Java Cms News & Articles

For dotCMS (news, site), eCommerce + Web CMS seems like a match made in heaven. Reason #1: Everyone wants to do eCommerce nowadays. Reason #2: Java+Java == Eternal love in the marriage of two Java-based software companies: KonaKart (eCommerce vendor) and dotCMS (open source Web CMS provider).

Vyre (news, site) has recently announced the latest version of their web content management system now supports Portlet Standards 2.0. But that's not all that is new.

Notice a trend? Open source is "stealing" away closed-sourced content management talent. The most recent one to be charmed away is Bill Beardslee, who, until recently, was a SVP, marketing and business development, at the Web CMS vendor Percussion.

Who knows whether it’s better weather (think Miami), or more chocolate, but open source vendors seem to be finding more and more ways of attracting employees from proprietary CMS players.

We had an opportunity to have a quick chat with Beardslee about where dotCMS stands now, where it is going in 2010 and what he plans to achieve in his new role as SVP, strategy and development, of the Java-based, open source CMS provider dotCMS (news, site).

Got a Hippo heart? Hippo (news, site) will open its doors to all supporters of open source and open source content management software on October 30, 2009. The event called #ForgeFriday is scheduled to take place in Hippo offices in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Petaluma, CA.

With the goal to possibly grow its Forge Project, Hippo invites all to participate and build a Hippo CMS plugin, a portlet, a repository add-on, a Hippo Site Toolkit component, or something else that you think would be cool enough to win “The Wow! Factor” award.

When and where:

• Amsterdam 14:00 -- 21:00 CET, Oosteinde 11 1017 WT Amsterdam (20)-5224466
• Petaluma 9 AM -- 4PM PDT, 185 H Street, Suite B, Petaluma CA 94952 (707) 773-4646

Can’t come over? Join online and follow the event through tweets and webcams. We should expect to see links with more info on the above on Hippo’s website shortly.

The online participants should also be able to upload ideas, code, screenshots or videos to the site. But in the end, no slides or code is allowed. The only thing you'll be judged on is the running demo.

Back in August, Hippo held its first Forge Friday filled with “pure hacking, a big BBQ, beers and, of course, geeky prizes.” Add to that 20 kilos of meat and 60 liters of beer, and it sure looks like a fun geeky event.

dotCMS (news, site), a J2EE/Java-friendly open source CMS, released a Windows installer for dotCMS v1.7 (famed for its plugin architecture). The installer should give users of different technical levels the ability to simply breeze through the dotCMS installation and get it up and running in a reasonable time.

The installer includes other bits of software needed for a dotCMS instance: the Java Runtime Environment 6, PostgreSQL 8.3 database, Apache Tomcat web server and the dotCMS itself with a starter site. Given the above, don’t be surprised at the substantial installer file size (over 200MB).

Configuring ports in a dotCMS installation

According to the release notes, dotCMS can run on Windows XP/Vista/7/200x Server and requires 1GB of free RAM and 500MB of free hard drive space.

dotCMS can work with four different database types. You can configure those parameters and/or add new databases by modifying the ROOT.xml file in the dotCMS directory under \conf\Catalina\localhost.

Note that dotCMS will not automatically create the database for you, but it will create the schema and the starter site.

Want to give it a try? The Windows installer is available for download here. Alternatively, watch this how-to video before doing the install yourself.

Software vendors need integration partners. And if one were to choose, these partners should be sophisticated, have a lively and broad Rolodex, be well respected in the sector and be capable of adding momentum to the project at hand.

Hippo (news, site), the makers of a Java-based, open source web content management system, seem to share this perspective. And they've signed an important agreement with Capgemini in the Netherlands.

Capgemini Nederland B.V. is a subsidiary of Capgemini, one of the better known firms for consulting, technology and outsourcing services. In 2008, Capgemini reportedly did EUR 8.7 billion in global revenue. The firm has presence in more than 30 countries and employs about 90,000 people worldwide. The Hippo-Capgemini partnership will focus on web content management (Hippo CMS 7) and portal solutions, as well as add more general implementation power to the Hippo ecosystem.

According to Hippo, some of Capgemini's consultants already receive advanced training in Hippo's new technologies. It has also been said that they are participating in the open source Hippo community to “stay on top of new features and functionality.”

The Hippo CMS is now in a much-revamped version 7 series, and most recently we saw the 7.1 release come out the gates, shipped as a bundle with Apache Jetspeed Portal 2.2 and the Hippo Site Toolkit. Based in the Netherlands and with offices recently opened in the USA, the Hippo CMS project appears to be making solid progress. We'll be keeping a close eye on it.

Alfresco (news, site) is one of the most well known open source enterprise content management providers. With over 1.4 million downloads of their solution already and a number of marque clients for the Alfresco Enterprise, they should be happy to continue business as usual.

But, as usual, they aren't. This week they have announced a partnership with ParaScale, a cloud storage software provider, to offer Alfresco "Content as a Service".

With the release of v7.5 of the open source content management system, OpenCms (news, site), it looks like they gone through previous versions, underlined all the problems they could find, taken in-hand all reported bugs from their community, and fixed them.

Also added is a collection of new features that weren’t there before and a significant upgrade to the OpenCMS Content Relation Engine (CRE), adding some new features to something that was already quite nifty.

Developed by Alkacon Software with the help of the OpenCms community, the thing to take really note of in this release is the improvements to the CRE.

In March this year when Magnolia (news, site) released v4.0 of its web content management system, the company’s CTO Boris Kraft said that while they were happy with the new product, there would be always room for improvement.

Three months later those improvements have come with the first official and complete release of  v4.1. While there are a number of new features, particularly in the enterprise edition, most of the enhancements can be found in new modules with the Standard Templating Kit (STK).

Let's take a look at what else is new.

GX (news, site) is one of a growing number of web content management vendors hedging their bets by offering per-month pricing for their WebManager content system.

eXo Platform is a French company focused on delivering an open source collaborative software suite. Around since 2003 and offering solutions like Portal, Enterprise Content Mangement, Collaboration and more, we decided to take a closer look to see what eXo was all about.

Magnolia’s here with another release. Magnolia 4.0  is the fourth generation of the Java-based web content management system and brings with it a whole mess of template related pizzazz.

In addition to production-ready functionality, Magnolia’s latest release delivers content presentation that follows accessibility guidelines, is search-engine optimized and introduces support for mobile devices.

Content Here, an analyst and consulting firm that focuses on content management technologies has published a report entitled Open Source Web Content Management in Java.

The report provides detailed reviews of seven software solutions including Alfresco, Apache Lenya, Daisy CMS, Hippo CMS, Jahia, Magnolia, and OpenCms. In addition, the report discusses the web content management marketplace in general and how open source solutions fit into this market.

This report is great because it provides companies with a review of open source solutions similar to the reports provided by CMS Watch, Gartner and Forrester on proprietary content management solutions.