Feature
Welcome to the February installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next month.
If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at [email protected] with a pointer to who we should contact at your project for updates.
Acquia
In January, Acquia (news, site) announced its private beta launch of DrupalGardens.com, a hosted Drupal (news, site) solution. They also launched an Open Government program to help US government agencies meet the requirements of the Open Government Directive.
Alfresco
In January Alfresco (news, site) celebrated its fifth birthday. Three years ago they put Alfresco Community under the GPL. Now they've announced that with the release of Alfresco 3.3 Community they're shifting the Alfresco repository to the LGPL. According to John Newton, Alfresco's Chairman and CTO, "What the LGPL license provides over GPL is the ability to link in the Alfresco repository without affecting proprietary software that links it."
In the meantime, they've released Alfresco 3.2. New features include:
- Multiple deployment options from fully on-site to fully in the cloud
- Multi-tenancy for multi-company cloud implementations
- A 5015.2 certified Records Management module
- IMAP support for email client access and mail archiving
- Collaborating on content creation in the cloud
- Rich user profiles
- Easier project portal customization
- Implementation of custom storage policies
- Monitoring and configuration tools
- Performance improvements
The company also announced the availability of Alfresco Content Services for Lotus social collaboration products at Lotusphere.
dotCMS
In January, dotCMS (news, site) sent out its version 1.9 developer preview. Major changes coming for 1.9 include:
- A revamped UI using the Dojo toolkit
- Improved multi-site management and virtual hosting
- CMIS web service support
- i18n Admin Console
- Improved roles and permissioning
- A Form Builder tool
- Custom content fields
- Binary content types
- A move to globally unique UUIDs for all objects
They also announced that their annual Boot Camp will be held April 13 - 15 in Miami, FL.
DotNetNuke
In January, DotNetNuke (news, site) announced the release of DotNetNuke Community, Professional and Elite Edition Version 5.2.2. With this point release, the Professional and Elite Editions both receive a full developer license for Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX.
Drupal
The big news for the Drupal (news, site) community in January was the release of Drupal 7 alpha. In February, the project will continue its attack on the issues blocking the alpha from becoming a beta. In case you've somehow missed all of the buzz about why Drupal 7 is a big deal, read up on it here.
eZ Systems
In January, eZ Systems (news, site) announced that it was selected as a winner of the Red Herring's Global 100, a list honoring the year's "most promising private technology ventures from around the world."
Hippo CMS
Coming in February, Hippo CMS (news, site) will release version 7.3 with real-time faceted navigation on repository content. This view lets users browse their content in a "loosely structured manner, drilling down as they wish on certain combinations of tags and characteristics." This new release also adds the Easy Form Builder, as shown here:
Hippo CMS 7.2 - Easy Forms Plugin from Vijay Kiran on Vimeo.
Joomla
The Joomla (news, site) project continues to work toward Joomla 1.6 beta.
KnowledgeTree
In January, KnowledgeTree (news, site) released version 3.7, which includes an alpha version of KnowledgeTree Explorer. This new product is built on Adobe AIR and so is cross-platform, allowing customers to have a consistent experience no matter what system they're working on. For more details and a walkthrough with screenshots, see KnowledgeTree's preview blog post.
Magnolia
In January, Magnolia (news, site) reached the milestone of hiring its first full-time technical writer. In addition:
- The Magnolia community integrated the CMS with Railo, a free and open source alternative for ColdFusion application development
- They released maintenance release Magnolia 4.2.3
- They upgraded the documentation website to the latest Magnolia version and published new documentation on topics such as Magnolia controls (GUI widgets) and module versioning
- They're releasing Magnolia user manual 4.1
February will bring further work on Magnolia 4.3, which they expect to ship in March, and more documentation.
mojoPortal
January brought mojoPortal (news, site) 2.3.3.4, a major new release for this project. This version offers improvements to shared files, blogs, the Feed Manager and simple lists and links. It also offers a new File Manager UI based on QtFile.
Other improvements include:
- De-coupled settings for Open ID and RPX
- Moving the URL location for CssHandler.ashx
- A query tool for developers
Nuxeo
Nuxeo (news, site) will be releasing Nuxeo DAM 1.0 in early February. Built on the foundation of Nuxeo EP, it has been in beta since December 2009. DAM 1.0 is said to be the first CMIS-compliant digital asset management system.
Also being released in February is Nuxeo Studio, a hosted design and configuration environment for Nuxeo's enterprise content management system. Available as an add-on component to Connect subscription customers, it will enable information architects and business analysts to fully configure both Nuxeo EP and Nuxeo DM.
ocProducts
During the holidays, ocProducts (news, site) moved to a new premises in central Sheffield, UK and brought on additional staff, including two new Project Managers. February brings the release of ocPortal 4.3, introducing performance improvements, new features, usability tweaks and better stability.
