiple deployment options from traditional on-premise to full cloud deployment ranging from a simple AMI to a fully-configured, fault-tolerant and load-balanced Alfresco cluster.
  

At the start of every year, I like to resolve to read a number of IT, CMS, and business related books. The Internet is a good resource, but perhaps because I'm too old school I still like to learn a thing or two from a book. So far I have three books on my reading list for 2010.

I plan to review each of these books at a later date but since I'm a slow reader I thought I'd share them now. Links to the books go to Amazon for a possible purchase are our available in CMS Report's Amazon store.

Six Apart announced the release of Movable Type 5 this week. Traditionally a blogging application, Movable Type 5 brings new features into the Web application that evolves it into a more rounded social publishing system. This release includes two versions:

• Movable Type 5.01 - commercial license
• Movable Type Open Source 5.01 - open source license

The goal of Movable Type 5 is to give businesses, organizations and individuals a single, unified software package with integrated website and blog capabilities.  It's been enhanced for the easy creation, administration and management of websites and blogs - all from a single user dashboard.

Here are some of the new and improved features in MT5:

• A new user dashboard for both the website and blogs. This makes it easy for authors, editors, designers and other publishers to easily navigate between the two.

• A new theme mechanism that makes it easy to apply a new theme across a website and blogs with a single click that proliferates changes throughout the published site.

• Enhanced content management features that include revision history and new custom fields. There are five new object types for custom fields: website, blog, comment, template and asset.
  

A couple days ago, I posted CMS Report's Top Ten Stories of 2009. The articles listed were ranked by popularity based by how many times viewed and the rate that they were viewed through the year. Popular stories do not always signify well written articles or are always an indication of personal favorites. Each year, I write a number of content management or IT related articles that I love but for various reasons you the people didn't have interest in reading and sharing.

Below are some of my favorite articles written in 2009 that were not a part of the previously posted Top Ten list. If I had a Top 20 Stories list the articles in both of these listings would be included.

• Looking forward to Microsoft's Windows 7
• Reviewing Barrie North's Joomla! 1.5 book and video
• The problem is bigger than SharePoint
• Testing the water with Acquia Search for Drupal
• Shortcomings of Enterprise Wiki Deployments
• Two CMS Worlds on Twitter
• Charging for online news doomed to fail
• Theme development and the GPL
• Judging Five Overall Best Content Management Systems
• Quoting IT: Addison Berry
  

The level of interest in content management systems astounds me. Each year, I continue to see at CMS Report an increase of visitors looking for information on content management. Our stories tend to focus on open source CMS more than proprietary applications and evidently that's the subject matter that our readers want to read.

Below are the top ten stories of 2009 that were posted here at CMSReport.com. As you can see, stories involving Drupal, WordPress, Joomla!, Alfresco, and Nuxeo took center stage. These stories might not have been the ten I would have personally picked for this list, but I'll respect the numbers behind their ranking.

1. Mollom: A solution for comment spam
2. 2009 Best Open Source PHP CMS: Drupal wins, Wordpress and Joomla! not far behind
3. Serving a home for my Drupal site
4. WordPress leads the Packt as 2009 Overall Best Open Source CMS
5. Allen Ellis: Why the Packt CMS Competition is Broken, and How to Fix It
6. Google PageRank
7. Alfresco Module Obtains U.S. DoD 5015.02 Records Management Certification
8. Using Wordpress city saves $19,000
9. Cheryl McKinnon, Nuxeo, and Open Source
10. Drupal Gardens preview video by Acquia

The interest in Nuxeo took me by surprise and I'll be adding the CMS to my top 30 CMS Focus page as time allows. As always, our thanks to all those who continue to return to this site to read the stories, join in on the conversation, and even submit articles. As I've said before, I'm not sure we would be doing this if it wasn't for the interest shown by others visiting the site.

There are a number of nice features and improvements that are included with the new WordPress 2.9. Probably the feature that will get everyone's attention is the improvements in the media-handling of images and videos. The improvements in this latest version of WordPress continue to show why this open source blogging application excels in usability.

Four features that the developers are highlighting in WordPress 2.0 include: