CMS Expo 2012 coming to Chicago this May

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Submitted by Bryan on

On May 8th, 9th, and 10th, you and I have the opportunity to attend 2012 CMS Expo which is held once a year in Chicago. This event is billed as as CMS "Learning & Business" conference showcasing some of the world's leading Content Management Systems and the people who power them. Whether the CMSs featured are proprietary or open source, focused on small business or enterprise, non-profit, government or commercial applications, there’s something for everyone at CMS Expo.  

Last year, CMS Report attended the conference for the first time and we were literally blown away with the diversity of people attending the conference. Lots of people like to focus on the software and design (and that's fine), but for me content management is also about people. CMS Expo has historically been the place for CMS leaders, CMS developers, site users, and business owners to meet all under one roof. CMS Expo offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity to learn about today's leading CMSs, and get to the truth about what works, from both a vendor and a user perspective. 

2012 CMS Expo Learning and Business ConferenceThere are over a dozen content management systems that will be showcased at CMS Expo. The CMSs that we are aware of include; Joomla!, Drupal, DotNetNuke, Mura, MODX, TYPO3, Sitefinity, Wondercode, Hannon Hill (Cascade Server), Liferay, Pyro, Movable Type, and Cloud CMS. We're telling you this is the conference not only to learn more about your favorite CMS but also to possibly discover your next CMS that is right for your business.

If you plan to attend, do not forget to register for CMS Expo 2012. Registration grants you FULL ACCESS to all sessions, panels, keynotes and expo hall, so you won't miss a thing. Your ticket also includes breakfast & lunch each day, plus "endless" coffee (or tea), snacks and more, plus entry to all business & social networking events.

As with last year, CMS Report is a proud media sponsor for the 2012 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference.

For the novice: 7 Content Management Systems

A website content management system (CMS) is software used to effectively manage the content of your website. A CMS helps website administrator to ‘upload’, ‘edit’ and ‘add’ content without any knowledge of web programming. Content management systems offers a range of benefits to website administrator and due to this they are highly popular among web community.

There are many CMSs on the market but you need to select the one based on your needs. If you are going to use a CMS for the first time, we recommend you choose a user-friendly CMS that does not add any kind of complexity on your part.

What follows is a list of what I believe to be the seven best web content management systems for novices:

WordPress

If you are a small business or a blogger, WordPress is an ideal choice for you. WordPress CMS software is developed by hundreds of community members and it includes a number of themes and plug-ins for appealing and effective website design.

Joomla

Joomla CMS is widely used in web applications as well as website development. Due to its user-friendliness and flexibility, it is amongst the most popular CMS on the market today. Joomla CMS is open source software thus available for free download to all.

Drupal

Drupal is open source website CMS software and It is used to create a wide verities of sites from a small scale personal blogging websites to large-scale community websites.

Movable Type 5 features social publishing

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Submitted by Bryan on

Six Apart announced the release of Movable Type 5 this week. Traditionally a blogging application, Movable Type 5 brings new features into the Web application that evolves it into a more rounded social publishing system. This release includes two versions:

Movable Type 5 The goal of Movable Type 5 is to give businesses, organizations and individuals a single, unified software package with integrated website and blog capabilities.  It's been enhanced for the easy creation, administration and management of websites and blogs - all from a single user dashboard.

Here are some of the new and improved features in MT5:

  • A new user dashboard for both the website and blogs. This makes it easy for authors, editors, designers and other publishers to easily navigate between the two.
  • A new theme mechanism that makes it easy to apply a new theme across a website and blogs with a single click that proliferates changes throughout the published site.
  • Enhanced content management features that include revision history and new custom fields. There are five new object types for custom fields: website, blog, comment, template and asset.

Movable Type 4.32 with Zemanta

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Submitted by Bryan on

Last week, Six Apart announced the release of version Movable Type 4.32. From what I can tell the sole purpose of this release is the introduction of Zemanta, an editorial assistance tool. Zemanta looks like a great tool, but I wonder if it is enough to warrant a new software release. Either way, the announcement has me curious and perhaps I'll try out Zemanta on my own choice of CMS.

