At the London Drupalcon 2011, Acquia announced a new set of components for its web services, which are applications, support and tools to help all Drupal developers, from novice to expert skill levels.
Acquia was founded in 2007 by Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson, and offers products and support for Drupal. It offers its network, hosting, Drupal Gardens, software, and training services.
These new tools are Insight, SEO Grader, Blitz and Drupalize.me.
Leading Drupal Firms Announce Initiative to Drive Consumer-Friendly Drupal App Development
We are extremely pleased to announce that XOOPS has received the "Best Technology Award" from the North East Asia OSS Forum for the upcoming X3 version of XOOPS, that will be officially released as Alpha version this weekend. The judges were impressed with X3 architecture, its usage of state-
of-the-art PHP libraries such as Zend Framework andSmarty 3, and the direction XOOPS is taking toward becoming a "Web Application-oriented development platform"
The Award will be presented on Thursday, Nov. 4th, in Seoul, South Korea, and Michael Beck, the project manager, will be there to receive it on behalf of XOOPS.
After that, he will travel to Beijing for a XOOPS China Community summit.
Python Testing: A new book from Packt Publishing that will help Python developers write tests for their applications using convenient tools and techniques of automated testing and test-driven development. This book allows users to explore how to make testing easier and more accurate with Python's doctest module. In addition developers will also learn how to keep their units separate and discover a simple and easy way to integrate Mocker and unittest.
There are very few shopping carts or ecommerce platforms that I'm willing to talk about on a blog for content management systems. For whatever reason, I have always had interest in the Magento Ecommerce platform. The following is a video on the features included in the Magento Enterprise Edition 1.6.
The open source Web forum application, phpBB, is available in a new version. phpBB 3.0.6 introduces not only bug fixes and stability improvements but also some major new features.
We are very pleased to announce the availability of the phpBB "Fast and Furrious" 3.0.6 package. This release fixes numerous bugs, introduces some major features, as well as improves stability and performance. Furthermore, the internal updater has been updated to detect and solve most conflicts, resulting in a reduction of necessary manual interaction by administrators.
Please note that we urge you to update. phpBB 3.0.6 fixes bugs being quite important for a smooth operation of your forums. With this release our support team will only give support for phpBB 3.0.6, updates to phpBB 3.0.6 and conversions to phpBB 3.0.6. Submissions to our trackers for older versions will not be accepted, please make sure you update/upgrade before you submit a bug report.
Some of the new features that have been implemented in phpBB 3.0.6 include:
Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development is a new book from Packt, which will help users design, develop, and deploy feature-rich PHP web applications using Zend. Written by Keith Pope, this book is an example-driven tutorial that takes readers through the process of building Model-View-Controller-based web applications. It will allow them to create a real-life storefront application from design to deployment and explore all the major aspects of the Zend Framework.
Zend is an open source, object-oriented web application framework implemented in PHP 5. It has a flexible architecture that helps build modern web applications and web services easily. It provides an easy-to-use high-quality component library that is designed to be used the way developers want, without requiring the use of the whole framework.
Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development will make it easy for developers to get started and produce a powerful and professional looking website. It covers the major Zend Framework components as well as throwing light on the best practices and design issues faced when building complex MVC applications.
Barb Mosher has written a great summary at CMS Wire on Google's new Sites API which allows content owners to move content in and out Google Sites. As Mosher points out, this new API and some additional tools will allow content owners to "pull stuff out of SharePoint and place it into Google Sites" which is sure to bring "real heat between Redmond and Mountain View" in their quest for customers.
Until now, content and data inside Google Sites stayed inside Google Sites. And there was no easy way to migrate additional content and data into it. With the introduction of the Google Sites Data API, that has changed.
The API support almost all of the functionality currently available within Google Sites including:
- Retrieve, create, modify, and delete pages and content.
- Upload/download attachments.
- Review the revision history across a site.
- Display recent user activity.
Which brings us to the point. With these new capabilities, you can now not only move data out of Google Sites, but you can move data into Google Sites and possibly out of other similar applications, like SharePoint.
Whether Google Sites and the new API will be a threat to Microsoft and SharePoint is questionable. But, once again I think these type of events emphasize that those content management systems that get the most attention from us these days are those applications that open up and work with other third party applications.
