"There are people who can call a blog as their business. In this case, their revenue is mainly from ad sales on their blog. But, that is not a very sustainable or long term business approach you should have. Your online business must solve a person’s problem."
- Marieke Hensel, Why Blogging is Not a Viable Business Mode", Branding Personality, January 30, 2012
With a smile on his face, Scott Liewehr sent me a tweet the other day letting me know that he briefly plugged my name while co-hosting CMS-Connected. CMS-Connected is a 60-minute monthly news show, streamed live on the TPN Network with a focus on the web content management industry and includes CMS related news and commentary from leading CMS expert analysts and participating guests. It's a very good video production and well worth your viewing time if you have any interest in content management.
My "plug" on CMS-Connected can be found about 41 minutes and 30 seconds into the January show, Web CMS Industry 2011 Year In Review. This video also includes host Tyler Pyburn and Seth Gottlieb as guest. The inside joke is that Scott didn't intend to mention my name, but was referring to Acquia's VP of Marketing, Bryan House. I've met Bryan a few times and lets just say he deserves better recognition than to be confused with me. Luckily, Scott caught himself and it didn't take him long to give Mr. House his proper dues.
My 1.5 seconds of fame put a smile on my face because it is a reminder to me that people with a passion for content management are drawn together for a reason. I've always said that a content management system is more than a product. If you don't get that a CMS is also about people, business, and information systems you'll never understand the power of a CMS. People like Scott Liewehr and Deane Barker get this.
As we discussed a few weeks ago, the release of Joomla 2.5 on this day was expected. Surpringly, knowing the release date seemed to make the wait longer. Without a doubt, Joomla.org will be a busy place the next few days. Joomla's marketing people tell me that Joomla! has been downloaded more than 28 million times and powers more than 1.6 million. Those are pretty significant numbers and this new version of Joomla! is expected to help continue the popularity of this open source CMS.
As I discussed in my previous articles, Joomla! for the first time includes multi-database functionality, beginning with Microsoft SQL. If you read the article, you also know that Joomla 2.5 also includes more than a dozen new features. You'll can also check out those features by going to joom.la/25features. But before you hop over to another site, you can find some additional details about Joomla 2.5 right now in this exclusive press release that we've acquired from sources secretly embedded in the Joomla! community.
Yesterday, the Argus Leader announced that they will be moving toward a subscription model for their online content. Readers no longer will be able to visit ArgusLeader.com and expect to be able to read all the content for free. I didn't visit the website too often, but I'll miss the freedom to come and go as I please without being an online subscriber.
By now, most of us and have seen this paywall subscription model being offered by various news sources. Until recently, subscriptions were required from some larger print publications but rarely were part of the local or regional online news ecosystem. When a paper from a relatively small city such as Sioux Falls, SD moves in this direction it isn't difficult to acknowledge this as the trend we'll be seeing followed by more newspapers in the coming years. The move toward a subscription model was inevitable, as research as shown time and time again that publications haven't seen the same revenue through online advertisement as they once did in the print media world of yesterday.
Revenue from online ads for niche sites like mine that have little overhead is enough. But real publications producing high quality content on a wider scope have genuine revenue concerns when providing you their content. Randell Beck of the Argus Leader acknowledged this in Sunday's edition of this paper.
I'm a huge fan of eGovernment and Government 2.0 initiatives. A few years ago we started seeing government sites adopting open data initiatives and adding features that allowed the public to provide more feedback to the government that served them. Changes such as these are good initiatives by governments as they continue their evolution into the digital age. Recently, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts redesigned their official website, Mass.gov, using the Percussion CM System.
Before I begin, let me confess that I don't know much about Percussion Software beyond what I read in their press releases. In fact, you'll find that some of the information here came straight out of one of their press releases and you'll want to continue your research beyond what you read here. However, personal experience has shown me that any redesign work done with government websites is hard work with my hurdles to cross. So after I took a look at the Mass.gov site, it didn't take much arm twisting from Percussion's marketing people to go beyond my comfort level and talk about a product I really should know a whole lot more about.
A few days ago, the Liferay product and engineering teams announced the release of Liferay Portal 6.1 CE. Last fall, during the Liferay West Coast Symposium, CMS Report was able to get a sneak peak of the features that Liferay Portal 6.1 had to offer. We were impressed then and we're even more impressed now with the changes that have been made since then.
Liferay Portal ships with broad product capabilities and provides more function than you would expect from a traditional portal. Besides having the capability as a web platform, Liferay Portal is also capable of supporting content and document management (including Microsoft office integration). Additional capabilities include:
Liferay issues their portal software under two licenses, an open source community edition and an enterprise edition. The Liferay community edition we're talking about in this article is specifically designated as Liferay 6.1 CE GA1. In addition to the numerous bugs that have been fixed since 6.0 GA4, many new features and improvements have gone into this release.
The release of Joomla 2.5, a popular open source content management system, is expected to occur within the next few weeks. This release gives Joomla! fans a reason to celebrate and those new to the CMS a chance to consider Joomla! for thier next project. Like clockwork, the Joomla community is preparing the way by educating the masses on the new features and enhancements included in this version. I'm not an expert on the Joomla! development process, but I'm going to do my best here in summarizing the information that I've gathered so far on Joomla 2.5.
The general availability of the official Joomla 2.5.0 release is due on January 24, 2012. Also, in case you missed it, Beta 1 of Joomla 2.5 was released just as the holidays were getting in full swing. You can also expect another beta and a release candidate from the Joomla developers between now and Release 2.5.0.
For those new to software development, the beta and release candidates of software typically is not suitable for production sites and should be used only for testing purposes. Testing the pre-release software isn't only a great way for you to get to know Joomla 2.5 better but it is also a great way to help the developers identify and fix bugs in the software.
The problem I have with top ten lists is that inevitably there is a story that should have made the list but didn't. Last week, I posted CMS Report's Top Ten Stories of 2011 and wished I could have included additional stories. The articles listed were ranked by popularity based by how many times viewed and the rate that they were viewed through the year. Popular stories do not always signify well written articles and they aren't always an indication of my personal favorites.
In case you missed these stories the first time around, below are ten additional content management articles we published in 2011. Every article deserves a second chance to be highlighted or tweeted again.
Across the globe, this was definitely another challenging year for business. Budgets are tight and more than likely the money you've set aside to advertise your business creates its own challenges. You have two choices, spend your money on an expensive advertisement campaign or spend your money wisely with banner placement at target niche websites focused on content management and website development. We, of course, hope you consider CMS Report as part of your winning ad strategy.
Our sponsors are winners in our yearbook. These are the folks that help CMSReport.com pay for the bills we receive from our hosing company and internet service provider. Sponsorship also funds the purchase of any software or hardware needed to support this site. Without sponsorship, niche sites like this one simply wouldn't be able to run debt free.
CMS Report continues to provide great content on a wide variety of content management related topics. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, you can purchase banner space at this site through BuySellAds. For those times that we have sold out on our banner space, BuySellAds does offer sponsors the ability to put themselves on a waiting list to advertise on our site when space becomes available.
CMS Report wants to thank our current sponsors for their support.
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JomSocial - JomSocial is a Joomla-based platform for building social networks and community websites with collaboration tools, Facebook-like features and more.
Sourcecoast: JBFConnect by Sourcecoast. Joomla plus Facebook - Simplifying social integration for your Joomla! site.
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A reader of CMS Report asked me to give the latest version of Foswiki some love and attention to this open source "enterprise wiki" with an article. Not a problem as this is why I'm here!
Eight months in the making, Foswiki 1.1.4 comes with some new features and more than 160 crunched bugs relative to the previous release. Here are some highlights of new features and enhancements included in this package:
Foswiki 1.1.4 is available from the download page at Foswiki.org. While you're there don't hesitate to take a look at the release notes for further details on the new features and bug fixes contained in this version of Foswiki.
[Source: Foswiki blog]
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.
As a former meteorologist, I think it goes without saying that by default I will talk about any content management system with "cumulus" in the name. In this case, I'm talking about CumulusClips, a video sharing CMS officially out of Beta and released a stable version (v.1.1).
If you are in need of sharing videos but a little uneasy with allowing someone else manage those videos then perhaps CumulusClips is your answer. Requirements for hosting CumulusClips aren't too difficult to meet although you'll want plenty of memory for all that video encoding you'll need to do for new videos uploads.
The video sharing cms CumulusClips is officially out of Beta and released a stable version (v.1.1). CumulusClips is an open source video script that allows users to create their own video website or YouTube like clone. CumulusClips has several great attributes. These include free & open source, mobile support, and automatic updates, just to name a few.
With all the hype surrounding the video recently more specifically online video this is a major break through. Users can now deploy their own branded video communities without relying on the major players like YouTube and Vimeo.
Users have been able to build their own video websites for a while now however these solutions were usually tagged with a hefty price tag (like BrightCove) or encumbered with encrypted source code like other video cms'.
To find out more about CumulusClips visit: http://cumulusclips.org
The 1994 Knight-Ridder video I attached at the bottom of this post is a fantastic reminder that the tablet predates the iPad and Android tablet by many decades. During the "hypermedia" era of the late 1980's, I can recall taking a "tech of the future" class where my professor discussed in similar detail what a tablet might look like in the future. He described a day where students would be sitting under trees reading not paper books but exactly what we know today as the digital tablet.
Believe it or not though, the origins of the tablet computer date back to the 19th century.
"The history of science and technology suggests that such absolutism on both sides of a scientific debate doesn't often lead to practical solutions."
-Daniel B. Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment
A new version of mojoPortal is out and about. The developers consider the release of mojoPortal 2.3.7.5 a "significant release with lots of new goodness". New features and improvements in this version include Windows Llive Writer support, IOS 5 support, and forum enhancements.
The following is a more detailed list of improvements in mojoPortal 2.3.7.5:
mojoPortal 2.3.7.5 is available now on mojoPortal's download page. Information on this page was provided via the official announcement.
