A new version of mojoPortal is out and about. The developers consider  the release of mojoPortal 2.3.7.5 a "significant release with lots of new goodness". New features and improvements in this version include Windows Llive Writer support, IOS 5 support, and forum enhancements.

The following is a more detailed list of improvements in mojoPortal 2.3.7.5:

• Improvements to Windows Live Writer support. A completely new implementation of metaweblog api with new support for Creating and Editing CMS pages in addition to Blog posts.
• Support for Windows Azure AppFabric cache and new guidance for hosting mojoPortal on Windows Azure.
• New button in Add/Edit Pages (aka PageTree.aspx) to resort child pages of the selected page alphabetically.
• IOS 5 support for rich text editors: Use of WYSIWYG editors CKeditor and TinyMCE is now possible in IOS 5 devices.
• Default roles for new root level pages has been promoted from a web,.config setting to site settings.
• New permission for Roles That Are Allowed To Set Page Level Skins (when page level skins are enabled).
• File Dialog used in the editors now shows meaningful messages when a user's file system quotas prevent upload
• Updated to jQuery 1.7.1 and jQueryUI 1.8.16 when using the Google CDN.
• Webstore improvements: 1) There is a new provider model for OrderCompletedEventHandlers that allows developers to plugin custom code that will be executed after payment clears on an order. 2) It is now possible to checkout in webstore with a zero balance.
• Forum improvements: 1) New setting to copy the posting user on the notifications. 2) New setting to suppress email notifications when a user edits an existing post. 3) New setting to limit the timespan in which a user may edit his post.

mojoPortal 2.3.7.5 is available now on mojoPortal's download page. Information on this page was provided via the official announcement.

Yesterday, Packt Publishing announced the finalists for their 2011 Open Source Award.   This announcement signals the start of the next stage where the finalists are now open to public vote, which lasts until October 31.

Not all the categories in the award are content management related, but if you have an interest in open source I think you'll find each one of the finalists have a great story to tell. The finalists, listed in alphabetical order across all the categories, are as follows:

Open Source CMS Award

• Drupal
• Joomla!
• mojoPortal
• Plone
• SilverStripe

Open Source Business Applications

• Magento
• NopCommerce
• OpenCart
• PrestaShop
• SugarCRM

Most Promising Open Source Project

• Chamilo
• FLOW3
• ImpressPages
• Nette Framework
• Seo Panel

Open Source Mobile Toolkits and Libraries

• FoneMonkey
• jQuery Mobile
• Min3D
• PhoneGap
• Sencha Touch

Open Source JavaScript Libraries

• Dojo Toolkit
• jQuery
• Raphael JS
• Sencha- ExtJS
• YUI Library

Open Source Graphics Software

• Airtime
• Blender
• GIMP
• Inkscape
• Krita

Users are invited to vote for their favorite open source projects across all the applicable categories and maximize their chances of winning their share of $24,000. Public votes will be combined with ratings from a panel of Judges with the winners announced on November 7.

In other Awards news, Packt has introduced subcategories to the 2011 Open Source Awards finals for the CMS and JavaScript Library categories. To read more, click here.

Last fall, I once again had the privilege of participating as a member of the judging panel for Packt Publishing's Open Source Awards. For the 2010 event, I participated by voting for the category of Open Source CMS Awards. In that award, the winner was declared by the panel to be CMS Made Simple, with SilverStripe as first runner up followed by MODx as second runner up.

I received a lot of inquiries asking me how and in what order did I rank the content management systems. Each of the judges on the panel, selects and ranks their top three CMS from the five included in this category. The judges are given a lot of reign for how they rank the CMS and may consider a number of factors including performance, usability, size and support from community, accessibility, ease of configuration, customization, scalability and security.

It has been my history to be transparent to all with how I rank each CMS as my vote will have some differences to those of the panel. This time around, I find myself hesitant and under personal protest with me providing information on how I ranked the five content management systems.

I question whether we're doing any good by declaring one CMS as better than another CMS. Dean Barker discussed on his blog some time ago this same uneasy feeling you get when you judge a CMS without having some reference to real world requirements. None of these content management systems would I consider losers and all of them remain worthy of future consideration. Yet, I'm disturbed that people will look at the numbers and interpret the results in a ways I never intended my rankings to be used.

My rankings for the Five Best Open Source CMS (with number one being the highest) were:

1. SilverStripe
2. mojoPortal
3. MODx
4. XOOPS and CMS Made Simple (Tie)

I'm not a firm believer in ties when it comes to ranking content management systems. Yet, this year I did just that for XOOPS and CMS Made Simple. All five content management systems that were reviewed I would consider as a candidate for a future project. None of the CMS would I consider a "last place" CMS so I refused to do so. It is also important to note that neither Drupal, Joomla!, or WordPress competed in this ranking as previous winners in this category duke it out in the Hall of Fame category.

Packt Publishing recently announced the finalists in each of the categories for their 2010 Open Awards. While award categories for content management systems are still included, this year Packt is also adding additional flavors of open source projects to be judged. The new award categories include awards for most promising open source project, e-commerce applications, graphics software, and JavaScript libraries.

The Voting for the winners in each of the categories ends on November 5, 2010.  This "public vote" will then be combined with votes by a panel of judges in each category to be announced on November 15, 2010.

This year, I will once again be participating as a judge for the Open Source CMS Award. I'll be in good company on this panel and have been a long time admirer of the work done by OpenSourceCMS's Scott Goodwin and CMS Wire's Dee-Ann LeBlanc. Karen Koombs, librarywebchic.net, is a new name to me and I'm looking forward to getting to know her better via this panel. There is always some controversy in these type awards on whether those projects awarded are really "the best" in their category. I plan to give my perspective on these awards in a separate blog post.

The following projects make up the finalist of 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. Vote for your favorite Open Source CMS here.

Finalists:

• CMS Made Simple
• MODx
• mojoPortal
• SilverStripe
• XOOPS

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. Vote for your favorite Hall of Fame CMS here.

Finalists

• Drupal
• Joomla!
• WordPress

Most Promising Open Source Project

This category is for all Open Source projects, whose first release date is less than two years from 9 August, 2010. Vote for your favorite Most Promising Open Source Project here.

Finalists

• BuddyPress
• LiveStreet CMS
• Pimcore
• Tomato CMS
• WolfCMS
  

There is a new version of mojoPortal out and about. Version 2.3.5.1 of mojoPortal offers some new features and improvements including:

• A new jQuery UI Skin - Read Joe Audette's blog post for more details on this new feature.
• Feature Setting Groups - By adding groups, one can organize the settings into logical groups that make it much easier for the user to digest because they can view one group at a time.
• User access control by roles
• Upgrades for rich text editors TinyMCE abd CKeditor
• Upgraded to the latest MySql Connector
• Updated Italian and German resources
• The Extra Skins download file has a new skin

Additional details about the new features and bug fixes for mojoPortal 2.3.5.1 can be found in the official release announcement at mojoPortal.com.

A new version of mojoPortal was released this week. This new version of the CMS, mojoPortal 2.3.4.1, includes the following significant changes:

• Support for Artisteer 2.4
• New Time Zone System
• Improvements for the forum
• Skin/Template Changes
• Webstore improvements

Details and additional changes in mojoPortal 2.3.4.1 can be found in the release announcement at mojoPortal.com.

A new version of mojoPortal was released today, version 2.3.3.9. The most significant change for this release is the introduction by the developers for their support in using html templates generated by Artisteer to make skins for mojoPortal. Two new skins made with Artisteer templates are included in this release as well.

The new version of mojoPortal also includes additional changes:

• Image Gallery now uses friendlier file names and you can optionally move existing Galleries below the /Data/Sites/[SiteID]/media folder to make it easy to browse gallery images from the editor.
• People often don't notice that the forums is integrated into site search, so a search box in the forums has been added that redirects to site search and filters for forum content.
• A search feature in the Url Manager to make it easier to find an url when you have lots of them.
• FCKeditor upgraded from 2.6.5 to 2.6.6
• Using the new jQuery 1.4.2
• Russian and Portuguese resources files have been updated

Additional information about mojoPortal 2.3.3.9 can be found at mojoPortal.com.

The latest version of mojoPortal focuses on improvements to the Newsletter as well as some upgrades for rich text editors and search engine optimizations (SEO).

mojoPortal 2.3.2.9 improves the Newsletter feature as follows:

• Users can subscribe to Newsletters without registering on the site.
• A Newsletter Sign Up feature has been implemented so that you can put it on any page(s) you like and configure it with various settings to control what is displayed.
• Each newsletter can be configured whether to opt in by default when a user registers on the site.
• Each newsletter can be configured whether to allow viewing previous editions as a web page. If your newsletter has compelling content, browsing previous newsletters may encourage more subscriptions.
• A progress bar so you can monitor progress as the newsletter is sent to the list.
  

Packt Publishing announced today the winner of their 2009 Best Open Source Other CMS Award. Using the word "Other" is Packt's way of saying non-PHP content management system. For the second straight year the winner for Best Open Source Other CMS is Plone.

Since the introduction of this category in 2007, Plone has consistently featured among the top three, having won it in 2008. In another close contest, dotCMS had to settle for the first runner up position, finishing ahead of mojoPortal in the second runner spot.

So far, Packt has not given many details as to why the judges selected Plone over the remaining non-PHP finalists. I do know that last year, the judges praised "the ecosystem that is developing around Python and Zope is encouraging" for which supports Python. We'll add to this article if additional details are made public by Packt or the judges themselves. 

Perhaps there is very little surprise to also see dotCMS and mojoPortal listed within the the top three CMS in this category. However, I'm surprised that we don't see a mention of DotNetNuke as a winner in this category. In a recent review of DotNetNuke, I found the CMS to be much improved from previous years and doing a lot of the right things in the area of usability.

Update: Judge Stoyan Stefanov has posted his notes from his review of the five finalists in this categegory: http://www.phpied.com/open-source-cms-aw...

Although you wouldn't expect an application with the version number of 2.3.1.5 to contain anything but bug fixes, in the world of mojoPortal almost every release contains new features for the CMS. mojoPortal 2.3.1.5 is no different with a number of changes centered around rich text editors (WYSIWYG). TinyMCE has replaced FCKeditor as mojoPortal's primary text editor.

Tiny MCE Editor Rises To The Top

For a long time now the FCKeditor has been the best editor available out of the box in mojoPortal. It was the only one with the ability to browse and upload images and files, it was the only one with integration for our Content Template System and Content Style System, and it was the only one with a spelling checker. Not anymore! I had not upgraded the Tiny MCE editor in a long time, I had tried to once and it broke and I was busy so I reverted to the working version. But recently we've been having some issues with FCKeditor so I decided to give the Tiny MCE upgrade another try.

Joe Audette, mojoPortal developer, writes that FCKeditor fans shouldn't feel like they're being left behind. mojoPortal also supports the CKEditor. The makers of FCKeditor realizing that the code base for their RTE was more than six years old and needing improvements began CKEditor as its replacement. CKEditor focuses on features such as accessibility and performance improvements that weren't quite there for FCKeditor.

Besides changes for TinyMCE and CKEditor, mojoPortal 2.3.1.5 also includes these enhancements:

• New Permissions Tab in site settings
• NeatUpload 1.3.18 upgrade
• The DOCTYPE changed to Html 5 for included skins
• The default 90 days allowed to comment on a new post post can be changed
• Removed Site Office
• New translations include Hebrew and Polish. The German translation has been updated.