CMS Report's Top Ten Content Management Stories of 2011

When I read the stories we post here at CMS Report, I am reminded how quickly the CMS market continues to evolve and mature. Every year, I worry that there is nothing "new" to write about in this information system niche only to have the developer, user, or owner of a CMS push another new story idea toward my screen. This time around when looking for the top ten content management stories of the year, I concluded we didn't have ten great CMS stories for 2011. Instead, I found more than two dozen great CMS stories for 2011.

Below are the top ten stories of 2011 that were posted here at CMSReport.com. The stories in this list are ranked based on the rate they were viewed since they first appeared at CMSReport.com.

Packt announce Finalists for 2011 Open Source Awards

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.

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.

Five Open Source CMS Leaders

One of the coolest things about CMS Expo 2011 was the opportunity to see five open source CMS "founders" together in one room. On the conference stage were Dries Buytaert (Drupal), Andrew Eddie (Joomla), Sigurd Magnusson (SilverStripe), Shaun Walker (DotNetNuke), and Per Ploug-Hansen (Umbraco).

Most people in the content management world will acknowledge that seeing these five guys together in the same room is a rare event. What you may not know is that for many of these open source leaders this event was the first time they have ever met one another.

We tend to focus so much of our time on our own projects that we lose sight of what is taking place outside of our own bubble. The benefits of open source projects getting to know one another better has me thinking a lot lately about the "The Strength of Weak Ties" and the importance of getting to know your competition.

CMS Expo 2011: Founders' Panel from SilverStripe on Vimeo.

The sound quality in the above video could be improved but I think we're just lucky enough to have the video. I'm not aware of any "official video" being taken by the conference organizers so we're fortunate the SilverStripe folks who shot this video were thinking ahead.

CMS Expo: The Right CMS For Government

The use of content management systems in government is a personal and work interest of mine, so this is a panel that I'm looking forward to hear from the speakers. There is actually a lot of diversity in what governments need their CMS to do and I'm curious to see how well the panel handles that diversity. I'm expecting Tony White, Ars Logica, to be the moderator for this panel.

Leaders from Featured CMSes will be on-hand during this panel discussion to participate in a live analysis of the CMSes, asking probing questions of each, to determine how their represented Content Management System (and supporting community and infrastructure) best meets the demands of today's governmental needs, whether at a municipal, state or federal level.

Represented on this panel are: Lee Middleton (SilverStripe), Shaun Walker (DotNetNuke), Brian Colhounyan (TERMINALFOUR), Benjamin Mack (TYPO3), Ken Wasetis (Plone), Jeff Kline (Accrisoft), and Casey Neehouse (Umbraco). The following questions were asked either by the moderator, Tony White, or audience members. The panels' answers to these questions are paraphrased.

What features in your CMS make it a good choice for government?

Plone - Government is already actively using Plone. Plone can address complex and flexible workflow. Import/export capability for security purposes.
TYPO3 - Addresses accessibility (Section 508 in US government).
Umbraco - Lots of state agencies are switching to .Net CMS. Umbraco and Dotnetnuke are .Net CMS. Section 508 compliance.
Accrisoft - Local government is the specific client for this company...delivering a turnkey solution.
TERMINALFOUR - The UN is a client. Multi-language is why the UN chose TERMINALFOUR for their CMS.
SilverStripe - SilverStripe sees government as partners and have built a very robust product that can be used by government.
DotNetNuke - Microsoft has helped partner with DotNetNuke which has been a positive in introducing DNN and open source to all level of governments.

CMS Expo: SilverStripe KickStart on Content

I'm sitting on a session that is geared toward content users working with SilverStripe. John Gregg, SilverStripe Training and Quality Manager, is heading this session. There isn't much new for me in this session, but it has been awhile since I looked at the SilverStripe author user interface. At times, I have considered SilverStripe's UI better than WordPress and thought this session would be a good chance to take a fresh look at the interface/workflow.

This session explains how simple it is to create content for your SilverStripe site. Learn how easy it is for content authors to create various page types, add structure, and upload files or images.
With WYSIWYG and drag & drop functions, site editors have full control over the way they want their content to look without needing to know HTML.
Images and files can be added through a drag & drop interface, and forms, subsites, permissions, and workflow allow the system to be used in large organizations.

John Gregg presenting SilverStripe at CMS Expo 2011

Sigurd Magnusson is in the room and he is talking about the upcoming SilverStripe 3.0. Some new things are being added for content authors that has me interested in taking a look at the preview that release. We have the potential of doing an interview with Sigurd and should be able to post the video next week.

