Feature
Welcome to the April 2012 installment of our what's coming from the open source projects in the next month. If you feel that your project was left out, we invite you to email us at [email protected] to have a project representative added to the list of people we contact for updates.
Composite C1
In April, the folks at Composite C1 (news, site) reached the 20,000 installation mark, which is over a thousand installations a month since they went open source last year. It also released Composite C1 3.2, which offers a number of new features, such as:
- A combined Save and Publish button
- A new tool for integrating with third party media sources such as Facebook (news, site), Twitter (news, site), and SharePoint (news, site) with the Composite C1 media library
- New multilingual support, with German and Chinese localizations added to the existing Russian, Dutch, Ukranian and English options
- HTML5 video streaming
- The ability to load the new Instant Image Crop package from Composite
- Support for .NET 4.5
- The ability to create custom login screens
If you're interested in an introduction to the Razor functions in Composite C1, check out this presentation by Marcus Wendt:
DotNetNuke
In April, the folks at DotNetNuke (news, site) added SharePoint 2010 integration to its new SharePoint Connector and the DotNetNuke SharePoint Library, which is part of its DotNetNuke Enterprise Edition. It also released DotNetNuke 6.2 beta, which includes new social features such as:
- User profiles
- Activity feeds
- User journals
- User messaging
- User notifications
Expect to see the final release of 6.2 in May.
Drupal
In April, the Drupal (news, site) project opened its call for papers for DrupalCon Munich, which will be held from August 20-21. The theme is "Open Up! Connecting systems and people." They've also opened the call for proposals for the pre-conference training sessions. All proposals are due by May 11.
The Drupal Association also conducted a code sprint to kick off upgrading Drupal.org from Drupal 6 to 7. April also brought the announcement that 13 Drupal projects were accepted for Google Summer of Code (news, site), totalling a $72,000 investment in Drupal.
In April, Drupal company Acquia (news, site) has made Drupal and the Acquia Network interoperable with Lingotek, which will make it easier to build and scale for global markets.
eZ Publish
In April, the folks at eZ Systems (news, site) released eZ Publish, now in version 2012.2, which offers the following changes:
- An autosave feature
- A template debugging operator
- The ability to cleanly extend the cluster features
- A revamped cluster index mechanism, which now supports eTag, HTTP RANGE and offers improved error and debug handling
It also launched a Reputation Engine in a step toward Gamification. This engine is plugged into most eZ Publish Community platforms, building and displaying community member reputation wherever desired. Another community effort involved re-constituting the Community Project Board, and there was a Meetup in Berkeley, Calif.
Expect eZ Publish 2012.3 to follow in May. This version brings a security fix, plus:
- An in-page preview feature
- An improved registration form for the installation wizard
- Compatibility with PHPUnit 3.6
- Translations from the Etna translation campaign
- An improved debug report with more readable output and accurate time measurement
Also coming in May is the need to hire more staff, including two more people for the Community Management team, along with more details about the upcoming eZ Publish Summer Camp.
Hippo
In April, the folks at Hippo CMS (news, site) announced that they're a finalist for the Red Herring 2012 Award, which selects "cutting edge companies and technologies … positioned to grow at an explosive rate." They also launched Hippo CMS 7.7 as a general release, and released Hippo CMS 7.7.1, which added:
- An improved auto-export module
- An improved Channel Manager Overview
- A German translation of the CMS user interface
- Improvements to user management
- Separate Site user access control
- An improved activity log that scales to extremely large numbers
- Channel Manager Events
- Improved Image Scaling and HST logging
- Extended Field Validation
The Hippo crew also found time to host more than 100 developers at Hippo headquarters in Amsterdam, and to add three partners: Alogient in Canada, comSysto in Germany and ESISS Ptry in Australia. It now has partners in 20 countries and on six of the seven continents.
Joomla
In April, the Joomla! (news, site) project crossed the 30 million download mark for its core CMS. It also released Joomla 2.5.4, which primarily contains security fixes.
Coming in May are Joomla Day Brazil on May 11 and 12, and the Joomla International Conference, J and Beyond, which will be held from May 18-20.
mojoPortal
In April, the folks at mojoPortal (news, site) released mojoPortal 2.3.8.5. This release includes:
- A QR Code control for the printer-friendly view
- A control that integrates Nivo Slider
- Updates to CKeditor and TinyMCE
The mojoPortal team also released a premium add-no feature, Site Membership Pro. This product aids in monetizing site content protected by member-only roles, by providing:
- The ecommerce infrastructure
- Assigning users to member-only access roles upon purchase
- Removing users from member-only access roles when their membership expires
- The ability to configure automated reminders before membership expires
Nuxeo
In April, the folks at Nuxeo (news, site) launched a survey to learn how people use its Documentation Center and what they're expecting from it. It has also begun producing two blog series, one to discuss features coming for Nuxeo Platform 5.6 (for example, it updated the UI for the Summary view for documents), and the other a joint project with Liferay, eZ Systems and Hippo on the topic of open source community mangagement.
