MODx CMS, a open source Web content management system, has announced it has published the first release candidate for its upcoming flagship product, MODx Revolution. Over three years in the making, this release candidate moves MODx CMS Revolution 2.0 out of beta and brings it one step closer to the final General Release.
In addition to maintaining MODx's reputation of offering absolute freedom over design and content structure, and the ability to build sites quickly and easily that perform well with Search Engines, MODx Revolution 2.0 Release Candidate 1 comes tightly packed with more than 240 bugfixes and enhancements since its last beta release. This release offers a faster Manager, easier installation, better Rich Text Editing (RTE) for content managers, a robust Package Manager for installing Add-ons directly within the Manager, and a new native file browser for direct access of files and other website assets.
"We're excited to see Revo moving out of beta, as it takes everything great about our classic code base, and re-envisions it in a modern architecture with Enterprise-level scalability," said Ryan Thrash, MODx's co-founder. "When developers start working with Revo and experience first-hand what we've talked about for so long—let's just say I think there's going to be a lot of happy developers and site owners. Revo really is a platform on which you can build a robust, mission-critical website. Our upcoming user conference, Partner Program and Commercial Support offerings will further enhance the MODx ecosystem and demonstrate our level of commitment to the MODx platform."
MODx Revolution 2.0 is designed to be a the most flexible, extensible and highly configurable platform on which to build and manage websites and custom web applications where users, permissions and content resources are a key component of the application. MODx Revolution offers users a completely customizable web content solution on a modern, object-oriented core with a fully documented API for developers, and backed by a robust data abstraction layer powered by its sister-project, xPDO.
MODx Revolution 2.0 brings to the MODx line a long list of new features. Some of the most significant new few features and improvements in this version of MODx include:
- New Core - Revolution sports a completely new core, written from the ground-up. It uses the database modeling framework, xPDO.
- Completely configurable - Run multiple sites on one core install, install the core outside of webroot, pick any name for the manager and assets directories, change and restructure every manager menu option.
- Improved caching options - No 5000 page limit. This makes MODx an even better candidate for larger sites with lots of traffic. Also, any Element can now be specified to be treated as a cached or non-cached. There's even a clean path to completely override the default caching system to implement large-scale caching code like memcached.
- Override everything & lose nothing - You can now extend or override any part of the MODx core cleanly and simply, all the while maintaining a clean upgrade path for future releases.
- New Transport Packages - Create custom distributions and more.
- Contexts - This allows developers to assign different views of your site based on pretty much any criteria. This means native multi-sites, subdomains, running the core outside of webroot.
- The Manager is MODx - A new Manager for the MODx system by using the MODx API, ExtJS, and Smarty templates.
- Completely new user system - Permissions are now handled via a robust. Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) security model..
- Lexicon Management - Manage your entire MODx system's lexicons, all from within the manager.
- Remote Transport Packaging - Install resources by downloading them from custom providers - either MODx-driven or 3rd party - from directly within the Manager.
- New Static Resources - now you can manage files on the filesystem (even outside of webroot) within the Manager.
[Source: Press Release, Release Announcement]