2011 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference

On May 2nd, 3rd, and 4th the CMS Association will be hosting the 2011 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference in Chicago. This three jam-packed days conference will give you a chance to immerse yourself in that which is relevant in the CMS world today for you and for your business. At CMS Expo you can expect to get the facts, find the support, and make the contacts to help your business succeed.

This year, CMS Expo will be featuring some of your favorite content management systems including Drupal, Joomla!, DotNetNuke, SilverStripe, and Umbraco. The 2011 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference will feature over ninety information-packed CMS training sessions. Created for Web Designers, Developers and Businesspeople, CMS Expo is the place to be for the most relevant, timely and actionable information in the fast-growth CMS Sector.

Attendees will learn the latest web skills, while making highly valuable business connections, all under one roof. Over eighty of the world’s top CMS instructors will share their knowledge and insights. CMS Expo will feature Learning Tracks on Business, Technical & Creative Foundations (such as PHP, MySQL, CSS, Web Design and more), plus their "Evaluation Track" is dedicated toward providing the perfect atmosphere to help participants compare CMSs, apps and add-ons/modules.

CMS Report is proud to be a Media Partner for the 2011 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference in Chicago. We consider this the must go-to conference of the year for fans of content management systems and those that want to stay relevant in this industry. We encourage you to click here for pricing & registration information.

SilverStripe community begins work on SilverStripe CMS v3.0

The SilverStripe open source community recently posted their roadmap to SilverStripe CMS v3.0. Version 3.0 represents a major year-long development project and is expected to be a substantial improvement over the current v2.4.x series. With an aggressive schedule, a stable version of SilverStripe CMS v3.0 is expected to be available by the end of 2011.

The roadmap introduces three major goals of SilverStripe CMS v3.0:

Better technical platform. Sapphire, the underlying programming framework, will evolve from an integral part of SilverStripe CMS, into a product that can stand on its own feet. In forming this delineation, improvements will be made throughout the core, including the ORM, data integrity, templating language, and performance. Sapphire v3.0 will consequently enable developers to make richer and more complex web applications and websites.
Better user experience for content authors. A refresh of the content authoring environment will bring even better usability and productivity. The interface will transition to jQuery, making the system capable of much greater customization. Managing images, embedding videos, and previewing work in progress will all be made easier. Images and documents will be able to versioned and secured in the same way pages can currently be.
Improved support for the social and mobile web. SilverStripe's existing templating language and support for web services already provide a foundation for the two top themes in the web currently: social media and mobile devices. With SilverStripe CMS v3.0, the developers intend to improve the core to make development for both easier and richer.

SilverStripe's Business Relationship Manager, Sigurd Magnusson, sent CMS Report an email about this new roadmap for version 3.0 and how developers can help get involved. "Note at this stage", said Magnusson, "the main thing we want people to do, is join our development mailing list so they people can be involved in the decisions and contribute to the development of this new major release, due late 2011". The official mailing list for the development of SilverStripe CMS 3.0 can be found at Google Groups.

Those interested in additional information regarding SilverStripe CMS v3.0 are encouraged to take a look at the SilverStripe 3.0 Planning page. A video recording of the first public presentation on SilverStripe CMS v3.0 is posted below the fold and slides from the meeting are also available.

Judging Five Open Source Content Management Systems

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:

SilverStripe
mojoPortal
MODx
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.

CMS Report's Top Ten Content Management Stories of 2010

What a great year 2010 was for content management. Open source CMS projects seemed to have grown up this year while proprietary systems appeared to continue in their evolution. While social publishing systems may not have conquered the traditional content management system, the CMS definitely took notice by integrating as many social media features developers could come up with.

Below are the top ten stories of 2010 that were posted here at CMSReport.com. The stories in this list were ranked by the number of views per month since the articles first appeared at CMS Report.

Top Ten Content Management Stories of 2010

As you can see, stories on Drupal, Joomla!, Sharepoint, SilverStripe, and MODx brought a lot of visitors to the site. Not all the stories listed above would have been one of the ten I would have personally picked, but I'll respect the numbers behind their ranking. I personally, don't like "versus" articles yet readers seemed to flock those articles. Unfortunately quality of writing doesn't appear to always matter as there were some very well written articles we posted in 2010 that didn't make this list.

The year 2011 will undoubtedly bring change and new stories to the world of content management systems. I think the year will also be a year of decision for the direction we take CMSReport.com. I feel as if this site of ours is stuck somewhere between our roots as a niche blog and a potentially popular CMS news site. I'm hoping we make some changes in the new year that all our readers can appreciate and value.

CMS Made Simple Wins the 2010 Open Source CMS Award

CMS Made Simple is the winner in Packt Publishing's Open Source CMS Award category of the 2010 Open Source Awards. CMS Made Simple has won this Award for the first time in the past five years, having been a presence in the Award since 2007. Packt also announced SilverStripe as first runner up with MODx in the second runners up position.