There is a reason why such topics as CMIS, open source, and API are in the spotlight with folks interested in content management. No one really wants to be stuck with a vendor that doesn't play well with others. It just strategically isn't a good idea to have your content controlled by a single vendor, so why do it? I suppose I'm rhetorically asking that question to both customers and vendors.
ComputerWorld: " HTML 5, a groundbreaking upgrade to the prominent Web presentation specification, could become a game-changer in Web application development, one that might even make obsolete such plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX."
TwiTip: "When I was new to twitter, I had no idea what I was doing — as is the case for most people when they first sign up. After I started following a few people I noticed all the different applications their Tweets were coming from: Twhirl, TweetDeck, Twittelator, Twitterific, PowerTwitter, TwitterFon, the list goes on. How do you sort through all of them and find the right application to use? Is any one of them better than the others? After trying nearly everything, I have a few ideas as to how to find the right Twitter app to suit your needs."
A recent blog post from Sarah Parez tries to answer some "want-to-know" questions on the upcoming Microsoft Office Web Applications. With software as a service becoming more popular, Google has quickly become a competitor of Microsoft's Office Suite with its Google Docs. Microsoft is aggressively fighting back by making its Office software available via the Web browser.
According to Perez's post, Microsoft's Office Web Applications will not only be available in Internet Explorer, but also Safari and Firefox. Office Web will also be compatible on the Linux and Mac platforms. Some of the specific answers Sarah Parez gives in her blog post:
Q: Do the Office Web Applications require Internet Explorer?
A: No! Office Web applications will work across multiple platforms and browsers including Safari and Firefox, too.
Q: Will the Office Web Applications work on the iPhone?
A: Yes, in the Safari web browser.
Q : Is Silverlight required in order to use the Office Web Applications?
A: No! Silverlight is not required. Using Silverlight will enhance the user experience, resulting in sharper images and improved rendering. Also, the Office Live Workspace has integrated Silverlight technology into the multi-file upload function for a better experience there, too.
Q: Will the Microsoft Office Web Applications work on Linux?
It is estimated that there are nearly 1,700 applications in the content management system (CMS) market. In an ideal world, I would love to cover all of them here at CMS Report. Since your time and my time is finite, I have instead chosen to limit the number of CMS applications focused here to no more than 30 applications. CMS Focus is meant to include today's web content management systems thus this list does change over time to stay relevant.
CMS Focus: CMS Report's List of Top 30 Web Applications
The applications listed in this section are not necessarily the most popular in content management and is not meant include everyone's requirements for a CMS. Instead the content management systems that make up this top 30 are what I consider Web content management "game changers" or "attention getters". The list does include a few enterprise content management systems, but this CMS list is geared more toward the small to medium size organizations as well as individual site owners.
TroubleshootingWiki.org is a new website designed to provide users with comprehensive, free guides on software troubleshooting. This site intends to help users eliminate the potential problems that might arise while working with various applications.
It is often difficult finding a resource that is focused on providing quality, relevant, and free information on software troubleshooting at one central location. Launched initially with over 20 tutorials covering different Content Management Systems and other software, TroubleshootingWiki.org is expected to grow into an exhaustive troubleshooting resource where users are able to add their own tips and tricks.
TroubleshootingWiki.org is part of an ongoing initiative at Packt to develop unique methods of contributing to the Open Source community. Notable other initiatives include the Wiki on Web Themes and Templates, www.ThemesWiki.org and the annual Open Source CMS Award that has a total prize package of $20,000, divided amongst winning projects. Packt also operates a unique Open Source Project Royalty Scheme, which sees them donate a percentage of their Open Source book sales directly to the projects they were written on. To date, they have donated over $100,000 to Open Source projects.
I came across another one of those "top ten" lists, this time, "Ten Reasons to choose Wordpress". Among the ten reasons to choose Wordpress were:
I've used Wordpress before and I have to say I chose it for its functionality and not whether a million zillion people used it.
I know there are people who use, join, and buy something because it is popular. However, I have thankfully never been one of those people.
"Marry technology and usability to build intuitive, easy-to-use, Ajax-driven applications that your users will appreciate."
