Feature
Bolt — an open source content management system (CMS) that markets itself as a "sophisticated, lightweight and simple" — has a new release with a number of visual and under-the-hood changes.
Released in May, Bolt's version 3 has "matured, and grown into a very extensible tool that can be used both as a straightforward CMS, as well as a platform to build your custom applications on," the company claims.
This release is regarded more of an evolution than a revolution of the CMS, which is built on the Silex microframework based on the Symfony PHP components. "Bolt is still very much Bolt — there was no need for massive structuring as in some older projects. The previous version was 2.2.20 and many of the enhancements in 3.0 are targeted at developers and improving overall quality and robustness of the system," Jani Tarvainen wrote on the Symfony Finland site.
It includes features like a new extensible Storage layer to provide for fine-grained caching and more complex queries. Its new extensions structure will be more developer friendly, but version 2 extensions will no longer work with the Bolt 3.
The developers also refreshed the backend user interface, which is fully responsive to allow editors to work on-the-go. Bolt boasts that it is built for content editors rather than programmers, which means no extra training for those already familiar with the typical CMS. All the content in Bolt is structured as content types and supports image uploading and user management for different access levels.
Users describe Bolt as complete out of the box, without the need for a lot of plugins, and note that like WordPress it comes with a default theme. And now widgets are available in templates and extensions, so developers have the ability to use these components in different templates.
In other open CMS news this month:
concrete5
Portland, Ore.-based concrete5 is inviting everyone to a party — though in fairness it's more like a friend asking you to hang out when he really wants you to help on moving day. So banish those thoughts of free pizza and beer and consider how the community is defining party in this case: It's asking for everyone's help with testing, coding and "exploring the potential" of Version 8.
"Ready to get started? Download the beta here," Jessica Dunbar, technology evangelist at concrete5, wrote on the company blog.
The team released Version 7.5.8 in May, adding three new languages and fixes to the Image Slider.
Concrete5 recognized community member Willem Anchor from Utrecht, the Netherlands as the featured contributor of the month. A veteran contributor to the concrete5 community, his most recent contribution efforts is with the security, PRB and certification
Drupal
A round of applause please for Megan Sanicki. After five and a half years as a Drupal Association staff member, she was promoted to executive director. "This community is magical," she gushed in the community blog.
"Those who work in other open source projects often point out how unique and special our community is because of its culture. I agree. This community is a bright spot in our complex world, and its health and longevity are worth protecting."
The Drupal community is busy working on the next version, Drupal 8.2.0. There's more info about those plans in Drupal8's release cycle notes. It's also updating its community documentation.
Hippo
Hippo co-founders Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer and Arje Cahn, CMO and CTO, respectively, explored the challenges of predictive content analytics on CMSWire recently.
"Predictive analytics solutions promise to help predict customer behavior in any given digital experience," they wrote.
"While some applications of predictive have met with relative success — such as in retail environments with product recommendations and offers — others present more challenges. In particular, predictive content analytics is a much more challenging beast, as it requires more complex inputs, analyses and interpretations than many other systems."
On June 28, Hippo will host a webinar to discuss employee engagement in the digital workplace, specifically about internal communication through targeting and personalization. It's also hosting a housewarming barbecue this month for its new Oldenburg, Germany, office.
The Hippo team is getting ready for it's annual user conference Hippo.Connect in Boston this September. It recently confirmed Robert Rose, Senior Contributing Analyst with Digital Clarity Group, as the keynote speaker.
Learning Opportunities
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.
Webinar
Jun
21
Retail Reinvented: A Masterclass in Creating Digital Experiences That Click
Hear how online retailers architect their digital experience infrastructure for peak traffic and demand
Webinar
Jun
22
How to Succeed in Today's Engagement Economy
Doing true personalization at scale with marketing automation
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
Kajona
The Kajona community released Version 5 — and coined a new word in the process. The new version is “phartastic,” it claims: Kajona is now based on a rewritten framework that follows common design and modern architecture patterns like namespaces and class-names based on the PSR recommendations and the deployment was moved to a phar-archive based approach.
"This means that Kajona no longer comes as a list of a few thousand files. Instead, each module is now packaged as a single, self-contained phar-archive. Updating a module is now no more then uploading and replacing a single file. The runtime integrated into Kajona takes care of anything else - e.g. the indexing of new packages and the possible extraction of static web-content," the team explained in a blog post.
The new base layout is a Vanilla Bootstrap Version 4, a more minimal template. Templates are now based on a set a of content blocks made up of text or image elements. The Kajona team said the editor was also rewritten to improve usability.
Magnolia
Magnolia is getting ready for its user conference in Basel, Switzerland June 7 to 9. Some 300 partners and clients are expected at the event.
Magnolia co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer Boris Kraft wrote an interesting post for CMSWire that called on authors to unite toward a better author experience. "I often consider authors as the lost generation, whose needs have been ignored in favor of more technical developments. But the time is right for you to stand and take your proper place in the world. You have more power than ever before," he explained.
Jan Schulte, a consultant at Magnolia in Basel, wrote about creating an efficient content model on Magnolia’s blog.
Nuxeo
The Salesforce Connector for the Nuxeo Platform provides a new way to access all enterprise content (documents, images, videos, etc.) related to any Salesforce object (customers, accounts, campaigns, products, etc.) from within the Salesforce user interface.
SFDC users can now easily search, list, preview and access the right content at the right time, associated with the right SFDC object, without leaving their SFDC application:
- Sales professionals have access to the most current sales brochures and information for each product
- Marketing managers can collaborate on web/print ad copy, images, video and other digital assets associated their related campaigns
- Product managers can share technical drawings and data sheets for easy access by pre-sales and support engineers
Digital asset management (DAM) applications are rapidly evolving into core strategic business solutions for the enterprise, marketing and media/production. To explain the challenges, Nuxeo put together a webinar on demand with Anjali Yakkundi, senior analyst at Forrester. Yakkundi talks about how to choose a DAM vendor and what to expect of modern DAM solutions.
Nuxeo University added new courses on building missing application features on top of the platform. Whether you plan to work with Nuxeo Platform's web user interface or through its REST API, Nuxeo claims this course is a must see.
XOOPS
A big high five to the development team at XOOPS: Version 2.5.8, with numerous bug fixes and enhancements, is ready for your content creating pleasure.
#XOOPS XOOPS 2.5.8 Final Available: The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce the release o... https://t.co/uMwyDwBvhA #CMS #PHP
— XOOPS (@XoopsProject) May 27, 2016
The new version is full of good stuff like security updates and Bcrypt passwords (a password hashing function). It's ready for recently released PHP 7, the latest version of the world’s most popular programming language. In addition, the XOOPS Module Framework library, the XMF library, is now included.
