Blogs

I'm not much of a programmer but I can appreciate the value of a good programming language when I see it. While I know Python and dabble with PHP, I've always appreciated Ruby and Ruby on Rails. There is something about the Ruby development scene that perks my interest in this programming language.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 was just released this week. The development of Rails 3.0 has been two years in the making. David August writes:

Rails 3.0 has been underway for a good two years, so it’s with immense pleasure that we can declare it’s finally here. We’ve brought the work of more than 1,600 contributors together to make everything better, faster, cleaner, and more beautiful.

Some of the biggest changes and additions in Rails includes:

• New Active Record query engine - makes it easier to build complex queries over several iterations.
• New router for Action Controller - the syntax has been modified to to favor the REST style
• New Action Mailer
• Manage dependencies with Bundler - Bundler allows you to specify the libraries, frameworks, and plugins that your application depends on.
• XSS protection by default
• Encoding issues resolved
• Active Model: Validations, callbacks, etc for all models
• Official plugin APIs
• Documentation

If you're interested in Ruby on Rails 3.0, check out the download page at RubyonRails.org.

A few weeks ago, CMS Report was asked to become a media sponsor for this month's DrupalCon in Copenhagen. Between the late invitation and my decrease in Internet activity this month, I have some doubts there is much time to "complete the deal". Promoting last Spring's San Francisco DrupalCon was a lot of fun and is an example of how less involved folks like me can help give back to the Drupal community. So, regardless, of whether this site is a media sponsor or not for this conference, I still want to do my part in helping promote DrupalCon Copenhagen.

DrupalCon is the twice-yearly gathering of Drupal developers and users to learn about, discuss, and contribute to Drupal, networking with other Drupal community members in the process. At almost every DrupalCon, you will have the opportunity to meet Drupal community leaders, top developers, your favorite module maintainers, dojo trainers, members of the Drupal Association, potential business partners, and future employees. If you attend a DrupalCon, I promise you that there is plenty to do and see at the conference.

Keynote speakers for DrupalCon Copenhagen include Dries Buytaert (Drupal Project Lead), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP Project Founder), and Jeremy Keith (Author of "HTML5 For Web Designers"). What's interesting is you'll find an appreciation for the keynote speakers that are not fully embedded in the Drupal community. As much as I enjoyed Dries' "The State of Drupal" speech at DrupalConSF, the awesome talks given by Tim O'Reilly, David H. Cole, and and Andrew Hoppin still whispers in my head today. Attending a DrupalCon just doesn't improve your game with Drupal but DrupalCon can also help improve yourself as a well-rounded IT professional.

If you're in Europe this August and have a chance to stop by Copenhagen, it would be one foolish move on your part to not attend DrupalCon Copenhagen. It's definitely not too late to buy your tickets for DrupalCon CPH. You better hurry though, because all indication are that those ticket prices are going to go up on August 16th.

In late July, MODx Revolution 2.0 was released. Before the project's release, I interviewed though email Ryan Thrash, CEO and co-founder of the MODx project, as well as Jay Gilmore. In a joint response, they graciously answered some of my questions about MODx. Below are my questions and their responses from our MODx interview.

CMS Report - The release of 2.0 is a new beginning for MODx...where does MODx go from here?

MODx - MODx Revolution represents a sharp inflection point in our history. We have a lot of very positive announcements to make in the coming weeks, but here’s a high level overview:

• MODX, LLC, is a new company we’ve formed to stand behind the core products and to continue to foster the ongoing development of the software and the MODx ecosystem in general.
• We’re hiring both from within the community and bringing in outside expertise to make sure we have a viable and sustainable business. We’re 1000% focused on accelerating MODx adoption, awareness and continuing to rise as one of the top Open Source content management platforms today. 2011 should be an unbelievable year for MODx uptake.
• We’re looking for qualified developers, consultants and agencies to partner with MODx. They’ll be recognized as MODx experts and Solutions Partners, prominently displayed on our website and outbound marketing efforts, officially launching no later than early 2011. We get a good volume of leads through the website and these will all go to Partners, which is just the tip of the iceberg of benefits from partnering with MODx.
• Similarly, we’ll be launching commercial support services to meet the demand we’ve seen from businesses in the community. We have great offerings to talk about with regard to this later.
• We’re relaunching and totally revamping our websit to better focus on and to serve more stakeholders including end users (at our new modx.com URL). We’ll have dedicated community and developer sections to make learning about MODx easier.

What this all means is that there’s now going to be an organization to hold to account for MODx. We’ve done what we think is a good job as stewards since founding the project, and we’ll have dedicated time and resources to do an even better job going forward.

This past weekend, I returned from a two week camping vacation in the mountains of Colorado. During those two weeks of little Internet connection...a lot of good content management stories came my way via email but were not posted here at CMS Report. I've decided to go through my mailbag this week and post some of the better stories that were missed in my absence.

