mojoPortal

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.