Today we're announcing a partnership with Zemanta whereby the Zemanta editorial assistance tool will recommend content to you as you write your blog posts. The tool is built in to version 4.32 of MovableType, zemanta-logo.jpgso if you are a prolific blogger who produces a lot of content on a regular basis, you'll find this feature very helpful.

Many of you have likely heard of Zemanta, and perhaps some of you already use it as a plug in to your Firefox browser or other online tools. Using Zemanta is sort of like having a content servant at your elbow suggesting ways to make what you're writing more interesting and compelling through photos, videos, related articles, and useful tags.

Need a photo to match a post you're writing? Zemanta to the rescue. Like to be reminded to tag your post so that it's search engine optimized? Zemanta will help you out. Zemanta has indexed more than a million top media sources and quality blogs, including Wikimedia Commons, Flickr and various stock photo providers to make it easier for you to create compelling posts.

"Snappy" Movable Type 4.3 is Available

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Submitted by Bryan on

This week, Matt Jacobs announced the availability of Movable Type 4.3. Jacobs calls Movable Type 4.3 "snappy" and states that this release "makes composing, publishing, and searching in Movable Type easier than ever".

Version 4.3 of this social publishing platform includes the following new features and improvements:

  • Smarter Search and Pagination - Several new ways to drill down your search (author, category and date), which lays the groundwork for the ability to paginate your index and archives. The ability to paginate comments, which will dramatically improve publish times on prolific comment threads.
  • Entry Asset Manager - Movable Type has been improved by the way it handles assets like photos, which means it's much easier to make slideshows and editing entries that use assets.
  • Summary Object Framework - This is Movable Type's first step in dramatically improving performance for larger installations.

Wordpress remains top blog platform

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Submitted by Bryan on

Royal Pingdom completed a survey looking at the top blog platforms of the top 100 blogs.  This survey mirrors other studies that I've read showing that Wordpress is king of the blog platform.

We found that Wordpress is the most-used platform among self-hosted
blogs, which perhaps isn’t a huge surprise. It has more than twice as
many blogs in the top 100 as Movable Type, the blog platform that came
in second place.

  • Wordpress is used by 27 blogs in the top 100.
  • Movable Type is used by 12 blogs in the top 100.
  • Only 8 of the top 100 blogs use a custom-made blog platform.
  • Drupal is the only general-purpose CMS with any presence worth mentioning, with 4 blogs in the top 100.

Royal Pingdom also takes a look at the role of blog services and blogging networks in the top 100 blogs.  I personally prefer to run my own Web applications instead of relying on a blogging service.  I have nothing against the blogging services, it is just that I like to be in control.  Also, there is always a question of who really owns the content of your blog when using a blog service.  If you use a blog service, be sure you always read the "terms of use".  After reading the fine print, you might be surprised who really has the final say on your blog.

Top CMS in the top 100 blog sites

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Submitted by Bryan on

CMS Wire recent took a look at Technorati's Top 100 blog sites and determined which CMS the sites were using most.  They concluded, not surprisingly, that Wordpress was the most popular CMS with 34% of the top sites using the blogging application.

Simply put, we found that WordPress dominates the list, that Movable Type comes in with a respectable second [16%], and the rest are either custom jobbies or a smattering of other platforms which are, relatively speaking, eating dust.

Probably more interesting, is that full-fledged CMS barely made a dent in the top 100 list.

Wider scope Web CMS technologies are not used much by the top blogs. Drupal scores 5 sites, with Plone used by 1. Other popular Web CMS platforms are conspicuous only by their absence.

CMS Wire isn't saying that CMS are not good for blogging.  I think what CMS Wire is observing is that when users want to only blog...they prefer to keep it simple.  Why use a CMS with more features than they possibly can use when something like Wordpress or Movable Type can do the job?  At least that is what I get from the article.

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