ocPortal

The ocPortal development team is pleased to announce that ocPortal 7.1 has now entered beta.

ocPortal 7.1 brings full support for HTML5 and for the schema.org meta-data initiative that Google/Yahoo/Bing jointly announced on Thursday 2nd June. This article explains how we have received schema.org, and how we have implemented it into ocPortal.

We feel that schema.org is a very important project, and is perfectly aligned with the goals and nature of ocPortal, so we have scrambled to release a solid implementation (achieved within 3 days).

Not only should schema.org support enhance the Search Engine Optimization of ocPortal websites, it really opens up new interoperability possibilities. For example, look at how Microsoft have been using 'tiles' in  Windows Phone, and the recent Windows 8 demo. This is a great example of how semantic markup can be used to create rich interfaces from website data. Because ocPortal now provides this data automatically, in the standardized schema.org microdata format, ocPortal webmasters need not do anything to enable these kinds of interoperabilities.

Specifically, we have implemented the following into ocPortal from HTML5:

• Use of the XHTML5 doctype
• Use of HTML5 semantics tags: header, footer, aside, nav, article, time, output
• upgraded/changed HTML4 functionality that is no longer valid HTML5
• workarounds to make Internet Explorer display pages reliably when HTML5 tags are present
• (We already supported, and continue to support, HTML5 video)
• (We already supported, and continue to support, HTML5 drag and drop upload)

And the following from schema.org:

• WebPage (the default, and we properly support marking up elements such as breadcrumbs, and what the prominent navigation links are)
• ProfilePage (authors, member profiles)
• ContactPage (various contact blocks, support tickets)
  

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.

Version 6.0.3 of ocPortal was released over the weekend. This version is a patch release that introduces a number of bug fixes since the last release. Although the focus of this release is to fix software bugs, there are some new feature included in this latest release.

New features included in ocPortal 6.0.3 are:

For the blogger, the most difficult day of the year has to be April Fools' Day. This is the day where jokes are played and stories are made  up. Computer geeks and CMS junkies easily get into the spirit of this celebrated day by pulling all kinds of online pranks. One of my fondest April Fools memories is from 2007 when the official Japanese and Russian Drupal sites migrated for a day from the Drupal CMS over to Joomla!. Good times, good times. The folks over at ocProducts have gotten into the 2011 April Fools spirit by announcing ocPortal 7 with HTML6.

I need your help! Please help me keep track of all the CMS related April Fools' stories that you find online.  Please feel free to add to my list by of content management pranks via a comment below or through Twitter. If you prefer to tweet the story instead I suggest we start using the Twitter hashtag: #aprilfoolscms.

List of Fake Content Management Stories on April Fools Day 2011

1. ocPortal - ocProducts announces ocPortal 7 with HTML6
2. Drupal - Announcing CertifiedToSUCK.com
3. TYPO3 - New paradigm for TYPO3 4.6 development
4. Drupal - Announcing the Drupal Retail Store
5. Joomla - Joomla Templates from YOOtheme
6. Real Story Group  - No more content management
7. Sharpened.net - The End of the Keyboard and Mouse
8. IBM developerWorks - Scrum Alliance 2.0
9. CMS Made Simple - Intuit Announces Acquisition of CMS Made Simple
10. Enano - Enano merges with Joomla!
11. EpiServer - EPiFAX 1.0 Released
12. Plone - Plone Announces New Release Naming Scheme Effective April 1

Open source ocPortal 6, a Web content management system, was recently made available to the public. ocPortal 6 is a major new version that incorporates many improvements and improves ocPortal's usability. Despite the significant changes in ocPortal 6, compatibility is expected to remain high with previous versions. The developers of ocPortal strongly advise upgrading to this version of ocPortal due to the significant performance and stability improvements.

Some of the new features and improvements in ocPortal 6 include:

Usability:

• Install profiles built into the Setup Wizard now allow you to set up a new site really easily. Choose from: blog, community site, info site, portfolio and shopping site.
• A smaller core. Many former 'core' addons are no longer core, meaning you can strip back and simplify your ocPortal site more than ever (don't worry though, they are still bundled and there by default, nothing is removed). Simplifying ocPortal for new users and small sites is a critical part of our strategy to increase ocPortal adoption.
• A new Add Comcode Tag button has been placed on forms, which allows you to fill in a simple form to add any Comcode tag rather than typing it by-hand. This brings into the open a lot of very rich functionality that existed in ocPortal that many users won't have realised was there (for example, carousels, or tab navigation).
  

ocPortal 4.3 was released this week. The new version of ocPortal introduces a number of "bug fixes, performance improvements, and usability improvements". However, ocPortal also introduces some new features to make upgrading to the new version more enticing.

The new features that have been implemented in ocPortal 4.3 include:

With a release candidate out for ocPortal 4.3, you can expect a number of improvements in the upcoming official release of ocPortal. This version is a feature release that introduces a number of bug fixes since the last release as well as performance improvements and new features.

The new features expected to be included in ocPortal 4.3:

• The "What's new" newsletter feature now allows you to easily re-order categories, change what categories are used, is better presented, and allows you to choose the reference date
• Added link to ocPortal's bookmarks feature on the screen-actions block (commented out by default though)
• Added Guest forum searching to OCF
  

During the past few weeks, I have been quietly updating CMS Report's CMS Focus page. CMS Focus is a list of the top 30 Web applications representing what I see as the Web applications of today and tomorrow which interest me the most. In a world where niche CMS news sites try to cover it all for their readers, I feel one of the strengths of CMSReport.com is limiting our focus on a certain number of CMS. The CMS on this list are applications I recommend site owners first look at before moving into the deeper waters of content management and social software.

During the past couple months I've had a number of email exchanges from Chris and Allen regarding their PHP based CMS, ocPortal. Their company recently relaunched ocPortal under an open source license in hopes of growing their user base. Both gentleman are very enthusiastic about ocPortal and have a strong desire to see more community involvement with their CMS.

In one of those emails, Chris had something to say about ocPortal's move to open source.

I've been following you on Twitter for a while and it was good to see you commenting on my blog post recently. I'd like to see if we can work with you to get some more ocPortal coverage on CMS report - we've got a lot to say and offer, and everyone who comments on our product gives really glowing reviews. I really want to get our project out of the obscurity it's always suffered; it's always a downer to read about things other groups do if we've done it already and not had news of it leave our community. From my personal perspective I feel we should really be up with the most popular CMS's, as we are ahead of them in about every category except community size. We started out commercial but are now OSS - I think in our initial years people weren't motivated to advocate us much because of that.

In a few other emails from Chris, he also discussed some of the frustrations with getting open source ocPortal some attention while the IT media is often focused on the  bigger open source projects. How does a small project compete against the bigger CMS projects such as Drupal, Joomla!, and Wordpress? I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know ocPortal deserves a chance.

In the coming months we'll focus on ocPortal for some of our stories. The next time our CMS Focus page gets a refresh, you can expect ocPortal to be in our Top 30 list. That also means you can expect a CMS or two that we're less enthusiastic about off the list.

Two providers of integrated solutions: ocPortal, an open-source Content Management System, and Bitnami, which makes "stacks" for easy installation of web applications, have partnered to release a "stack" for ocPortal 4.1.10. Jointly developed/tested by both companies, users of almost any background can now easily download and run ocPortal on the "big three" operating systems, Windows, Linux, and Mac.