Not long ago, Acquia announced a new product/service called Drupal Gardens. In the announcement, Dries Buytaert gave his description of Drupal Gardens.
For those who have not heard about Acquia Gardens, this product will provide an easy on-ramp for people to experience the awesome power of Drupal without having to worry about installation, hosting and upgrading. Think of it as Wordpress.com or Ning for Drupal. Think of it as 'Drupal as a service'.
Wordpress users have been encouraged to update to to the latest version of Wordpress, currently at 2.8.4. It appears there is a nasty worm going around attacking Wordpress sites.
Several weeks ago, I mentioned the Wordpress for BlackBerry client which allows you to submit articles to your WordPress blog remotely. Recently, CMS Report, was pointed to a Joomla! client for the iPhone, the J Admin Mobile! application.
Similar to Wordpress for BlackBerry, J Admin Mobile! (JAM!) allows you to manage many of the core features of your Joomla! 1.5 site remotely. We can only conclude that the smarter and more Web capable our phones become the more established this trend of moving the CMS client over to mobile devices will become.
JAM! 1.4.0 was recently submitted to the Apple App store with the developers expecting to see the updated version available soon. Some of the new features in JAM! 1.4.0 include:
During the past year, I've posted various articles on social publishing systems. Open source content management systems such as Drupal, Movable Type, and WordPress have done a lot in the past year to better incorporate social media features into their web applications. I think the topic of social publishing will continue to be an interesting topic as the CMS continues to evolve in order to stay current with the current social tech trends.
The following is a WordPress.TV video of Andy Peatling, Automattic, talking about the WordPress social networking system BuddyPress at WordCamp Montreal. In the video Peatling gives practical advice for people considering WordPress/BuddyPress as a platform.
The Blog Herald has posted an interesting piece on an unannounced change in WordPress 2.8. Basically, Wordpress no longer notifies other servers of your updated articles at the same time you post those articles.
Web design company pingVision won six Telly Awards for this 57 second spot answering the question, "What is Drupal?". The Telly Awards honor the very best local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions, and work created for the Web. This is the 30th year for the Telly Awards.
Barrie North has a problem. He can't stop talking about his favorite content management system, Joomla!. So last year, he decided to write his own Joomla book titled appropriately, Joomla! 1.5: A User's Guide. The problem is that people like North are never willing to let that be enough. As Joomla! 1.5 continues to evolve since its initial release so too has North's offerings. Two weeks ago North's publisher, Prentice Hall, sent me a second edition of Joomla! 1.5 as well a new video from their LiveLessons series, Fundamentals of Joomla!. Unlike last year, I decided to actually review the book as well as watch the video.
Let me first say, I'm a reluctant book reviewer. There is nothing that weighs on a person's busy day than having publishers send me a steady stream of content management related books for review. Eventually, those technical books begin stacking up on my desk and secretly I know half of those books aren't worth my time or your money. Luckily for all of us, North's Joomla 1.5 book and Fundamentals of Joomla! video are well worth the purchase. I can't help but give two thumbs up to both North's updated Joomla! 1.5 book and new video.
Kieran Lal, Acquia, recently had the opportunity to give a presentation on Drupal in front of an information system's course at San Francisco State College. It's a good video for anyone that wants to learn everything they possibly can about Drupal and given only one hour to do so. I would have loved to seen more questions and answers on the video as Kieran is one of those people that responds very well when people present him with good questions and good ideas.
WordPress 2.8, currently under development as a beta, is expected to be completed and released in a week or two. Until then, you can check out some of the documentation at wordpress.org to find all of the new goodies being added to this latest version of the blogging software.
Some of the highlights for WordPress 2.8 include: