With a smile on his face, Scott Liewehr sent me a tweet the other day letting me know that he briefly plugged my name while co-hosting CMS-Connected. CMS-Connected is a 60-minute monthly news show, streamed live on the TPN Network with a focus on the web content management industry and includes CMS related news and commentary from leading CMS expert analysts and participating guests. It's a very good video production and well worth your viewing time if you have any interest in content management.

My "plug" on CMS-Connected can be found about 41 minutes and 30 seconds into the January show, Web CMS Industry 2011 Year In Review. This video also includes host Tyler Pyburn and Seth Gottlieb as guest. The inside joke is that Scott didn't intend to mention my name, but was referring to Acquia's VP of Marketing, Bryan House. I've met Bryan a few times and lets just say he deserves better recognition than to be confused with me. Luckily, Scott caught himself and it didn't take him long to give Mr. House his proper dues.

My 1.5 seconds of fame put a smile on my face because it is a reminder to me that people with a passion for content management are drawn together for a reason. I've always said that a content management system is more than a product. If you don't get that a CMS is also about people, business, and information systems you'll never understand the power of a CMS. People like Scott Liewehr and Deane Barker get this.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, the release of Joomla 2.5 on this day was expected.  Surpringly, knowing the release date seemed to make the wait longer. Without a doubt, Joomla.org will be a busy place the next few days. Joomla's marketing people tell me that Joomla! has been downloaded more than 28 million times and powers more than 1.6 million. Those are pretty significant numbers and this new version of Joomla! is expected to help continue the popularity of this open source CMS.

As I discussed in my previous articles, Joomla! for the first time includes multi-database functionality, beginning with Microsoft SQL. If you read the article, you also know that Joomla 2.5 also includes more than a dozen new features. You'll can also check out those features by going to joom.la/25features. But before you hop over to another site, you can find some additional details about Joomla 2.5 right now in this exclusive press release that we've acquired from sources secretly embedded in the Joomla! community.

Yesterday, the Argus Leader announced that they will be moving toward a subscription model for their online content. Readers no longer will be able to visit ArgusLeader.com and expect to be able to read all the content for free. I didn't visit the website too often, but I'll miss the freedom to come and go as I please without being an online subscriber.

By now, most of us and have seen this paywall subscription model being offered by various news sources. Until recently, subscriptions were required from some larger print publications but rarely were part of the local or regional online news ecosystem. When a paper from a relatively small city such as Sioux Falls, SD moves in this direction it isn't difficult to acknowledge this as the trend we'll be seeing followed by more newspapers in the coming years. The move toward a subscription model was inevitable, as research as shown time and time again that publications haven't seen the same revenue through online advertisement as they once did in the print media world of yesterday.

Revenue from online ads for niche sites like mine that have little overhead is enough. But real publications producing high quality content on a wider scope have genuine revenue concerns when providing you their content. Randell Beck of the Argus Leader acknowledged this in Sunday's edition of this paper.

I'm a huge fan of eGovernment and Government 2.0 initiatives. A few years ago we started seeing government sites adopting open data initiatives and adding features that allowed the public to provide more feedback to the government that served them. Changes such as these are good initiatives by governments as they continue their evolution into the digital age. Recently, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts redesigned their official website, Mass.gov, using the Percussion CM System.

Before I begin, let me confess that I don't know much about Percussion Software beyond what I read in their press releases. In fact, you'll find that some of the information here came straight out of one of their press releases and you'll want to continue your research beyond what you read here. However, personal experience has shown me that any redesign work done with government websites is hard work with my hurdles to cross. So after I took a look at the Mass.gov site, it didn't take much arm twisting from Percussion's marketing people to go beyond my comfort level and talk about a product I really should know a whole lot more about.

The release of Joomla 2.5, a popular open source content management system, is expected to occur within the next few weeks. This release gives Joomla! fans a reason to celebrate and those new to the CMS a chance to consider Joomla! for thier next project. Like clockwork, the Joomla community is preparing the way by educating the masses on the new features and enhancements included in this version. I'm not an expert on the Joomla! development process, but I'm going to do my best here in summarizing the information that I've gathered so far on Joomla 2.5.

The general availability of the official Joomla 2.5.0 release is due on January 24, 2012.  Also, in case you missed it, Beta 1 of Joomla 2.5 was released just as the holidays were getting in full swing.  You can also expect another beta and a release candidate from the Joomla developers between now and Release 2.5.0. 

For those new to software development, the beta and release candidates of software typically is not suitable for production sites and should be used only for testing purposes. Testing the pre-release software isn't only a great way for you to get to know Joomla 2.5 better but it is also a great way to help the developers identify and fix bugs in the software. 

The problem I have with top ten lists is that inevitably there is a story that should have made the list but didn't. Last week, I posted CMS Report's Top Ten Stories of 2011 and wished I could have included additional stories. The articles listed were ranked by popularity based by how many times viewed and the rate that they were viewed through the year. Popular stories do not always signify well written articles and they aren't always an indication of my personal favorites.

