Liferay Assumes Leadership for PortletFaces Community

Open Source Leader Offers Enterprise-Grade Support

LOS ANGELES, CA — April 3, 2012 — Liferay, Inc., provider of the world’s leading enterprise-class, open source portal, today announced that it was granted leadership for all open source projects on portletfaces.org, a community that showcases JavaServer Faces (JSF) as the premier user interface framework for developing portlets. The community was founded by Liferay Partners Triton Services and Mimacom AG, who are both recognized as experts in Liferay and JSF technology.

JSF establishes the standard for building server-side user interfaces on the Java EE platform and is widely leveraged among enterprise Java developers. Triton and Mimacom formed portletfaces.org in response to an increasing demand for JSF portlets. As provider of the premier open source portal for the enterprise, Liferay shares a large overlapping community with portletfaces.org, as evidenced by the high concentration of Liferay-related sub-projects such as PortletFaces Bridge, AlloyFaces, and LiferayFaces.

Book Club: MODX The Official Guide

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]

Introducing ProcessWire 2.1

ProcessWire is a friendly and powerful open source CMS and CMF with an exceptionally strong foundation. With all custom fields, an easy-to-use jQuery-inspired API, and a powerful page selector engine, ProcessWire will rise to any task. Version 2.1 is the second major open source release of ProcessWire CMS.

SilverStripe Framework Will Stand Alone

SilverStripe Ltd. is due to release SilverStripe CMS 3.0 in alpha in October and beta by the end of the year. The biggest change to the current content management system will be the separation of the SilverStripe Framework as it’s own entity. The framework as a stable basis, formerly known as ‘Sapphire’, enables the developer to build more than just traditional websites and potentially build applications for any device and any purpose.

SilverStripe CMS 3.0 promises an improved user interface, a better technical platform and will embrace social media and mobile web applications. SilverStripe Framework is an object-oriented PHP5 web application framework. It is based on a Model-view-controller (MVC) architecture, a popular approach for building web-based applications. The Framework reduces the overhead associated with common programming tasks, and enables developers to write code in a logical and structured manner.

Product Marketing Manager Kerstin Schuman says that SilverStripe Ltd. is proud to give the framework a status of it’s own; it is a great tool to build anything a developer wants. The framework will now become a standalone member of the SilverStripe Suite, becoming downloadable as a separate development tool. The SilverStripe Suite comprises of the SilverStripe CMS, SilverStripe Framework, SilverStripe Site Monitor and supported SilverStripe modules.

Schuman says the release of the framework gives SilverStripe the opportunity to reach a new group of people who need more than just a CMS in order to build creative new web applications.

List of 32 Web Frameworks

Andrew Lynch posted a fantastic list of 32 Web Frameworks over at memeburn.com. He starts off that list with Ruby on Rails, Django, Drupal, CakePHP...well you get the idea.

Frameworks are built on top of programming languages and provide methods of streamlining some of the more mundane and common tasks associated with web development. In essence, they allow developers to achieve more with less coding, saving both time and money. They provide a range of simple methods that help you connect to a database, authenticate users and build an admin backend, all with a few lines of code.

Be sure to read the complete story so you can see Andrew's review of 32 web frameworks that you have to choose from for your next project.

Intersoft Solutions Debuts WebUI Studio 2011 R1

Intersoft Solutions, a global vendor specializing in highly-reusable user interface controls for ASP.NET, Silverlight, and WPF, today announced the official release of WebUI Studio 2011 R1. It introduces over 30 new controls spanning across three platforms, including the flagship UXGridView, a high performance MVVM-compliant data grid for Silverlight and WPF, in addition to many enhancements. WebUI Studio R1 delivers a total of 290 powerful controls for small to large-sized enterprise business application development.

XOOPS rewritten using Zend Framework: Alpha 1 released

The XOOPS Project is proud to present Alpha release of its next generation Web Application Development platform – the Xoops Engine.

It is definitely the most daring and innovative development in the almost 10 year history of XOOPS!

XOOPS is one of the most successful Open Source CMS solutions, constantly winning top places in various competitions, and receiving various awards. But it was slowly showing signs of aging that would require major rewrites of the Core. After much deliberation the team decided to rewrite it from the ground-up using a standard off-the-shelf PHP Framework. Following the same thinking as IBM or Apple did when they decided to use standard Intel chips, the XOOPS team believes that using standard components and libraries while focusing on unique value-add, will increase the “speed to market” for XOOPS. This way the team can take advantage of latest Web developments and vast resources provided by the respective Framework’s developers. It's like getting suddenly a whole new team of some of the best PHP programmers joining XOOPS!

It will also lower the entry barrier to XOOPS for people who are already familiar with a particular PHP Framework.

After much research, XOOPS team has selected Zend Framework, the best and most popular PHP Framework on the market. The Xoops Engine will be probably the first and only case so far of rewriting a major Open Source project using an industry standard PHP Framework.

