miacms

The last significant version of MiaCMS was released this week. As I wrote several weeks ago, except for bug fixes and security updates, MiaCMS 4.9 will be the last version to be released by the developers. The MiaCMS core developers will now begin focusing all new development efforts on the Aliro platform.

I think the MiaCMS developers' attention toward the Aliro platform is a good strategic move. The developers likely recognized that the space for a content management system with Mambo roots was a little crowded. When I reviewed MiaCMS last year, I couldn't help but think it was going to be an uphill battle for MiaCMS.

The open source project MiaCMS announced that they and the project team behind the Aliro CMS are joining forces to create a best of breed and next generation CMS. For those folks that aren't familiar with MiaCMS, MiaCMS is a fork of Mambo. I was first introduced to MiaCMS while sitting on the judging panel for Packt Publishing's 2008 Most Promising Open Source CMS Award. Admittedly, Aliro is new to me. Aliro is a project that while appreciating the features and history of the Mambo family (including Joomla!) still saw a need to make some dramatic changes to the CMS architecture and modernize the code base.

While MiaCMS impressed me in 2008, I felt it was too similar to Mambo and was too far behind the Joomla! project to really stand out on it's own. At the time of the Packt open source award I thought MiaCMS needed to do a lot more to distinguish itself from Mambo and Joomla!. This is what I wrote:

Similar to Joomla!, MiaCMS is another fork of Mambo.  However, since the MiaCMS project is still young and the code in MiaCMS too similar to Mambo, I kept seeing MiaCMS as nothing more than a rebranded and improved version of Mambo 4.6.  Keeping within the "spirit" of the most promising category...it just seemed too early for me to put MiaCMS in the top three CMS.  Time will tell us whether MiaCMS will be its own fully supported CMS or only remembered as a fork under the shadow of Mambo.

I really want to revisit MiaCMS next year and compare it with Joomla! and Mambo.  If someone feels that I'm being too harsh on MiaCMS for being a fork of Mambo, know that I was just as harsh on the Joomla! project.  It really wasn't until the development of Joomla! 1.5 before I considered the Joomla! project truly legitimate.  As Joomla! has learned, it takes more than forking the code and opening a site  to create a legitimate open source project...it takes a community willing to change, evolve, and learn.  I think MiaCMS is on the right track, but it lacks the history needed to judge it fairly.

I think MiaCMS merging with Aliro is an amazing and gutsy step being made by both teams. The MiaCMS team appears to realize that in order to evolve into a much better CMS, they have to let go some of their past efforts in hopes of a new future. The reasons given for MiaCMS wanting to merge with Aliro says it all.

• Mambo is quite old at this point.  Releases, developers, and svn activity are all but non-existent, as alluded to in a recent interview with Chad Auld.  MiaCMS has given new life to the aging platform, but with the advancements in PHP and related frameworks over the last several years, the system is really in need of a full re-architecture building upon the lessons learned over the last 8 years.  While still with the Mambo project we announced such an effort several years ago, before the fork.  That effort was to be a Mambo rewrite on top of the CakePHP framework, but it never really got off the ground due to the political infighting that ultimately required the MiaCMS fork.
• So, here we are several years later with a much better system, MiaCMS, but still in need of a much larger architectural shift.  While we have advanced the upper layers of the system, Aliro has been focused on the all-important foundation.  Building on top of Aliro will allow us to better serve the community and put out a CMS that is even more impressive, efficient, secure, and flexible than the one you currently enjoy.

Initial plans is for the combined projects to use the name Aliro for their new endeavors. The MiaCMS core developers will begin focusing all new development efforts on the Aliro platform after the MiaCMS 4.9 release is out and stable. However, the team does plan to continue to support MiaCMS 4.9 with bug fixes and security updates.

MiaCMS 4.8 was released this past week.  New features and improvements in this release include:

• OpenID support (versions 1&2)
• Content versioning
• A brand new and improved JavaScript architecture
• A Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) upgrade (from 2.5.2 to 2.6.0)
• An Enhancement to the Related Articles module
• New versions of the Byte&MOStlyCE editors
• Bug fixes and other general enhancements

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.

With the polls closing in ten days for some of the best open source CMS out there, if you haven't voted already, you need to head over to Packt Publishing and let your voice be heard.  There are five finalists for differing categories to choose from.  Voting for the winners in each of the categories opened September 1 and ends on October 20, 2008.  This "public vote" will then be combined with votes by a panel of judges for the top three CMS in each category will then be voted for by a panel of judges.

This year, I'll be on the panel of judges for the Most Promising Open Source CMS.  The five fanalists in this category are:  CMS Made Simple, ImpressCMS, MemHT, MiaCMS, and SilverStripe.  I'm hoping to submit my choices for most promising CMS early next week.  This is going to be a tough choice for me as I have found myself impressed with each of the open source projects.  Many of these newer crops of CMS already have their eye on the ball by making sure they're ready to be used globally (multi-language capable, right to left text, etc).  Some of the older more established CMS still struggle to this day to make this happen in their projects.