Liferay Announces Rapid Community Growth in 2011

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Liferay Sync, Liferay Portal 6.1 EE set to launch with strong open-source community momentum

LOS ANGELES — (January 24, 2012) — Liferay, Inc., provider of the world’s leading enterprise-class open source portal, announced today the expansion of its community to 56,000 members in 2011, a nearly 40 percent increase over the previous year. The participation of the Liferay community continues to strengthen the portal provider's offerings, including the new Liferay Sync and Liferay Portal 6.1 Enterprise Edition, both planned for release later this quarter.

The 2011 Open Source Awards

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This month, Packt Publishing began accepting nominations for its 2011 Open Source Awards. Breaking tradition, I've declined the invitation this year to be a member of the judging panel of this award (I've been a judge for the past four years). Regardless of my lack of participation as a judge, I still think this a great award and merits mention here on my blog.

Although there can be some controversy of declaring a "best CMS" in any award, I think Packt has done a great job in helping promote those open source applications that become a nominee for this award. I know for myself, I've found great value in the "most promising" category for identifying up and coming open source projects. In fact, I'll even argue that there are a few content management projects out there that still would be unknown if it wasn't for the Packt Open Source Award. Prize money alone given by Packt to the various open source project winners since 2006 tops $100,000.

Julian Copes from Packt announced the start of awards in late July with promise of improvements and new categories for this year's version of the Awards.

Packt will be launching its annual Open Source Awards in 2011 and once again we have worked to make the Awards bigger and better. Staying true to Packt’s values for the Awards of encouraging, supporting, recognizing and rewarding Open Source projects, we’ve introduced and altered categories to allow a greater scope of projects to take part.

We have given a lot of thought to the changes we intend to put in place, and we feel this will enable Packt to further its support for projects both new and old.

So what are the changes?

JFBConnect v3.2 - Adds Multiple Features for Enhanced Integration of Joomla and Facebook

With Facebook recently announcing it surpassed the 500 million user mark, and Joomla powering over 2.5% of all websites, the integration of both is a natural fit for growing your site and brand both easily and organically.

 

Facebook for Joomla v3.2The newest release of JFBConnect, version 3.2, now makes that integration even more powerful! Updated features include a rich wall posting feature on registration and login, full Facebook Open Graph support, automatic comments and like boxes throughout your Joomla site, and additional profile fields during registration.

 

These enhancements are all in addition to existing features such as one-click registration, customizable profile import into multiple 3rd party extensions, automatic logging in of Facebook users, and all of the Facebook social widgets such as Like, Comments, Fanbox and more.

SilverStripe community begins work on SilverStripe CMS v3.0

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The SilverStripe open source community recently posted their roadmap to SilverStripe CMS v3.0. Version 3.0 represents a major year-long development project and is expected to be a substantial improvement over the current v2.4.x series. With an aggressive schedule, a stable version of SilverStripe CMS v3.0 is expected to be available by the end of 2011.

The roadmap introduces three major goals of SilverStripe CMS v3.0:

  • Better technical platform. Sapphire, the underlying programming framework, will evolve from an integral part of SilverStripe CMS, into a product that can stand on its own feet. In forming this delineation, improvements will be made throughout the core, including the ORM, data integrity, templating language, and performance. Sapphire v3.0 will consequently enable developers to make richer and more complex web applications and websites.
  • Better user experience for content authors. A refresh of the content authoring environment will bring even better usability and productivity. The interface will transition to jQuery, making the system capable of much greater customization. Managing images, embedding videos, and previewing work in progress will all be made easier. Images and documents will be able to versioned and secured in the same way pages can currently be.
  • Improved support for the social and mobile web. SilverStripe's existing templating language and support for web services already provide a foundation for the two top themes in the web currently: social media and mobile devices. With SilverStripe CMS v3.0, the developers intend to improve the core to make development for both easier and richer.

SilverStripe's Business Relationship Manager, Sigurd Magnusson, sent CMS Report an email about this new roadmap for version 3.0 and how developers can help get involved. "Note at this stage", said Magnusson, "the main thing we want people to do, is join our development mailing list so they people can be involved in the decisions and contribute to the development of this new major release, due late 2011". The official mailing list for the development of SilverStripe CMS 3.0 can be found at Google Groups.

Those interested in additional information regarding SilverStripe CMS v3.0 are encouraged to take a look at the SilverStripe 3.0 Planning page. A video recording of the  first public presentation on SilverStripe CMS v3.0 is posted below the fold and slides from the meeting are also available.

