François Hollande won the presidential election in France last week, with the help of an impressive campaign and content management system SilverStripe.
Hollande’s website http://francoishollande.fr was the web-based focal point of the door to door campaign and functioned as the main communication tool throughout the whole election period. In the month before the election, the site had three million unique visitors and ranked 15th most visited information site in France.
Every year, I find it an honor when I'm asked by open source projects to announce that they have entered been accepted as mentoring organizations into Google's Summer of Code program. I'm a big advocate of college education and I also understand the importance of a summer job to keeping those college bills under control. Open source projects and the Google Summer of Code provides this opportinuty for upcoming software developers. The Summer of Code is a "global program sponsored by Google that offers post-secondary student developers ages 18 and older stipends to write code for various open source software projects".
There are several goals to the Google Summer of Code program:
The Summer of Code program provides college age students with alternatives to the typical summer employment at the local grocery store or fast food chain with an opportinity to work the code and on projects that inspires them the most. Google will provide a stipend of $5500 USD per accepted student developer, of which $5000 USD goes to the student and $500 USD goes to the mentoring organization.
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.
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:
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
