The ImpressCMS team is very proud to announce the release of ImpressCMS 1.3 - smaller, faster and better! New version of ImpressCMS improves speed, memory use and efficiency, while laying the groundwork for features communities need for their online applications.
ImpressCMS
10 New Content Management Systems via CMS Focus
Our CMS Focus page lists the top 30 content management systems that we want to discuss most here at CMS Report. It has been more than a year and a half since I made any changes to this list and so I decided it was time to make some significant changes. On this page you'll now find 10 new CMS that have been added to the list as well as ten previously listed CMS that were "retired" to the "Hall of Fame".
The applications listed under CMS Focus are not necessarily the biggest and most popular in content management, but instead are CMSs that for whatever reason have caught and kept my attention. If you find value in the CMS Focus page then that's great news and I'm glad I could help. If you find little value in lists such as these, that's fine too and I hope that you can find other content here at CMS Report that at least plays a role in your quest for a better CMS solution.
For those curious, the following ten web applications were added to CMS Focus:
Now Available: ImpressCMS 1.3 Alpha
Smaller, Faster, Better. Those are the claims for ImpressCMS 1.3 and now you have the ability to put it to the test. The project developers have published a review release of the upcoming version. In addition to the internal changes, ImpressCMS 1.3 will run under PHP 5.3, positioning it for better implementations as web hosts begin upgrading their servers.
Security Release: ImpressCMS 1.2.4
Two security vulnerabilities were just discovered and a new release has been published to address them. The ImpressCMS Project has just released ImpressCMS 1.2.4 as a stable release - site administrators are strongly encouraged to upgrade their sites.
Testing popular CMS and blogging systems
For a long time I’ve been really interested in performance aspects of content management systems and smarter blogging systems. This is the reason for my decision to test some of the popular systems on a workbench and to get some technical information about these systems.
The test was quite simple. I installed the packages on my sandbox server and added a function (cip-bench()) to the installation. Then I ran the index page with the default template and configuration. The data I got from the test was limited on the raw index page after the installation. I picked up 5 aspects for the test:
- The first one was the memory usage of the system
- The execution time
- Executed database queries
- How many database tables exist
- And the last parameter shows how many files are required.
It is interesting to see how different some CMS solve their tasks. I was surprised of some results for example 399 database queries of contenido.
To sum up this test I was impressed by chyrp. It’s delivered with an elegant backend and I think it has got a lot of potential to become more popular and famous. The memory usage of wordpress seems to be improved in contrast to previous versions.
Blog
| name | memory | avg time | queries | tables | required files |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| chyrp | 5.556 MB | 0.3 – 0.5 | 7-10 | 8 | 63 |
| geeklog | 6.97 MB | 0.6 – 0.7 | 59 | 50 | 38 |
| serendipity | 6.773 MB | 0.5 – 0.55 | 11 | 21 | 48 |
| textpattern | 2.823 MB | 0.2 – 0.3 | 21 | 17 | 12 |
| wordpress | 12.044 MB | 0.4 – 0.6 | 15 | 11 | 73 |
CMS
| name | memory | avg time | queries | tables | required files |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| cmsmadesimple | 7.543 MB | 1.1 – 1.48 | 38 – 52 | 52 | 92 |
| contenido | 9.562 MB | 0.6 – 0.9 | 254 – 265 (399) | 76 | 123 |
| impressCMS | 10.938 MB | 0.5 – 0.6 | 53-55 | 57 | 139 |
| joomla | 6.289 MB | 0.7 – 0.8 | 7 – 11 | 33 | 127 |
ImpressCMS Releases 1.2.2 Final - A Security Release
The ImpressCMS Project (www.impresscms.org) has just released ImpressCMS 1.2.2, which is a security release. This version patches a recently discovered vulnerability in an external library, CSSTidy. The file containing the vulnerability is not used by ImpressCMS, and should be removed.
The vulnerability was reported on Secunia as a cross-site scripting vulnerability targeting a file in the CSSTidy plugin. Upgrading to ImpressCMS 1.2.2 will take care of removing the exploitable file.
To remove the file without performing an update to your installation, you can manually remove plugins/csstidy/css_optimiser.php.
Where do I get ImpressCMS 1.2.2?
You can download the latest release from our file release system on SourceForge. The download packages allows you to either do a fresh installation, or upgrade from an earlier version of ImpressCMS or XOOPS.