“We are happy to see XOOPS, one of the leaders in the Open Source CMS space, is using Zend Framework as the foundation of their ‘next generation’ release”, said Eldad Maniv, SVP Marketing and Products at Zend. “We are confident that by leveraging the power of Zend Framework and its vibrant community, XOOPS can achieve its goals and grow in popularity.”

Why did we choose Zend Framework

New Xoops Engine (X3) Goes Zend Framework

We are very pleased to present you X3, the new Xoops Engine for the next generation of XOOPS powered web application development.

XOOPS Logo This new Xoops Engine was long time in coming. During that time, we went through different phases of trials and errors, but we believe that we finally have the best combination of features and technologies to strategically position XOOPS as one of the top Web Application Platform solutions.

The new Xoops Engine has been re-designed from the ground up to take advantages of third-party frameworks like Zend Framework and Smarty 3.

Why did we rewrite XOOPS?

XOOPS is one of the most successful Open Source CMS and portal solutions, constantly placing in top places in various competitions, and receiving various awards. But it is showing signs of aging, that would require major rewrites of the Core.

In order to keep us focused on creating a flexible and extensible development engine for developers and a high performance application platform for end users, the development team has decided to use industry-standard frameworks. By doing so, we can focus our limited resources on aspects that make XOOPS unique and special, while leaving standard functionality to be addressed by off-the-shelf frameworks. This way we can take advantage of latest internet developments already included in those frameworks - it's like getting suddenly a whole new team of some of the best and brightest PHP and RIA programmers joining XOOPS!

After much research, we've selected a couple of frameworks at this stage:

PHP: Zend Framework
Template: Smarty 3,
JavaScript: jQuery

Meanwhile the multi-engine mechanism of the Xoops Engine will ensure the possibility of adopting other excellent frameworks in the future, like Yii Framework, Dojo Toolkit, etc.

Book for creating a working architecture for a PHP 5 based framework

PHP 5 CMS Framework Development - 2nd Edition is a new book from Packt that teaches readers about the design choices involved in the creation of advanced web oriented PHP systems. Written by Martin Brampton , this book will help readers to implement solid mechanisms for common features such as menus, presentation services, and user management, and to build a highly functional infrastructure for web applications.

PHP is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development, allowing the production of dynamic web pages. This free software, which can be easily embedded into HTML, generally runs on a web server that needs to be configured to process PHP code and create content from it. PHP has evolved to include a command line interface capability and can also be used in standalone graphical applications.

PHP 5 CMS Framework Development - 2nd Edition starts off by discussing fundamental issues such as the automatic loading of code modules and interfaces to database systems, and goes on to explain deeper topics such as session handling, caches, and access control. Furthermore, the book also talks about the key issues that affect a wide range of specific content handlers by exploring a practical example in detail.

Using this book, developers will learn effective coding techniques through detailed explanations, along with technical functions such as handling user sessions and creating caches. Additionally, developers will learn flexible and efficient ways to support different world languages, to transform query string URLs to be more “friendly” for people and search engines, and alternative ways to deal with presentation services.

Written by a seasoned developer, this practical hands-on guide is ideal for professional PHP developers who want to learn more about web oriented frameworks and content management systems. The book is out now and available from Packt. For more information, please visit http://www.packtpub.com/php-5-cms-framework-development-second-edition/book

Blossom Brings Spring Framework to Magnolia CMS

Key developer joins Magnolia to take Spring integration to whole new level

NEW YORK, NY — August 2010 — Magnolia, the open source content management vendor that delivers simplicity on an enterprise scale, today announced the release of Magnolia Blossom, a module for Magnolia that integrates Magnolia with the Spring Framework. Tobias Mattsson, the seasoned Spring developer who created Blossom, has joined Magnolia to support Blossom users and bring the integration of the Spring application platform to a whole new level.

“Spring is the world's most popular Java Development Framework and nearly half of the Global 2000 are SpringSource customers," said Boris Kraft, Magnolia CTO. "Magnolia Blossom is a best of both worlds scenario where the greatest CMS meets that leading enterprise application stack, to manage content in addition to developing applications. With Tobias Mattsson on board, Magnolia will become the CMS of choice for Spring users.”

“Integrating websites with applications is a key business case on the web today,” added Tobias Mattsson. “With Magnolia’s new Blossom module, Spring developers are finally able to bring custom back-end business logic to your web site without additional integration effort. Blossom is a unique Spring-CMS integration that lets developers easily define custom Magnolia elements – like dialogs, page templates, and content objects – right within their custom business logic. Magnolia Blossom brings all of Spring’s flexibility and integration to the rich publishing environment that Magnolia CMS provides."

Spring helps developers write high quality applications faster, and delivers key Java concepts with a comprehensive set of frameworks. For more information on Magnolia Blossom, please visit www.magnolia-cms.com.

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