Bryan Ruby

The final version of SMF 1.1 is out. That's right, as far as 1.1 goes, no more release candidates for this forum software.

SMF is by far one of the easiest Web applications to install and upgrade that I have come across. In fact I upgraded my WebCMS Forum within 24 hours of the release and haven't looked backed. Though, I'm giving a week or two for some burn in time before I upgrade a client's site.

Instead of listing all the new features since 1.0, below are the major changes since SMF 1.1 RC3 was released. Release candidates in SMF are typically stable and introduce new features. In fact most open source projects would actually have given the RCs new version numbers.

On a recent visit to Drupal's forum I found another post with both Joomla and Drupal in the subject line. Making comparisons between Joomla and Drupal are very common these days as they are currently considered the top two open source content management systems (CMS) out there. The forum post written by Steve Burge contains a link that takes you to a comparison table he did between Joomla and Drupal.

A new "bugfix" for TYPO3 has been released. Some of the major fixes in TYPO3 4.0.3 are for:

• Internet Explorer 7 compatibility
• Some minor fixes to the Extension Manager
• Some small tweaks for PHP5 were made
• Some fixes for the Tools>User Admin Module “SU” mode
• A security enhancement prevents image access through thumbs.php.

The original TYPO3 announcement including links to release notes and downloads is available at TYPO3.org.

Brad Baker posted on the Joomla! Developer Network an article discussing how one can can contribute to their open source community. While Mr. Baker's article are focused on Joomla!, I think his comments could apply to any open source project. I especially like how he concludes his article.

The November 20, 2006 article "Spam surge linked to hackers" from eWeeks is a must read. Unfortunately, I can't find the actual online version of the article in print.

The article discusses the increasing complexity hackers are using botnets running on tens of thousands of hijacked Windows computers to spread spam. The article focuses on the research by SecureWorks regarding the malware trojan called Troj/SpamThru. Some scary unique features have been identified with this trojan including:

A debate that is going on among many CMS projects. Ryan Boren asks if it's time for Wordpress to drop support for MySQL 3.23?

I'm convinced that digital identity and universal authentication systems will make it big on the IT radar scope for 2007. While a number of propriety systems have cropped up over the years, the open-source project OpenID has started to make headlines as it tackles the problems and solutions for digital identity.

OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.

Beta 4 for phpBB 3.0 has been released. This time around users of the forum application will find that it also contains something new, an update path.

With this beta an update path is provided, though being not fully supported. We decided to give away the proposed update package to let it properly test and fix any remaining issues encountered before using this as the primary method of updating. This means that you should test the update and report any bugs or issues you notice, but not depend on a successful update - you should still not use this beta in a live environment and you should always be able to completely remove your installation to perform a fresh install.

Computerworld and the National Policy Research Council (NPRC) recently completed a study ranking the Websites of state, county, and local governments on usability and other criteria. In the study, Michigan's site earned top marks.

According to the article, the "the e-government report card is based on an extensive examination of 11,227 official government Web sites." Sites were judged on 25 criteria, including "whether people could use them to pay taxes, bid for contracts, find government jobs and complain to local officials about concerns such as potholes." Also included in the article was a report card summarizing other top e-government performers among city, state, and local sites.

What separated the winners from the losers?

Over the weekend, I upgraded the server that hosts CMS Report with the latest stable releases of MySQL and eAccelerator. The upgrade from MySQL 4.1 to 5.0 was easy compared to the upgrade I made a year ago from MySQL 3.23 to 4.1. This time around I also have use of CPanel which meant I could make the database upgrade with at least one eye closed. My journey with upgrading from eAccelerator 0.9.4 to 0.9.5 however took a lot longer.

I've been using eAccelerator 0.9.4 since it was released early in 2006. I've gotten into some trouble in the past by those smarter than me when I tried to explain exactly what eAccelerator does and does not do. To play it safe this time around, I'll give you the summary of what eAccelerator does straight from eAccelerator.net: