A new version of dotCMS, an open-source J2EE enterprise class web content management system, was released this week. dotCMS 1.5 incorporates web content management with CRM, eCommunication tools and ecommerce.

New features introduced in dotCMS 1.5 include:

• Content "Triggers" using JBoss Rules to allow rule based user segmentation by usage.
• Business Intelligence Reports - Integrated with Jasper Reports and iReports allow detailed and customized reporting on site usage, transactions and content activity.
• Improvements to User Search Segmentation, Permissions and Management.
• Revamped Campaign/Communication Manager.

Since dotCMS is a "new" CMS that we're focusing on, I'm needing to add some content. This was announced a couple weeks ago, but still worthy of posting if you're trying to catch up like we are on what dotCMS is all about.

dotCMS 1.5.1 released – Open Source CMS, Web CRM and eCommerce - Dotmarketing released dotCMS 1.5.1 today which provides over a 150 fixes and improvements to a feature rich, open-source J2EE enterprise class web content management system.

New features included in this version of dotCMS are:

The fun continues this week with Packt Publishing announcing another winner in their 2007 Open Source Content Management System Awards.  Packt Publishing announced MODx as the winner of the Most Promishing Open Source CMS category!

Packt can exclusively reveal that MODx has won the Most Promising Open Source Content Management System in this year's Awards. As the fourth category winner, MODx came out on top ahead of TYPOlight and dotCMS, who came equal second.

Packt's announcement has a quote from MODx's co-founder,  Ryan Thrash, stating that  they "plan to live up to the Award title, and look forward to an incredible year for MODx complete with major releases, increased scalability and functionality, and even a few interesting surprises”.

Packt's Most Promising category is a very cool one and I think of all the award categories...this is the one that is most encouraging category for a young project.  I'm in agreement with Packt Publishing's announcement that this is an "extremely competitive and high quality field". 

This is one of my first posts on dotCMS 1.5, so "long-time" dotCMS users feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong here.  Earlier this month, dotCMS 1.5 was released.  dotCMS is an open source Java based CMS geared toward toward the enterprise with Web customer resource resource management (CRM) and eCommerce, and business intelligence.

New features included in dotCMS 1.5:

• Content "Triggers" using JBoss Rules to allow rule based user segmentation by usage.
• Business Intelligence Reports - Integrated with Jasper Reports and iReports allow detailed and customized reporting on site usage, transactions and content activity.
• Improvements to User Search Segmentation, Permissions and Management.
• Revamped Campaign/Communication Manager.
• Web based communications can delivered to a segment of site visitors as a campaign.
• Updated User Interface.
• Taxonomy (Tagging) Improvements
• Quartz based job scheduler.

For the original announcement on the release of dotCMS 1.5, please visit dotCMS News.  You can also download dotCMS  via the project's download page.

On Monday, Packt Publishing announced the five finalists in each category of its 2007 Open Source Content Management System Award.  The five categories are Most Promising, Best PHP CMS, Best Other (Non-PHP) CMS, Best Social Networking CMS, and Overall Winner.  In the finals stage, the public as a whole is eligible to vote for each category through October 26th.  While that may seem like a long time for the polls to be open, I'd encourage you to vote early so that you have no excuse for why your favorite CMS didn't make it to the winners list.

Around this time last year, Packt Publishing announced the "top five" finalists for their award (no separate categories in 2006).  In 2006, those CMS projects that made it to the finalist list included Drupal, e107, Joomla, Plone, and Xoops.  When those five CMS were announced, I chose to double my efforts on covering those applications here at CMS Report.  Although the extra categories this year have brought quite a few more Open Source CMS into the foreground, I still don't see why I couldn't keep most of them on my CMS Focus radar scope.  With 16,000 people nominating their favorite CMS for this award, that amount of generated interest is hard to ignore.  Luckily, I already cover many of the CMS that did make it as a finalist...but there are still many new CMS on that list that will shake things up a bit here at CMSReport.com.