One of the first sessions I attended at CMS Expo was a presentation focused entirely on Telerik's Sitefinity CMS. The most significant features Sitefinity has to offer is a Mobile Web option which uses responsive design. However, it was Sitefinity's usability features and widgets that impressed me most which attracted me most.

Jay Gilmore tweeted me this morning to be sure that I made a note of the latest version of MODX Revolution that was released a couple days ago. MODX Revolution 2.2.2 includes a number of important fixes, some performance improvements, and two new wizards to make it easier to create User and Resource Groups in the CMS.

If you're using MODX Revolution and have not upgraded to 2.2, you will find that it has been one of biggest releases for the MODX folks to date. There were also notable improvements and enhancements included in Revolution 2.2.1.

Some of the highlights in the MODX Revolution 2.2.2 release:

• New wizards for creating User and Resource Groups
• xPDO change to improve performance, specifically with getResources
• Upgrades from command line no longer require all settings in the config file
• Added User duplication for the easy creation of Users and to preserve settings
• New prompt to login to regain access to work in progress after timeout
• Improvement to URL handling
• Further performance enhancements via xPDO method changes.

For further details, please read the release announcement found at MODX.com. MODX Revolution can be downloaded via the MODX download page.

Although, I like to consider myself unbiased when I blog about content management systems, it is no secret that Drupal holds a special place in my heart. Drupal was one of the first CMSs I used that didn't "dead-end" me on a project I was required to support. Over the years, the Drupal community has treated me well, even during those times when I was very wrong in my judgment of Drupal. If Drupal was not a part of my world, I'm not sure I would even be blogging about content management systems. Drupal is the open source standard for which I judge other CMSs.

So, it should come to no surprise to anyone that when John Coonen inquired if I would moderate a Drupal in the Clouds panel at CMS Expo, I jumped at the opportunity. I am excited about the high caliber people that will be on this Drupal in the Cloud panel. The panelists include Joni Klippert from Standing Cloud, Kieran Lal from Acquia, and Jeff Walpole from Phase2 Technology. If you're trying to figure out what is involved in getting your Drupal site, services, and support to the Cloud, these are the people you want to have in the room answering your questions.

Even if you have no interest in Drupal for your CMS, I encourage you to attend this panel to learn more about content management in the Cloud as well as SaaS and PaaS. Like many of you, I've had my concerns and doubts in the past about the Cloud. Is all this talk about the cloud and SaaS a marketing gimmick? Is there any real benefit for my business to putting content into the cloud? During last year's CMS Expo I got my initial answers to these questions after talking to the folks at Acquia, Accrisoft, and Agility. The move toward the Cloud and software-as-a-service for content management is the real thing. It wasn't just the people from these companies that convinced me but their customers too. 

If you are at CMS Expo this year, be sure to attend this 3:30 PM Drupal in the Cloud session on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. If you're worried that you may not know enough about Drupal or the Cloud to enjoy this session, please attend anyway. CMS Expo is geared for the newbie as well as the expert and I think this will be a great session for everyone to attend.

ImpressPages CMS has been updated to version 2.1 and I have to say I'm blown away with the new features included in this open source PHP-based CMS.  Last year, I told you that we all needed to keep an eye on this relatively new content management system. Almost from the start, ImpressPages contained some pretty impressive features including the ability to have most of its content administered directly in the website so you can see what the site looks like as you edit. ImpressPages calls this feature in-place editing. A year later and we continue to see some really cool stuff ImpressPages is doing with their CMS.

Some of the more significant changes and additions in ImpressPages CMS 2.1 include:

• Contact form widget (with lots of new options and possibilities)
• F.A.Q. widget
• File browser in Rich text widget (lots of requests)
• Automatic theme installation (one click and you're done; read further)
• Users module (registration and login widgets included)

Probably the best new feature in this version of ImpressPages is the automatic theme installation. In most CMSs that I've used, when you change the theme of your site you're usually only changing the style sheet and the layout of your site and you usually need to do a lot more tweaking with the rest of the stuff especially images. For instance, if you decide to decrease the width of your body you may then have to manually shrink the size of your images in the new body size. Apparently, this annoying task is taken care of for you in ImpressPages CMS 2.1.

When you switch a theme for ImpressPages CMS every piece of content adapts to new styles automatically. Even images are automatically recropped from original files to fit new defined sizes. Click "Install" for new theme and it's done. A whole lot of magic happens then.

Yesterday, MODX Revolution 2.2.1 was released and this new version offers several small enhancements while addressing 85 issues with fixes. New in 2.2.1 is Sudo users. Sudo users is a setting on a user account that gives unrestricted access to the MODX install. This new feature lets site administrators maintain a user account that cannot get locked out of the site while creating access policies for other site administrators and users.

MODX Revolution 2.2.1 is also intended to prepare MODX Revolution for MODX Cloud. MODX Cloud is being billed as "the ultimate MODX platform" that lets you build sites properly without having to worry about the infrastructure at all. I'm not sure of all the changes that Revolution has gone through to prepare it for MODX Cloud but I would imagine that it may have something to do with making it more compatible with the available API of MODX Cloud.

Here are the highlights of the 2.2.1 release:

Life is treating Liferay very well these days. After only a few months since Liferay Portal 6.1 was introduced, this company witnessed half a million downloads of their 6.1 software. So what does Liferay decide to do next? How does this sound? Take Liferay through a multi-city roadshow so even more business users and organizations become aware of what Liferay has to offer.

That's right, if you want to find out more about Liferay Portal you may have an opportunity to visit with the people of Liferay at a city near you. If the roadshow doesn't work for you, you may also want to check Liferay out in the upcoming 2012 CMS Expo in Chicago. During this May event, Liferay is a Featured CMS in one of the best yearly Learning and Business CMS conferences I've ever attended. I think this is a pivotal year for LIferay and you don't want to miss out getting to know this enterprise open source company.

To learn more about the Liferay's Portal 6.1 half a million download as well as the roadshow, I've attached their press release below.

Every year, I find it an honor when I'm asked by open source projects to announce that they have entered been accepted as mentoring organizations into Google's Summer of Code program. I'm a big advocate of college education and I also understand the importance of a summer job to keeping those college bills under control. Open source projects and the Google Summer of Code provides this opportinuty for upcoming software developers. The Summer of Code is a "global program sponsored by Google that offers post-secondary student developers ages 18 and older stipends to write code for various open source software projects".

There are several goals to the Google Summer of Code program:

1. Create and release open source code for the benefit of all
2. Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source development
3. Help open source projects identify and bring in new developers and committers
4. Provide students the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits (think "flip bits, not burgers")
5. Give students more exposure to real-world software development scenarios (e.g., distributed development, software licensing questions, mailing-list etiquette)

The Summer of Code program provides college age students with alternatives to the typical summer employment at the local grocery store or fast food chain with an opportinity to work the code and on projects that inspires them the most. Google will provide a stipend of $5500 USD per accepted student developer, of which $5000 USD goes to the student and $500 USD goes to the mentoring organization.

Michael Assad, the CEO and a co-founder of Agility, must have been one busy man with a video camera during this year's SXSW. Michael was able to interview a number of leaders in the Web publishing industry including people working for such groups as Time Inc., Hearst, BBC, the New York Times, and Al Jazeera.

My two favorite interviews includes Michael's interview with Perry Solomon from Time Inc and his interview with Bill Adair from PolitiFact. One of my long standing criticisms of traditional media has been their lack of enthusiasm in embracing digital media. As a blogger, I tend to think that perhaps they "just don't get it" but such an argument would not be honest nor truthful. There are major players in the publishing industry that have known for decades that digital publishing needed to be a part of their business model. That iPad you're using wouldn't have been possible without the amount of brain storming provided years prior by these publishers.

Given one reason or another though, publishers until recently have been slow to deliver their content in the multiple formats and the mediums we prefer. As skilled as the publishing industry may be for delivering digital content their achilles heel has been unwillingness to take necessary risks. That's why this is great video footage from Michael as they show the print industry is now ready to fullly evolve and allow the digital publishing business take to be fully integrated with traditional print. At least that's what I take away from these videos.

I haven't done one these for awhile...a Moodle release announcement. Last year, we took Moodle off our Top 30 CMS Focus list so it isn't on my radar too often. But like so many great content applications out there, just because it isn't on our list doesn't mean you shouldn't still consider them for your CMS.  

Below is almost a straight copy and paste from the release announcement at Moodle.org. Be sure to also pay attention to the release notes for additional details. And yes, as a non-Moodle user I too was confused as why there are four different versions of Moodle being supported and updated. The explanation is at the end of the announcement.

 Moodle 2.2.2, 2.1.5, 2.0.8 and 1.9.17 are now available

Moodle 2.2.2, Moodle 2.1.5, Moodle 2.0.8 and Moodle 1.9.17 have been released.

In addition to a number of bug fixes and small improvements, security vulnerabilities have been discovered and fixed. As always, Moodle recommends that you upgrade your sites to these latest versions as soon as possible. All admins of registered Moodle sites have been notified with security issue details.

Upgrading should be very straightforward. Full details about the releases can be found in the release notes:

• Moodle 2.2.2 release notes
• Moodle 2.1.5 release notes
• Moodle 2.0.8 release notes
• Moodle 1.9.17 release notes

The releases themselves are available via the Moodle download page as packages or direct from our CVS and Git repositories.

I've mentioned on this blog a few times that CMSReport.com was never really meant to be a business or publication. It just happened. Six years ago, I started this journey I'm on with just my fascination for information systems and the little knowledge I had obtained on my own about content management systems. I was hungry to learn more and I started this site simply as a place to store my personal notes, bookmarks, and possibly share ideas with a few others. As many of you know, a lot has happened since the early years and I've been at crossroads for how to take CMS Report to the next level.

Last December, I received a call from someone that wanted to bounce some ideas off me and potentially partner with me to make this site something more than it is now. For a myriad of reasons, I'm not ready to name who I talked with so lets just call him "Mike". Mike's solution was not only for him to partner with me but also for me to become a client of the company he co-founded. While I liked the ideas Mike was bringing to the table, I have to tell you that I was a little apprehensive about letting someone else build a new site for me.

When it comes to information technology, I've been blessed with many talents. Six years ago I wisely picked Drupal as the CMS to run my site on. Not only was this open source solution the perfect fit for me to manage my content, Drupal also gave me the freedom and control I needed to run the site the way I saw fit. Over the years Drupal has allowed me to pick and modify my own themes, choose my own modules, and host my site on servers of my own choosing. The problem with the "all me" and "full control" approach is that it consumes a lot of valuable time that I could be using more productively elsewhere.