Open Source

As the title says, phpBB 3.0 (code name Olympus) is now out as a second beta. I see a lot of encouraging things about phpBB 3.0 and it will likely be seen as a big improvement over 2.x. The features and improvements to phpBB from version 2.x to 3.x are numerous and I'll probably chat about them as 3.0 near its actual actual release date.

The only comment I'll really make here is...I'm sure glad I didn't build a near production site on phpBB 3.0 Beta1. If you read the few lines below you'll see that no update path is offered between the first and second beta. Ouch!

From phpBB:

The past couple days has been a busy time for those involved in the Rails open source project. Just as busy as the Rails core developers were the users running Ruby on Rails applications (such the Radiant content management system). On Wednesday, the project's developers released Rails 1.1.5. In the announcement of the Rails release, David August called upgrading the new version "mandatory" since the security vulnerability was so severe.

A sleepless night for Earl Miles late last week provided the Drupal community a replacement to his Dashboard module. Earl Miles announced a successor to Dashboard at his site, Angry Donuts. The new module is the Panels module and I expect we'll be seeing it used a lot by Drupal's users, especially newcomers of Drupal and those less inclined to dig into the PHP code.

Dashboard the previous module, allowed Drupal developers an easy way to implement "simple" two-column layouts of content (called nodes in Drupal) that are not sidebars. While you can put blocks about anywhere in Drupal, the core doesn't offer an easy way to put content outside the "main body". While dashboard overcame the "single column" for content obstacle, it required knowledge of PHP to implement.

A couple days ago I opened my Thunderbird e-mail client on my Windows XP system and found an e-mail from Joe Audette of the mojoPortal project. "Mojo whata?", I asked. I thought I knew most of the content management projects (CMS) projects around, but this one didn't ring a bell. After reading his e-mail, I understood I likely have not heard much about his project because my focus on CMS has been a little too narrow lately.

In his e-mail, Audette writes, "Hi, just wondering if you only cover CMS's using php technology or if you would consider giving any press to .NET/Mono based projects? Any coverage of my project mojoPortal would be much appreciated."

As I've mentioned in past posts, I have a strong desire to cover more than just PHP Web applications. mojoPortal, named after Audette's dog, is written in C# and runs under ASP.NET on Windows or under mono on Linux or Mac. Already the talk of a CMS using a blend of Microsoft and open source tools was peaking my interest.

A post by Nick Lewis, Drupal and XML: Looking Forward, caught my attention. In his post he discusses work on developing the CAP XML format (Common Alerting Protocol).

In preparation for my /Nick Lewis/ trip to Washington D.C. next month, I’ve begun to develop a module that integrates the CAP XML format (Common Alerting Protocol) with drupal’s node, location, google map, category, and CCK modules.

Put plainly, the CAP format seeks:

osCommerce recommended a few months ago that osCommerce users update to the latest version, osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 051112 Update. The update "addresses security related issues and bug reports that exist in the released version". The changes are minimal and are not expected to break compatibility with contributions (third-party plugins). Additional information:

This update release focuses solely on security related issues and bug reports, and does not introduce any new features that have been made for the next development milestone release.

The folks at Joomla.org continue to point out the success they have had since leaving the confines of the Mambo Content Management System (CMS).  While we are glad to see their numbers are up, we believe that Joomla isn't alone in seeing those numbers climb.  Just yesterday the folks at Drupal.org was making the same claim during their release of Drupal 4.7.

Early this Monday morning Drupal 4.7 was released.  Since then, about every Drupal blog from Belgium (where Drupal founder Dries is from) to South Dakota in the United States (where CMS Report is based) has talked about the release.  Here at CMSReport.com we've been testing Drupal 4.7 since Beta 1 and have been very pleased to see it through a mature released.  The following "press release" was posted at Drupal.org :