Open Source CMS eZ Publish Updated, Adds New Integrated Search

Norwegian Web content management vendor eZ Systems have released an all-singing, all-dancing expansion for their popular open-source eZ Publish resource. The new package includes support for PHP 5, a snazzy new search utility -- eZ Find -- and promises "a smooth upgrade path for existing eZ Publish sites." Publish 3.10 already has more than 2m downloads, and is installed on over 150,000 systems worldwide. And it's free, you fools, free!!! The company's new eZ Find search module will enhance these features further, including relevance ranking, native support for eZ Publish access rights, keyword highlighting and the ability to search sites containing millions of content objects. Meanwhile, development of Publish 4.0 -- which runs on PHP 5, and boasts multilingual url support -- continues apace. It is available as of now, but only the Alpha version, so beware. Publish 4.0 will pave the way for integration of eZ Components, eZ's PHP enterprise components library, an update of which is due for release around the end of this year. eZ Publish is an open source Web content management and development platform, which can be used for web publishing, e-commerce, intranets and portals. It comes either as a free package (from eZ.no), or as a commercial version with central support and maintenance. It runs on Windows and Linux (and other UNIX platforms), and works with the usual major database and server technologies, although Apache and MySQL are recommended by the vendor. As with most Web CMS offerings, content can be managed via a browser window, with no other installed software necessary. As a free, open-source CMS, the code has been polished by a large community of users, and the software is renowned as clean and highly functional. Novice users can get stuck straight in and build relatively complicated resources, with functions like e-commerce, using a Wizard facility; while advanced CMS developers can customize eZ Publish and build their own internal apps from the ground up. “Users have ... relied upon the features and robustness of eZ Publish for many years,” says CEO Aleksander Farstad. “By making eZ Publish compatible with PHP 5, we are leveraging the advantages provided by the current PHP platform.” eZ Systems are one of the vanguard of open-source providers which are giving rivals like Microsoft and Interwoven a serious headache. Not only are small businesses embracing the new cheap & cheerful OSS solutions, but a growing number of large corporate and media clients are defecting to dynamic, highly customizable solutions like eZ Publish.