A couple weeks ago, Stefane Fermigier sent us an email regarding the release of Nuxeo EP and DM 5.3.2, an ECM Platform and Document Management application. Stefane writes:

I'm very happy to announce that we have released Nuxeo EP and DM 5.3.2 today.

The release notes are here:

http://blogs.nuxeo.com/dev/2010/07/nuxeo-dm-532-is-available.html

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release, which I believe is the strongest we've done so far, and also the one that took the less effort to create thanks to the build and QA process we've put in place in the last year.

We have other new releases coming up in the following days: Nuxeo DAM 1.1 and Nuxeo CMF, and the next release of Nuxeo DM will be Nuxeo DM 5.4, scheduled around October this year.

Remember also that we have the Nuxeo World conference in November: http://www.nuxeo.com/about/events/nuxeoworld2010

Meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy using Nuxeo DM 5.3.2. We've upgraded our intranet to use this version (over 5.3.1) in the final days of testing the new release, and I can tell you it is noticeably snappier and overall more pleasant to use than the 5.3.1.

You can find additional details of this new version of Nuxeo on Stefane's blog. I've also embedded a video on what's new in Nuxeo DM 5.3 below.

As I  have done each and every year,  I will be taking my annual break from technology. From now through August, I'll be posting and managing the site a little less. I won't be abandoning CMS Report, but you will be seeing me a little less.

During the summer months, I like to slow down my technology usage for a few weeks. I don't think as human beings we were meant to be immersed in the huge quantity of today's digital information. From the moment we are awake to the moment we go to bed, our bodies are being loaded with information. The email, cell phone, and the Internet seem to have a never ending presence in the lives of us IT folks. I don't have much control with removing technology from my work day, but I do have options in my personal life. It's time for me to unplug and officially begin Technology Break 2010.

My slogan for Tech Break 2010 is Run, run as fast as you can! Why the sense of this urgency in this year's slogan?  Well, last year's slogan of Blog less, Relax more didn't do me much good in 2009 as I failed miserably to stay away from the tech. This year, it's going to be even more difficult as today's smartphones pretty much means we now wear a computer tied to our hip. I have a feeling the result of this exercise is that I will end up spending less time with technology, but it will be near impossible to take a complete break from the geek life I've lived with for so long.

As always, I appreciate help in any articles submitted to CMSReport.com.  If you want to really help out, create an account today and start contributing your own CMS stories. I'll be checking email now and then for submitted posts so we make sure you're not waiting too long to see your story published. Have a good rest of the summer!

It has been an extremely long time since I've done any type of comparision between Drupal and Joomla!. While I like to keep a close eye on both of these open source content management systems...I just haven't felt the need to compare the two applications with each other. The rhythm of each of the two CMS are so different that I honestly don't know what I would write in the Drupal vs Joomla post. Comparing Drupal and Joomla with each other is like comparing Country music and Jazz with each genre not really capable of diminishing the importance of the other.

This isn't to say such comparisons can't be interesting and useful. I definitely know how popular Drupal vs. Joomla! articles can be and the number of visitors such articles will bring to a site.  If you're interested in reading a new Drupal vs Joomla article, you can find such an article at Achieve Internet.

Some of the comparisons are out of date or lack sufficient technical detail to fully support their conclusions. Furthermore, both Joomla! and the Drupal CMS are on the verge of releasing new versions, Joomla! 1.6 and Drupal 7, that will move both products in a positive direction.

This series of articles attempts to address where the technologies stand now, with a keen eye on the fact that both are moving targets as they approach new releases. The focus will be on using the web design software to build enterprise level websites, including those for large businesses, government agencies, and sizable non-profits, as this is the focus of Achieve Internet, based in San Diego, CA. We will examine the following topics from a technical perspective: baseline content management system (CMS) functionality, back-end appearance and functionality, and coding & customization.

If you're interested in hearing more from Achieve Internet, the article you'll want to read is Joomla! vs. Drupal for enterprise web development, Part 1.

Some of the most enjoyable Drupal moments for me was the time I spent in 2009  testing Acquia's Search for Drupal. Acquia Search is a plug-and-play service within the Acquia Network, built on Apache Solr and available for any Drupal 6 site.

I think Acquia Search is probably one of the most significant services provided on the Acquia Network and the feature that will continue to attract businesses to not only Acquia but also Drupal. So although I'm no longer on the Acquia network, I'm pleased to hear that new features have been added to this Apache Solr implementation.

Some of the more significant features being added to Acquia Search include:

• Attachment Indexing - Utilizing the Apache Solr Attachment module you can now search the text in document files such as PDF and Word documents. This is big! Even cooler, those documents can searched locally or remotely.
• Multi-site Searches - Search multiple Drupal sites at once.
• Update to Solr 1.4.1 which fixes a number of bugs.
• Wildcard Searches