Bryan Ruby

The development team for CMS Made Simple recently announced the latest version in its CMSMS 1.11 series. This release brings a few minor features, some performance improvements, documentation improvements, a Smarty upgrade, and a number of bug fixes (including a minor security issue). 

Some of the more significant new features and improvements found in CMSMS 1.11.8 include:

While Drupal 8 has been been under development for two and a half years, I haven't talked much about it. I learned long ago that it doesn't do much good to talk about an upcoming release of a CMS until the software crosses over from what most of us would consider "vaporware."

The Omeka team recently announced the release of Omeka 2.1. Omeka is a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions. The focus of this new version of Omeka is interoperability with other systems by including an API for reading and writing information in your Omeka installation.

According to Patrick Murray-John, Omeka Development Team Manager:

Ever since social media and social networks have gone mainstream, our digital lives have become complicated. There are a number of social media management tools already out on the market that aim to give users the tools they need to better mange, filter, and prioritize the content they read from their favorite blogs and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Almost all these tools fall short of their intended goals and why I'm always on the lookout for something better to come along. 

I had the privileged of reviewing Liferay Portal for CMS-Connected's "In the Spotlight" segment. This is the first time, I've done a show with new co-host Butch Stearns. The end result is what I think is a great question and answer review of Liferay's products followed by Scott Liewehr's analyst perspective of Liferay the company. In the show, I talked about Liferay Portal and Liferay Social Office. I also had a chance to briefly mention Liferay Sync.

The month of August starts out with a bang for WordPress fans. We knew given Matt Mullenweg's State of the Word speech that it was only a matter of time when WordPress 3.6 would be released. Starting yesterday afternoon, site administrators such as my wife (it runs in the family) were quickly greeted with a notification that the WordPress update is available.

Yesterday's launch gives WordPress sites the availability of a new blog-centric theme (Twenty Thirteen), "bullet-proof" autosave and post locking, a revamped revision browser, native support for audio and video embeds, and improved integration with Spotify, Rdio, and SoundCloud.

The Joomla! project recently released a new version of their flagship content management system, Joomla 3.1.4. This is a maintenance release with no security fixes. While most of the updates are technical and will likely only be of interest to developers and site maintainers, there are also a few user interface tweaks here and there. For example, this version will now show the Joomla username in the administrative area.

Specific feature enhancements for Joomla 3.1.4 include the following:

A couple years ago, my wife and I took advantage of the post-housing bubble low interest rates and upgraded to a larger home. We came across a pre-owned house built in 2006 that came with the price, size, and style that just screamed to us "buy me".  As a family, we carefully reviewed our finances and listed our pros and cons before making the purchase. My wife and I were excited to finally have a bathroom connected to the master bedroom. Our then young son was excited that he finally had a family room that offered him fun and adventure. Secretly though, what sold me on the house had nothing to do with these things. What impressed me most was that this house had a network distribution panel.