Special attention was paid to making it easier to switch from other content management systems to ocPortal without losing content or themes. The new theme importer "will enable site administrators to automatically construct an ocPortal theme through parsing the HTML of an existing website."
Other new features include data extraction tools allowing administrators to export user generated information such as user results to CSV format.
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Jun
6
The Future of Social Media: Emerging Trends and How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
The impact of emerging technologies like AI on social media
Webinar
Jun
7
The Building Blocks of Personalization
This webinar will explore how personalization can create powerful ecommerce shopping experience.
Webinar
Jun
8
Attracting—and Keeping—Your High-Net-Worth Investors
Join PwC to dissect their recent survey findings on a specific customer subset — high-net-worth investors.
Webinar
Jun
13
The Future of Contact Centers with AI at the Helm
Learn how to balance human intuition and interaction with the potential uses of AI to create delightful and lasting CX
Webinar
Jun
13
Learn How to Deliver Dynamic Video Experiences at Scale
Learn how to convert existing assets into video experiences in near real-time.
Webinar
Jun
20
3 Steps to Unlock Your Customer Data and Drive Revenue
Discover how Twilio Segment’s #1 Customer Data Platform helps implement data-driven strategies.
Plone
In January, the Plone (news, site) project put out maintenance release 3.3.4, which is a recommended update that both fixes a potential security issue with Zope and should make Plone sites load faster. The project also announced some events to mark on your calendar:
- Plone Conference 2010 will be held in Bristol, UK, on October 27 - 29
- World Plone Day is April 28, 2010
For much more in-depth information, see the January 2010 edition of the This Month in Plone Newsletter.
January also saw Plone gain some bragging rights. According to Jon Stahl, a member of the Plone Foundation Advisory Board, his benchmarking shows that Plone 4's alpha release came in three times faster than Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. Let the arguments over methodologies begin! At least the developers sweating the focus on performance while working on the alpha should feel vindicated.
In February, Plone 4 leaves its alpha testing phase and enters beta testing.
Sense/Net
In January, Sense/Net (news, site) put out their 6.0 Beta 5 release. This version adds:
- The ability to store and manage lists of things in the content repository, using the web GUI
- Integrated Lucene .NET indexing for enhanced search and query performance
- Sense/Net Data Source, a new ASP.NET DataSource
They also started the Sense/Net Partner Program for the Enterprise Edition.
For February, they plan to integrate Workflow through the Windows Workflow Foundation from .NET framework version 4, allowing users to add workflows to lists and use built-in workflows and create custom ones without having to use Visual Studio. They're also hiring QA staff and preparing for Beta 6, which will become the RC for Sense/Net 6.0. Then comes lots of long-awaited GUI enhancements.
SilverStripe
In January, SilverStripe (news, site) released version 2.3.5. This is a recommended update as it contains security fixes. They also announced a 2x performance boost on Windows systems through WinCache, and they attended Linux.Conf.Au as well.
They're working hard on releasing 2.4.0 beta for February.
Squiz
In January, Squiz (news, site) released version 3.26.0 of MySource Matrix. New features include:
- Workflow Bundles, which allow a group of assets to be taken into Workflow and approved in batches
- TRIM 6.2 compatibility
- A Matrix System Check script
- An operational enhancement to the Check Indexes System Integrity script
- Workflow Streams, which enable system administrators to create workflow schemas containing multiple approval paths
Coming in February, Squiz begins a series of free seminars in their London and Edinburgh offices. The first is on February 18 in Edinburgh and focuses the MySource Mini CMS. On February 23 and 24 in London, Squiz exhibits at the Technology for Marketing and Advertising Exhibition in Earls Court.
Umbraco
February marks five years since the first open source version of Umbraco (news, site) was released. This month we'll also see the final beta for version 4.1, which offers:
- Improved UI performance
- Improved media handling
- WebDav support
- Automated image cropping
- LINQ 2 Umbraco support for .NET developers
The company behind Umbraco is opening a US office as well to support their US client base. They have a major install going on with a household name, but the details aren't public yet. Well? We're waiting!
WordPress
In January, WordPress (news, site) released version 2.9.1 and launched its WordPress Foundation site, which is running on a development version of WordPress 3.0. Jane Wells also declared 2010 the year that WordPress delves into open source design.
XOOPS
In January, XOOPS (news, site) released version 2.4.4 final, which is a bug fix release of version 2.4.3. Updates include:
- A new text sanitization framework
- A new logger for deprecated API calls
- An improved active system modules cache file
The XOOPS 2.5 pre-alpha was also released for those who don't want to wait for the first official alpha. Use at your own risk!
Also, the project released its 2009 annual report to look over the past year and look forward 2010.