TikiFest Tampa: Introducing the Florida Tiki Users Group

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f you're in the Tampa, Florida area September 24-26, be sure to join us for TikiFest Tampa. This event is organized by the newly created Florida Tiki Users Group.

Planned events include a Tiki Boot Camp for new Tiki admins and discussions of more advanced topics such as Tiki Profiles and Workspaces. In addition to these technical topics, a social dinner event is also planned.

If you're a member of the Tiki Community or simply interested in wikis and content management systems, you're invited to participate. For more information, visit: http://tiki.org/TikiFestTampa.

Beyond Tampa: The Brazil Tiki Users Group

And in South America, the Brazilian community is forming a Tiki Users Group. The Brazilian community has long-been a substantial contributor to the Tiki Community, is planning a TikiFest, and has a dedicated support mailing list in Brazilian Portuguese. For more information, see http://tiki.org/BrazilTikiUserGroup.

Only days left to nominate your Open Source project for an award

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Last month, Rick Wagner posted about the launch of Packt Publishing's 2010 Open Source Awards. IT is unbelievable to me that a month has already passed since that announcement. For those that wish to nominate their open source project for this award, let this be a reminder to you that the nomination period is ending September 17.

As Rick mentioned, the 2010 Award will feature a prize fund of $24,000 with several new categories introduced. While the Open Source CMS Award category will continue to recognize the best content management system, Packt is introducing categories for the Most Promising Open Source Project, Open Source E-Commerce Applications, Open Source JavaScript Libraries and Open Source Graphics Software. CMSes that won the Overall CMS Award in previous years will continue to compete against one another in the Hall of Fame CMS category.

I've included details below regarding the various categories in this year's Open Source Awards along with links to their respective nominating pages for each category.

The following categories make up the 2010 Open Source Awards:

Open Source CMS Award

Every Content Management System (CMS) that is based on one of the Open Source licenses is eligible to participate for this category. Nominate your favorite Open Source CMS here.

Hall of Fame CMS

This category is reserved for those CMSes that have won the Overall Open Source CMS Award at least once in the past. Since the launch of the award in 2006, only Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress have won the Overall Open Source CMS Award, therefore, this category will feature only those three participants in 2010. Vote for your favorite Hall of Fame CMS here.

Most Promising Open Source Project

Sponsored by OpenCandy, this category is for all Open Source projects, whose first release date is less than two years from 9 August, 2010. Nominate your favorite Most Promising Open Source Project here

Open Source E-Commerce Applications

This category is reserved for the type of web applications that simplify buying and selling of products on the Internet. This will include complete e-commerce applications or frameworks designed for e-commerce. E-commerce modules or extensions to other systems can also be nominated. If a system is general purpose (like a CMS such as Drupal or Joomla!) the specific e-commerce functionality should be nominated, not the base system. Nominate your favorite Open Source E-Commerce Applications here.

Open Source JavaScript Libraries

This category is reserved for JavaScript libraries, libraries of pre-written JavaScript controls which allow for easier development of RIAs (Rich Internet Applications), visually enhanced applications or smoother server-side JavaScript functionality. Nominate your favorite Open Source JavaScript Library here.

Open Source Graphics Software

This category, as the name suggests, is for all Graphic Application Software that is used for graphic design, multimedia development, specialized image development, general image editing, or simply to access graphic files. It can also include graphics libraries, which use command line references or programming language inputs to design or edit graphics. Nominate your favorite Open Source Graphic Software here.

On Hacking Drupal Core and Contributing Back to the Open Source Community Project

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The Onion implemented version 4.7 of Drupal several years back and mightily hacked core for the functionality and performance it needed. Recently, the Onion - a company with a number of staff developer resources - decided to migrate to a different WCMS (Django) that they felt was more of a programmers' framework than that of Drupal. Their decision to abandon Drupal for a different project is regrettable, since their team's experience could really have helped improve Drupal these past few years and The Onion would have benefited in the process.

TIKI: One of the most active projects on SourceForge

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TikiWiki CMS/Groupware (http://tikiwiki.org), the open source, wiki-based content management system continues to be one of the most active projects on SourceForge, consistently ranking in the top 15 in terms of SVN code commits (http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/ran...).