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
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.
Webinar
On demand
AI for Marketers: Optimize Personalization Across the Funnel
Understand the benefits of utilizing AI across your entire marketing stack
Coming on May 15 at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT is a webinar offering a sneak peek of Nuxeo Platform 5.6 features.
Plone
In April, the Plone (news, site) project held World Plone Day, and announced the schedule of speakers and talks for Plone Symoposium East, which will be held in State College, Pa. on May 22 and 23. Additional training days will be held May 19-21. It also held its second annual Cioppino Sprint, where it focused on documentation and community infrastructure.
Also coming in May is the sixth annual Plone Open Garden on May 2-4.
SilverStripe
In April, the folks at SilverStripe (news, site) announced that Google (news, site) selected seven university students to work on SilverStripe CMS as part of the Google Summer of Code (news, site). The selected projects include:
- A module for personalizing website content for different users
- A more sophisticated form and model validation layer
- An improved behavior testing framework and test suite
- Improved developer ergonomics through a developer toolbar and better debug logging
- An improved payment module
- Improved functionality for module and widget download pages on silverstripe.org
- A refactoring of the module system to allow more sophisticated module installation and management
The team also released beta 2 of the SilverStripe Framework 3.0 and SilverStripe CMS 3.0. This beta adds the following features in addition to those already created in previous pre-releases:
- A list view for pages
- Improved image insertion and media management
- Improved tree view usability while editing content
- Added a new default theme: Simple
- Added support for PHP 5.3+
Coming in May, it will be working toward SilverStripe 3.0 beta 3. This will be the final beta, after which it will be feature complete and will move to RC1. New features will include:
- Moving the SilverStripe classes into PHP namespaces
- Making more usability enhancements driven by user testing
- Improving network performance
Squiz
In April, the folks at Squiz (news, site) unveiled a Suggestion Box on the Squiz Matrix (news, site) User Manual Library, to allow users to provide feedback, request changes and report documentation errors. It also released Squiz Matrix 4.6.5 and Squiz Matrix 4.8.1. There were twelve enhancements added to 4.6.5, including:
- Improved future asset status cron job error reporting
- A cascade option on the Clear Squid Cache Trigger action
- An Include All for SOAP Advanced Search
- A tree location trigger condition: Select Multiple Locations
- Keyword modifiers on the Redirect page
- A decision tree: First Question Selection Enhancement
Sixteen enhancements were added to 4.8.1, including:
- An export online quiz to XML tool
- An option to define a limit to the number of submissions made on a Custom Form
- The ability to send a workflow notification to the user who initiated the workflow process, once an asset is made live
In May, expect to see Squiz Matrix 4.8.2. New features for this release will include:
- A Filter by Date Range option for the Logs screen
- A CreateAssetLink function performance enhancement
- JavaScript API functions: getLineageFromUrl and getUrlFromLineage
- The ability to forcibly remove HIPO jobs with the HIPO Management Script
- An asset, Cloned Trigger Event
Umbraco
In April, the folks at Umbraco (news, site) released Umbraco 4.7.2, and announced that it will support version 4.* until 2016. Version 4.7.2 is a bug fix and security release. It also released Umbraco 5.1, which adds features such as a Fluent Content API and macro templates.
As we move into May, it will be working on Umbraco 4.8, which will bring uComponents into the mix.
WordPress
In April, the WordPress (news, site) project released WordPress 3.3.2 and 3.4 betas 1 through 3. Verison 3.3.2 is a security fix release, and version 3.4 offers improvements such as:
- A theme customizer with preview
- Flexible custom header sizes
- An improved user experience when searching for and selecting a theme
- An API for registering theme support for custom headers and backgrounds
- Internationalization improvements
- The ability to install child themes from the WordPress Themes Directory
XOOPS
In April, the folks at XOOPS (news, site) released XOOPS 2.5.5, which offers bug and security fixes as well as updates to a number of libraries: HTML Purifier, jGrowl, jQuery, jQueryUI, phpMailer, phpThumb and TinyMCE. It also released Issue #45 of its WOX (World of XOOPS) Newsletter.