I had the privilege of sitting as a judge in this year's Open Source CMS Award category. My vote was a little different from the official award ranking where I would have placed mojoPortal, another 2010 award finalist, in a runnerup position. I may have been the only judge that may have ranked mojoPortal in the top three positions. As I've done similarly in past years, in the near future I'll post how I judged the finalists in this category. However, it is now CMS Made Simple's well deserved moment and I won't take the spotlight away from them with my personal ramblings.

Attached below is the official press release I received from Packt Publishing announcing CMS Made Simple as the winner of the Open Source CMS Award. Congratulations to all those involved int he development and support of this great open source CMS.

SilverStripe CMS becomes the first Microsoft Certified open source web app

Yesterday, I received an email from SilverStripe Co-Founder, Sigurd Magnusson. For all the years I have been corresponding with Sigurd, I don't think I've ever seen him as excited as he was this time in breaking the news. SilverStripe, a web development company delivering open source content management systems (CMS) has achieved Certification for Windows Server 2008 R2 for version 2.4.0 of their flagship product, SilverStripe CMS. This is a world first, as the software is the only truly open source web application to achieve certification on the Windows platform.

What is a little different about this story is that it is not only SilverStripe's press relations people making a big deal about this story. Microsoft is making a big deal about the accomplishments of SilverStripe. Andrew Gordan, Microsoft's New Zealand’s Platform Strategy Manager writes:

A large amount of the innovation in the software world is happening on the web and in the cloud, and in addition to that, we are seeing increased awareness and acceptance of open source software on the Microsoft Windows platforms.

Microsoft's Certified for Windows programs are well known for indicating software and hardware products that have been thoroughly tested to work well on Microsoft Windows and as of today, SilverStripe CMS is the first Open Source web application to complete the comprehensive testing necessary to achieve "Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2" status.

In his own blog post, Sigurd mentions that the certification for SilverStripe has been a long but rewarding road. A large proportion of the SilverStirpe's community and clients use Microsoft servers, databases, and other technology. Over the past three years there an effort has been made for the SilverStripe CMS to work with Microsoft's operating system, web servers, and SQL Server database product.

Finalists in Packt's 2010 Open Source Awards announced

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:

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

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

SilverStripe 2.4.2 Released

SilverStripe released its second update to the 2.4 codebase. SilverStripe 2.4.2 addresses two potential security vulnerabilities and a number of additional bug fixes. However, this version also contains some improvements also worth mentioning.

SilverStripe 2.4.2 contains some significant improvements for supporting SilverStripe on Windows.

SilverStripe 2.4.2 offers increased confidence over past versions for running our software on Windows OS when using SQL Server as the database. Previously, you had to run SilverStripe on Linux for all unit tests to pass. As a result of fixing bugs and unit tests, all SilverStripe unit tests now pass when running on Windows. The work includes fixing full-text search for the SQL Server database module, fixing windows file path issues along with numerous other bug fixes for the Windows platform done in 2.4.0 and 2.4.1.

Additional improvements in SilverStripe 2.4.2 include:

Other minor improvements

Allows Apache to provide better error pages
Improved unit testing reports
Fixed the installer logic for SQLite database

SilverStripe 2.4.x is the recommended version of SilverStripe CMS to use on production websites. The latest version of SilverStripe can be downloaded from SilverStipe.org. For additional information on SilverStripe 2.4.2, please see the original release announcement.

SilverStripe 2.4 moves a significant step forward

SilverStripe 2.4 was released this week. According to Brian Calhoun, SilverStripe CEO, this release is an important milestone for the open source CMS.

We're excited to tell you that we just released SilverStripe version 2.4! This is a major new release and an important milestone for the SilverStripe community, the open source project, and our company.

SilverStripe 2.4 is the culmination of over a year's worth of development. We fixed 391 tickets and had over 1,400 changelog entries. A large number of the patches that went into 2.4 have come from you, the community, and we're especially happy that there's been increasing community involvement.

Significant new features in SilverStripe 2.4 include:

Hierarchical URLs (Yes, I too am surprised that this wasn't a feature already in SilverStripe)
Microsoft SQL Server database support
PostgreSQL database support
Performance and memory use optimizations - the CMS backend interface for the "Site Content" section easily scales to well over 10,000 pages
Introduction of user roles which make it easier to manage more complex security configurations
More secure against brute force login attempts
Broken internal links auditing via the WYSIWYG editor

Additional information about this latest version of SilverStripe can be found on the official announcement at SilverStripe.org.

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