According to Ohloh.net, Tiki is "one of the largest open-source teams in the world, and is in the top 2% of all project teams on Ohloh." (http://www.ohloh.net/p/tikiwiki/factoids/). This diverse and extensive community effort has fueled more than 800,000 downloads (http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/det...) plus countless one-click installations through control panel applications such as Fantastico.

TikiFests
This activity and growth comes on the heels of the recent TikiFest held in New York, NY, USA (http://tikiwiki.org/tikifest). TikiFests are a tradition of the TikiWiki community in which Tiki contributors who usually collaborate online, get an opportunity to meet in person. Future TikiFests are scheduled in Canada, Poland, Brazil, Germany, and the United States. Over 35 TikiFests have been held.

Alledia updates their Drupal and Joomla comparison

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Submitted by Bryan on

In the world of open source CMS there is no comparison more attention getting than an article comparing Drupal and Joomla!. Probably, the grand daddy Drupal versus Joomla! comparisons of them all was posted over three years ago by the Joomla SEO company, Alledia. I extended the discussion Alledia started with my own comparison between Drupal and Joomla. My article evidently struck a chord in late 2006 and currently is approaching near 200,000 reads.

Good comparisons between Drupal and Joomla! are popular because quality comparisons between the two applications are rare. It's very difficult to have passion for one CMS, be well informed on both CMS, and in the end be non-bias in your comparison. In the three years since I wrote my article, I've only come across three additional comparisons between Drupal and Joomla! that I thought worthy to bookmark.

I haven't updated my own article comparing Drupal and Joomla because I have developed a bias opinion over the years that I can't overcome...I prefer Drupal over Joomla! Both are good applications in their own right, but in the end I almost always recommend Drupal over Joomla!. That's why I'm glad to see Alledia update their own comparison between these popular CMS with Joomla and Drupal - Which One is Right for You? Version 2.

The Drupal v. Joomla Survey Results Are In

A couple months ago I posted an entry on this blog announcing Webology Solutions' Drupal v Joomla Survey.  Well now the results are in.

 

We had nearly 200 reponses from professional web developers versed in Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress and a number of other content management systems.  The results are available in two formats.  We have posted a pdf file containing summary results for each question asked in the survey.  We have also posted the detailed data in a comma separated file available for download (Personally identifying data has been removed).   The results of the survey are now posted on our blog.  You can download the files from our download section at WebologySolutions.com.

 

In the following weeks we will be posting analysis of the data, discussing issues such as what functions each CMS supports best and which CMS makes it easier to develop custom applications.

April 22, 2009 is World Plone Day

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In case you didn't know, the Plone community is planning on celebrating across the globally World Plone Day.  This “follow the sun” event takes place Wednesday on April 22, 2009 and currently involves at least 29 countries.

Plone, one of the open source software communities, is staging World Plone Day 2009 - a series of events around the globe on April 22nd to spread awareness of their product. Plone is a free and open source Internet publishing system that combines web content management, social software, collaboration, and enterprise portal features.

Build a Social Networking Website using Drupal 6 with New Book

Packt is pleased to announce a new book on Drupal that will guide users in creating and managing their own social networking website, using powerful and feature rich social networking modules. Written by Content Management expert, Michael Peacock, Drupal 6 Social Networking will help users in promoting and marketing their website using the Drupal CMS platform.

Drupal is a free Open Source modular framework and Content Management System (CMS). Drupal is extremely scalable, making it ideal for both a simple personal website as well as an industrial strength commercial or institutional web presence. Written in the programming language PHP/MySQL, its power and flexibility combined with its exceptional design means it is one of the most popular choices for creating a CMS website.

This book will guide users from the basics of both Drupal and Social Networking right through to more complicated aspects, like creating their own custom design and features for their website. It will walk users through the creation of a custom module, making use of Google Maps, to illustrate how easily the social network can be extended to meet their needs. It will also introduce users to Drupal themes to install and enable new themes and customize the existing ones.

In addition to this, the book looks at communicating with the users of the social network through mailing lists, theme changes and Twitter feeds, to keep them up to date, and improve user retention. Through this book users will learn some useful methods for promoting their website through Search Engine Optimization, Online Marketing, and a range of new Social Media.

Monadarling.com an exicting indian/desi community portal

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Monadarling.com is a new and exciting Indian/Desi community portal to hit the World Wide Web, particularly in the social media space. Our goal is to Inspire, empower and provide information and services necessary for users realize their dreams and aspirations work towards a better life and a better world at large.

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