Bryan Ruby

First Name
Bryan
Last Name
Ruby

Member for

18 years 11 months
About

Bryan Ruby is owner and writer for the socPub and founded the original site as CMSReport.com in 2006. He works full time as information technologist and is a former meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Additional websites Bryan writes for include his own blog and a new website that he can't seem to get off the ground called Powered by Battery. Despite a history of writing for niche blogs, his interests are eclectic and includes family, camping, bicycling, motorcycling, hiking, and listening to music.

Bryan can also be found on Medium's Mastodon instance as well as on Bluesky.

Latest Posts

Powered by Battery: The Ryobi Electric Riding Lawnmower

A few weeks ago during my visit to the local Home Depot, I came across the Ryobi RM480E, an all-battery powered electric riding lawn mower. Ryobi claims that you'll get up to 2 hours of run time or cut up to 2 acres on a single charge. This quiet, smooth battery powered riding mower houses three high-torque brushless motors to support the mower's blades and drivetrain.  The RM480E's uses four 12V lead acid batteries instead of lithium-ion which given the choice  and given the size of the mower  so they're not lithium).

WordPress 4.8 introduces four new widgets

WordPress 4.8 is now available and introduces users to new content management tools including three media widgets covering images, audio and video. The "Evans" release also includes link improvements, an updated text widget that supports visual editing, and an upgraded news and events section in your dashboard. 

When Matt Mullenweg announced the release of WordPress 4.8 he mentioned that this new version was built with you in mind. While the updates seem minor, he indicated that users will find that the improvements intuitive enough that "you’ll welcome [the changes] like an old friend".

An End of an Era: Mollom End-of-Life Announcement

Sometimes I get too nostalgic over computers or software that I once used in my daily life. I remember my first computer (the Commodore Vic-20), I remember my first programming language (BASIC), and I remember my first spam filtering software for user generated content (Akismet). But nine years ago, a new spam filtering service originally intended for Drupal called Mollom emerged and I quickly forgot about the other spam blocking software.

New Joomla 3.7 Offers Seven Significant Improvements

This week, the Joomla! Project announced the release of Joomla 3.7. This new release in the Joomla! 3 series features over 700 improvements to the popular content management system, including many features which "make administration of Joomla! Web sites easier and more feature-rich, as well as several security updates". The following are the seven biggest new feature improvements socPub.com found in Joomla 3.7.

As Facebook Fights Fake Accounts, Black Market Prices Go Up

NBC News recently posted an interesting article where the author notes that the spam industry follows the same Law of Supply and Demand as any capitalist-loving business does. As social networks crack down on fake accounts and fake news, the spam industry is able to charge their customers more to establish such inauthentic accounts.

Facebook shut down as many as 30,000 fake accounts in the past week — but that's unlikely to hurt the multi-million-dollar spam industry.

CMS Report is now socPub

We're no longer yesterday's CMS Report. Less than ten days ago, I started the process to migrate this website's content management system from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. During the migration I decided it was also time for a rebrand by listing the site under a new name and a new domain. We're now socPub and registered under the domain socpub.com.

What does socPub mean? Absolutely, nothing.

Recommended Feeds for CMSReport.com

RSS LogoWhen it comes to promoting the CMS Report's news feeds, I've always been indecisive on how best to promote our various RSS links. I've always been happy to promote our primary news feed, but I've been hesitant about promoting and supporting some of our more "hidden feeds". However, increasingly I've been receiving emails from our readers asking for alternative feeds that might be more suitable for their needs.

So by popular demand, a list of some of the RSS feeds available at CMSReport.com:

DNN releases Evoq 9 with a new Content as a Service Platform

Although I retired last year from writing stories solely focused on content management systems, I still have a few of my favorites that I like to keep an eye on. One of those favorites is DNN which back in the day we once called DotNetNuke. Less than a year ago, DNN brought to market Evoq 8 which addressed modern day marketing needs for better customer engagement. Last week, DNN showed the industry the ongoing evolution of its product line through Evoq 9.

Bryan Ruby: Recovering from Blogging Burnout

After three or four decades of being immersed in the digital lifestyle and blogging on a continual basis for 15 years, I found myself puking at the idea of spending more time in front of the computer outside of work. It's not that I don't still like technology and content management, but I didn't recognize until it was too late that the lack of topic diversity would eventually lead me to digital burnout. To fix this, I seriously tried not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In the end that's exactly what I did.