In case you missed these stories the first time around, below are ten additional content management articles we published in 2011. Every article deserves a second chance to be highlighted or tweeted again.

• Book Club: MODX The Official Guide
• Open Source CMS, Market Share Report, and White Elephants
• Review of Drupal's Building Blocks
• Judging Five Open Source Content Management Systems
• Book Club: Pro Drupal 7 Development
• DotNetNuke 6 Released (Screenshots included)
• List of Fake Content Management Stories from April Fools Day 2011
• Drupal 7 has been officially released 
• Moodle 2.1 Released
• More than an Introduction to Accrisoft
  

A reader of CMS Report asked me to give the latest version of Foswiki some love and attention to this open source "enterprise wiki" with an article. Not a problem as this is why I'm here!

Eight months in the making, Foswiki 1.1.4 comes with some new features and more than 160 crunched bugs relative to the previous release. Here are some highlights of new features and enhancements included in this package:

• Significant enhancements were made to the Foswiki email implementation. These changes increase compatibility with email services like Google’s gmail, adding support for SMTP over SSL as well as S/MIME signed mai
• Preference variables can take parameters now. This allows to build very powerful macro shortcuts to ease the life of your content editors.
• JQueryPlugin had a major release in its own allowing new possibilities for smart user interaction for the application developer. 
• There’s a new custom-made jQuery-ui theme providing a decent look and feel for enterprise use.
• SpreadSheetPlugin has been enhanced with new functions.

Foswiki 1.1.4 is available from the download page at Foswiki.org. While you're there don't hesitate to take a look at the release notes for further details on the new features and bug fixes contained in this version of Foswiki.

[Source: Foswiki blog]

When I read the stories we post here at CMS Report, I am reminded how quickly the CMS market continues to evolve and mature. Every year, I worry that there is nothing "new" to write about in this information system niche only to have the developer, user, or owner of a CMS push another new story idea toward my screen. This time around when looking for the top ten content management stories of the year, I concluded we didn't have ten great CMS stories for 2011. Instead, I found more than two dozen great CMS stories for 2011.

Below are the top ten stories of 2011 that were posted here at CMSReport.com. The stories in this list are ranked based on the rate they were viewed since they first appeared at CMSReport.com.

Top Ten Content Management Stories of 2011

1. The 2011 Open Source Awards
2. Google+ first week of use review
3. 10 New Content Management Systems via CMS Focus
4. Another new term: Social Content Management
5. CMS Expo 2011 Series
6. Liferay Marketplace and Liferay Portal 6.1
7. CMS Redefined: Cloud. Mobile. Social
8. CMS Report upgrades to Drupal 7
9. DotNetNuke, Drupal, Liferay, and SharePoint in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals
10. CMS in the Fast Lane: Joomla! 1.7
    

As a former meteorologist, I think it goes without saying that by default I will talk about any content management system with "cumulus" in the name. In this case, I'm talking about CumulusClips, a video sharing CMS officially out of Beta and released a stable version (v.1.1).

If you are in need of sharing videos but a little uneasy with allowing someone else manage those videos then perhaps CumulusClips is your answer. Requirements for hosting CumulusClips aren't too difficult to meet although you'll want plenty of memory for all that video encoding you'll need to do for new videos uploads.

The video sharing cms CumulusClips is officially out of Beta and released a stable version (v.1.1). CumulusClips is an open source video script that allows users to create their own video website or YouTube like clone. CumulusClips has several great attributes. These include free & open source, mobile support, and automatic updates, just to name a few.

With all the hype surrounding the video recently more specifically online video this is a major break through. Users can now deploy their own branded video communities without relying on the major players like YouTube and Vimeo.

Users have been able to build their own video websites for a while now however these solutions were usually tagged with a hefty price tag (like BrightCove) or encumbered with encrypted source code like other video cms'.

To find out more about CumulusClips visit: http://cumulusclips.org

The 1994 Knight-Ridder video I attached at the bottom of this post  is a fantastic reminder that the tablet predates the iPad and Android tablet by many decades. During the "hypermedia" era of the late 1980's, I can recall taking a "tech of the future" class where my professor discussed in similar detail what a tablet might look like in the future. He described a day where students would be sitting under trees reading not paper books but exactly what we know today as the digital tablet. 

 Believe it or not though, the origins of the tablet computer date back to the 19th century.

Last weekend, digital agency water&stone, released their 2011 Open Source CMS Market Share Report. I consider this report one of the few non-bias and detailed surveys that come across my desk each year. The report isn't perfect, but the report does help give a good snapshot on the state of who's who in the world of open source content management systems.

You are most definitely going to want to take a look at the details in the report. The findings in this year’s report were based on a survey of more than 2,500 CMS users and additional research into a wide variety of measures of market share and brand strength. I'm still combing through the survey and taking note of the interesting individual nuggets of information that can be found in the results of the survey.