ImpressCMS 1.2 Final is Released
Half a year ago, I posted a video previewing the upcoming release of ImpressCMS 1.2. Unknown to me at the time was that it would take another six months before the content management system was to become finally released. According to the project developers, it's actually been 14 months since the release of ImpressCMS 1.1.
Almost 14 months in the making, ImpressCMS 1.2 is now ready as a Final release! ImpressCMS 1.1 was released at the end of October 2008 and the scope of changes in this release has kept the developers, testers and translators busy.
ImpressCMS has had a short, but notable history - founded in 2007, an initial release in January 2008, 3rd place in Packt Publishing's Most Promising Open Source CMS in 2008 and 1st place in 2009, a 2008 finalist in SourceForge's Community Choice Awards, 32 separate releases and almost 10,000 commits in its code repository.
Some of the new features and improvements in ImpressCMS 1.2 include:
- Imagemanager, with online editing
- Fully customizable Profile module, with social networking features
- Content module
ImpressCMS is awarded Most Promising Open Source CMS
Packt Publishing announced that ImpressCMS has won the Most Promising Open Source CMS category in their 2009 Open Source CMS Award.
While ImpressCMS took first place in this category, Pixie and Pligg weren’t far behind and settled for a tie in the first runner up spot.
ImpressCMS has featured in the top three in this category for the second time in a row, and has lived up to its reputation this year by winning the top spot.
Pixie and Pligg, on the other hand, featured in this category for the first time and managed to impress a lot of judges with their quality and support.
The "Most Promising" category is my favorite of all the categories in Packt's open source CMS award system. The CMSs in this category are lesser known applications requiring the judges on the panel to do a lot more homework than usual and sometimes coming up with some surprises in their analysis. This category is Packt's biggest contribution for getting lesser known open source CMSs the exposure they most likely deserve.
Last year, I had the honor of judging the Most Promising category and was pleased to see SilverStripe get the nod from this award. In 2008, ImpressCMS was also evaluated for this category and left me with a positive impression.
Finalists in Packt's 2009 Open Source CMS Award announced
Yes, it's that time of year again. Packt Publishing recently announced the five finalists in each of the categories of its 2009 Open Source CMS Award. The Voting for the winners in each of the five categories ends on October 30, 2009. This "public vote" will then be combined with votes by a panel of judges with the top three CMS and overall winners in each category to be announced on November 9, 2009.
This year, I will be participating as a judge for the Overall Open Source CMS Award. I have the honor of sharing the judging panel with John Resig of jQuery fame, Deane Barker of Gadgetopia and Blend Interactive, and Karen Coombs from Web Services at the University of Houston Libraries. I'm especially excited to be working with Deane Barker, a fellow Sioux Falls resident. Over the years, Deane and I have had some great discussions on content management systems. It will be interesting to find out whether we will be agreeing with each other or not on which CMS should be considered the top CMS for the Overall category.
Previous winners in the Overall category have included Drupal (2007, 2008) and Joomla! (2006) as the overall winner. Previous winners of the Overall category are not eligible for the Overall category in 2009 as Packt Publishing apparently wanted to prevent the Overall category of being dominated by past winners. The good news is that both Drupal and Joomla are eligible to compete in the new Hall of Fame category and are also finalists in the Best Open Source PHP CMS category.
ImpressCMS 1.2 Preview Video
A video tour of the new features of ImpressCMS has been produce so you can see what is coming in the next release found via ImpressCMS.org.
ImpressCMS 1.1.2 Final
ImpressCMS 1.1.2 was released over the weekend. Improvements and new additions to ImpressCMS since 1.1.1 was released include:
- SMARTY was updated to the latest version - 2.6.22
- Password encryption method can only be changed if the site is open and allows you to access the reset password page
- Database factory improvement providing more protection against SQL injections when Protector 3.30+ is installed
- SimplePie RSS generator
- Updated HTMLPurifier Library from 3.2.0 to 3.3.0
New users should download the latest full version, users who already have a XOOPS or ImpressCMS site should get the latest upgrade packages. More details can be found at the project's Website.
XOOPS comes back to CMS Focus
I caused a little bit of controversy during my review of ImpressCMS as one of the five most promising CMS.
ImpressCMS impressed me so much that I decided to add it to CMS Report's CMS Focus. ImpressCMS pushed XOOPS off of this list!
Some of the XOOPS fans thought I was being too harsh on XOOPS by knocking it off my top 30 list. When I took a look at ImpressCMS (a fork of XOOPS) I was impressed with some of the new directions the project has taken since its departure from XOOPS. I knew I wanted to put ImpressCMS on my top 30 CMS list, but in order to put one into CMS Focus I have to take another CMS off the list. I choose to take XOOPS of the list.
After some discussion with "mamba", I have realized that I may have been premature in taking XOOPS out my top 30 list. So as of today, XOOPS is back on the list. Putting XOOPS on the list bumps off Dragonfly from CMS Focus.
Judging five most promising Content Management Systems
This year, I was given the privilege of sitting on the judging panel for Packt Publishing's 2008 Most Promising Open Source CMS Award. Judges on the panel were required to select their top three CMS based on a number of factors including performance, usability, accessibility, ease of configuration and customization, scalability and security. These top three CMS were to originate from the five finalists in the most promising category which included: CMS Made Simple, ImpressCMS, MemHT Portal, MiaCMS, and SilverStripe.
As I promised earlier, I'm posting online my notes and comments on how I ranked all five finalists in the most promising category. For better or for worse, Packt Publishing also gives their judges a lot of flexibility in how they rank a CMS. While I wouldn't consider this a complete analysis of the CMS, it should provide enough information on the impression each CMS left me when reviewed. While the methodology for determining the best CMS may be subjective, I do try to design my ranking of the CMS to be fair and non-biased.
The order in which I ranked the top "most promising" CMS were:
- SilverStripe (my highest ranked)
- ImpressCMS
- CMS Made Simple
- MiaCMS
- MemHT Portal (my lowest ranked)
In order to come with the above rank, I chose to use factors such as performance, usability, accessibility, ease of configuration, ease of customization, scalability, the the amount of support/documentation offered through the project's site/infrastructure. I did not use security as a factor in my ranking. Since the CMS must be less than two years old to qualify in the most promising category, it seemed unfair to rank these CMS by security since by definition they're not fully matured projects.
ImpressCMS 1.1 Goes Final!
For Immediate Release
The ImpressCMS Project (http://www.impresscms.org), after an intense period of development and testing, has released ImpressCMS version 1.1 Final!
This release offers a glimpse of what to expect from this new project - the list of new features is truly impressive!
What ImpressCMS 1.1 OffersSome of the features introduced in this version of ImpressCMS have been on the community's wish list for a long time -
- Built-in content creator and manager
- WYSIWYG editor available throughout the site without having to hack the core or modules
- Increased security options for encrypting user passwords
- Built-in support for RTL (right to left) languages
- Built-in UTF-8
- Password strength meter
- CAPTCHA built-in and used for system comments and registration forms
- Integration of OpenID as an authentication method for user logins
- and many more features...
ImpressCMS v1.1 is available for download from the Project's SourceForge repository and is provided as a complete installation package and as an upgrade package, for users coming from an earlier version of ImpressCMS or XOOPS.
SilverStripe is 2008's Most Promising Open Source CMS
SilverStripe was announced as the winner of Packt Publishing's 2008 Most Promising Open Source CMS Award.
SilverStripe is today exclusively revealed as the winner of the 2008 Most Promising Open Source Content Management System. The SilverStripe project receive $2,000, holding off strong competition from CMS Made Simple in the first runner up position with ImpressCMS and MiaCMS finishing joint second runner up.
Packt Publishing notes that SilverStripe's core team is heavily involved in not only their product but also with SilverStripe's users.
It received universal approval from the judges for its features and was praised as an excellent option for companies who want a powerful open source website that is professionally created and well supported. The judges were complimentary about SilverStripe’s scalability, use of Ajax, its healthy community and the impressive levels of input on the forums from its developers.
I had the honor of being one of the judges on the panel for Packt Publishing's 2008 Most Promising Open Source CMS Award. My vote also went for SilverStripe followed by ImpressCMS for second place and CMS Made Simple for third place. Since I wasn't sure how the other judges on the panel were going to vote, I'm always a little nervous of being too far off from the consensus. Needless to say, I feel validated. In a few days, I'll throw my notes online for how I ranked all five finalists in the most promising category.
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