Content Management

This week ocProducts released version 7 of the Open Source CMS, ocPortal, making rapid improvements based on feedback from user testing.

ocPortal 7 builds on the user-experience work that has also driven the previous three releases, with the aim of making it easier to build highly sophisticated social web-sites that can be fully customized by regular users.

In addition to implementing user feedback, the developers have enhanced ocPortal further by optimizing how long the simplest common administration tasks take. These have now made things even easier, and more manageable, than in the past.

WordPress 3.1.3 was made available to the public yesterday. This release is not only a  security update for all previous versions but also offers some new features.

WordPress 3.1.3 contains the following security fixes and enhancements:

MODX, LLC, the company behind the open source MODX content management platform has released a major update to its flagship MODX Revolution with version 2.1. This release extends MODX’s reach beyond the traditional Open Source server infrastructure and into the Microsoft channel by adding support for Microsoft SQL Server.

CMS Expo in Chicago last week gave me a great opportunity to learn about a variety of content management systems. I spent most of my time at the conference getting out of my comfort zone by visiting with those companies and open source projects that I knew the least about their products and services. Unfortunately, this strategy also prevented me from visiting with my personal favorite CMS, Drupal. By the end of the conference, I felt I needed to treat myself by attending one of the final sessions in the Drupal track, "Social Drupal".

What key activities should you integrate? In what scenarios might you be smarter to leave the heavy lifting to an outsourced solution?  What elements are critically important right now when building your social relevance in the market?  Find this out and more at this practical advice session on how you can be using Drupal to capture the Social Media audience which awaits.

My hope for the session was that it would give me good pointers for how to connect my Drupal sites better to the social web. Lullabot's Blake Hall led this information packed session. Blake began the session by pushing his vision that this session should not just be called "Social Drupal" but also "Community Plumbing (without the crack)". The proposed rewriting of the title for this session is a reminder to the audience that Drupal has always been social.

Blake started the session reminding that one needs to take a look at the bigger picture by taking a look as your site's Social Media Strategy. This strategy would include the following elements:

• Authentic Story
• Honest Dialogue
• Engage your audience
• Activate the social media

While the big picture is always nice consider it's the details that help determine whether your site is going to succeed. From this point forward Blake focused on specifics and I feverishly did my best to keep up. Some of the notable remarks from Blake that caught my attention:

• First step is to take a look at your business goals and the resources you have available when building/supporting your site. Blake of course sees Drupal as being able to address both ends of this equation.
• Some of the social modules for Drupal he recommends include Feeds, Flag, Twitter, Dashboard, Fivestar, Messaging, Radioactivity (gotta check this one out!), and Organic Groups.
• Speaking of organic groups, take a look at groups.drupal.org: especially Social Networking Sites group to tap into Drupal community's expertise on social publishing.

OpenCms 8 is now ready and available for download! OpenCms is one of the most popular Open Source Content Management Solutions. This new version was developed by Alkacon Software GmbH with the support of the international OpenCms developer community.

OpenCms 8 contains a greatly improved user interface for content managers and numerous other enhancements.

Major new features in OpenCms 8

• The "Advanced Direct Edit" mode allows to create page content by drag & drop.
• The new sitemap editor allows to create new pages and rearrange the navigation tree by drag & drop.
• A multiple file enabled upload dialog all based on HTML replaced the old "Upload Applet".
• The new "Content Subscription Engine" allows to inform users when important documents have changed.
• The XML content editor now support elements.
• The new publish dialog supports session based selection of content as well as add/remove of individual resources.
• Extended support for creation of content for mobile devices with the tag.
• A central "Shared Folder" has been added that is available from all sites for sharing content.
• JPA support has been added to the database layer, so there's support for 10+ additional databases.
  

Back in December I participated in a podcast with Alan Shimel from Network World where I was also joined by Kathleen Reidy, Senior Analyst from The 451 Group and Todd Barr, Chief Marketing Officer for Alfresco. The topic of the podcast was “Open Source CMS” but we also talked about “crystal ball” predictions for the CMS market in general for 2011. In the podcast, I mentioned that from DotNetNuke’s perspective, innovation in the content management market in the coming years will all be centered around 3 major disruptive industry trends…Cloud, Mobile, and Social.

The use of content management systems in government is a personal and work interest of mine. There is actually a lot of diversity in what governments need their CMS to do and I'm curious to see how well the panel handles that diversity. Tony White, Ars Logica, is the moderator for this panel. 

Leaders from Featured CMSes will be on-hand during this panel discussion to participate in a live analysis of the CMSes, asking probing questions of each, to determine how their represented Content Management System (and supporting community and infrastructure) best meets the demands of today's governmental needs, whether at a municipal, state or federal level.

Represented on this panel are: Lee Middleton (SilverStripe), Shaun Walker (DotNetNuke), Brian Colhounyan (TERMINALFOUR), Benjamin Mack (TYPO3), Ken Wasetis (Plone), Jeff Kline (Accrisoft), and Casey Neehouse (Umbraco). The following questions were asked either by the moderator, Tony White, or audience members. The panels' answers to these questions are paraphrased.  

What features in your CMS make it a good choice for government?

• Plone - Government is already actively using Plone. Plone can address complex and flexible workflow. Import/export capability for security purposes.
• TYPO3 - Addresses accessibility (Section 508 in US government).
• Umbraco - Lots of state agencies are switching to .Net CMS. Umbraco and Dotnetnuke are .Net CMS. Section 508 compliance. 
• Accrisoft - Local government is the specific client for this company...delivering a turnkey solution.
• TERMINALFOUR - The UN is a client. Multi-language is why the UN chose TERMINALFOUR for their CMS. 
• SilverStripe - SilverStripe sees government as partners and have built a very robust product that can be used by government.
• DotNetNuke - Microsoft has helped partner with DotNetNuke which has been a positive in introducing DNN and open source to all level of governments.
  

For the final session of the day at CMS Expo I decided to sit in on the tour of Plone talk. Admittedly, before this session it had been a long time since I took a hard look at Plone. I love the Python computer language, but I've never came across a project that sent me to Plone. Don't let my inactive use of Plone give you a reason to not consider it for a project of your own...Plone has a lot going for it.

Plone is among the top 2% of all open source projects worldwide, with 340 core developers and more than 300 solution providers in 57 countries. The project has been actively developed since 2001, is available in more than 40 languages, and has the best security track record of any major CMS. It is owned by the Plone Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and is available for all major operating systems.

Ken Wasetis, President and CMS Solution Architect at Contextual, was the speaker for this session. After giving usual general background information for Plone, Ken quickly dives into what he believes to be one of Plone's biggest strengths: security. Due to the security strengths he also emphasizes to the crowd that Plone is larger than you think in government.

I'm sitting in a CMS Expo session on search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the descriptive term used by marketers to describe the process of luring traffic to your site by improving your position in search engine indexes.

I'm sitting on a session that is geared toward content users working with SilverStripe. John Gregg, SilverStripe Training and Quality Manager, is heading this session. There isn't much new for me in this session, but it has been awhile since I looked at the SilverStripe author user interface. At times, I have considered SilverStripe's UI better than WordPress and thought this session would be a good chance to take a fresh look at the interface/workflow.

This session explains how simple it is to create content for your SilverStripe site. Learn how easy it is for content authors to create various page types, add structure, and upload files or images.