Not surprisingly, the report confirms the ranking position of open source's three most dominate Web content management systems in the market. The press release itself summarizes the results this way:

PHP-based systems WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal continue to dominate the web content management space. But, while the Big Three remain unchanged from last year, the Report concludes that WordPress retains a clear lead in the face of decreasing competition from Joomla!.

The decreasing competition from Joomla! can be seen most noticeably in the decrease of installations reported by the survey respondents in 2011 compared to 2010. The survey does note that this dramatic drop is likely due to the Joomla! community aggressively promoting the survey last year. This year, the promotion efforts were not coordinated and less influential. I only point this out because this is an example of where the report isn't "perfect" via inconsistencies in the yearly survey sample introducing  a margin of error in the trend comparisons. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm currently playing catch-up in discussing all the good books sent my way this past year. Many of the books have been sent by the authors and publishers themselves for review and some of the books I've bought on my own dime. There should be no further evidence that I'm a procrastinator in posting book reviews than this particular review of Todd Tomlinson and John K. Vandyyk's Pro Drupal 7 Development. This book was published almost a year ago, and I'm only now finding the time to blog about this book.

While it has been close to a year since this book was published (about just as long since Drupal 7 was released), I marvel how relevant Pro Drupal 7 Development remains as a valuable resource to me. This book and its previous versions have saved my hide so many times that I have lost count. This book may have been sitting on my desk for a year but I assure you it hasn't been collecting dust.

If you're going to get any Drupal book in print this is the book you should get if you're going to do any development with Drupal or simply need to troubleshoot your way out of a Drupal related problem. I realize there are a lot of resources available online from the Drupal community that contains much of the same material found in this book. However, this book organizes the material in such a thoughtful manner that I find the looking up material via the book more efficient than seeing it out though online search.

A couple weeks ago, Liferay's marketing and communication folks sent me an email mentioning that Liferay was included as a "Leader" in Gartner's 2011 Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals. After my usual procrastination I finally got around to reading the report and what follows in this blog post are some impressions that jumped at me while reading the report. I'm not convinced the randomness of these personal thoughts make up a blog post (at least a well-written blog post) but I'm going for it since my public note taking often turns out better than a well polished article.

The report offers some fascinating insights regarding the state of portals. I want to respect Gartner's terms and copyrights so no graphics or direct link to the actual report will be available from this post. If you want to read the report, Liferay is providing access to the reprint of this report via a link provided on their Award and Recognition page (click on the "Read Magic Quadrant" link). The Magic Quadrant is Gartner's graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. The graphic depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace. In this case, Garner is measuring the portals strength in "completeness of vision" as well as "ability to execute".

One of my favorite yearly conferences is the CMS Expo in Evanston, Illinois. I'm not sure if I've ever been to a conference where so many open source CMS leaders in one room. Whether your CMS is open source or proprietary, you need to be at this conference. Whether you're a business leader, developer, content author, or analyst you'll be doing yourself a great favor by being at this year's CMS Expo.

So it should be no surprise that when the conference Co-founders, Linda or John Coonen, ask me to promote their conference that's what I'm going to jump at the opportunity. This is a great conference and if you're wanting to promote your CMS, CMS Expo is the perfect venue to make your presence known.

It's Time For Your CMS To Take Center Stage

With over 1,000 CMSs on the market today, it’s more important than ever for top-tier and upstart CMSs alike to break out from the crowd, reach new prospects, and get their message heard. The 2012 CMS Expo is the ideal venue to stand out from the rest, and be recognized as an industry leader.

The 2012 CMS Expo Call For CMSs is now officially open.

Is your CMS on the list yet? If not, contact the CMS Expo team today via email, or by calling (815) 455-2900 to get pricing information and how to become a Featured or Spotlight CMS at the 2012 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference.

At this moment, I have a tall stack of unread books related to content management systems sitting in front me. Publishers and authors apparently like my review style because new books continue to be sent my way. However, reading a book from cover to cover for a review (the last one being six months ago) takes time and I just haven't been able to keep up with the required reading. So with admission that I haven't read every page of these books, I've decided to at least start posting mini-reviews of select books and hoping that this move is still a win-win-win for publishers, authors and readers.

So in Oprah style, welcome to CMS Report's Book Club. The first book of this new series is Bob Ray's MODX: The Official Guide. This is the first book published by MODX Press and represents how much the MODX community recognizes the need to get quality CMS books about their projects into the hands of developers and users. I've had a couple conversations with MODX's Jay Gilmore and have witnessed the huge effort and level of support taking place to get this book published.

Becoming a publisher is no easy task but we felt no-one else was going to do it as well as we will at this stage. We have at least 3 other books including one that is nearly complete in the works for release over the next 3 quarters from MODX Press. The first one is the hardest. [Gilmore]