In the world of Content Management Systems, Joomla is one of the most reliable and popular CMS platforms available. Stable, immensely configurable and extensible, it's used on some of the most highly trafficked websites on the Internet today. The recent release of Joomla 1.6 Beta gives a few tantalizing peeks into what to expect when the finalized version is released later this year. Experts are anticipating that the final version will be available by late summer 2010. While we're waiting for that to happen, we can take a look at some of the most important features and improvements expected to be included.

In terms of back-end requirements, Joomla 1.6 runs on no less than MySQL 5.0.4 and PHP 5.2 on the server side of things. With all the code work that went into Joomla 1.6, it needs serious, up-to-date software to run at all. Legacy mode has also been disabled so that all extensions and applications must run on Joomla 1.6 natively. Joomla 1.6 will continue the steady progression and evolution of the popular CMS with a focus on semantic markup and capabilities that take advantage of HTML5 and CSS3, standards which are increasingly being supported by all major browsers and streamline productivity for designers and developers.

Fortunately for extension and plug-in developers, reconfiguring older programs to conform to the new Joomla 1.6 API shouldn't take a lot of work and ought to be relatively easy. They haven't completely reinvented the wheel with the latest release, so it won't take a lot of modification to bring things up to snuff. In the short term, there may be some problems upgrading, but the long-term gains are worth it. In terms of SEO for websites that are upgrading from 1.5 to the latest version, URL rewrites are one of the major aspects to look out for, bu that's a relatively minor point.

The Joomla Project has announced the release of Joomla 1.6 Beta. Designed to offer enhanced site control and a more polished user experience, Joomla 1.6 is expected to deliver a variety of new tools to improve website management and access, a more robust organizational structure for content control, and various other user-experience improvements throughout the software.

Some of the key features that will be introduced in Joomla 1.6 include:

• New Access Control System - Allows site administrators control over who can view and manage content.
• Unlimited Depth Organizational Model - Gives site administrators and content creators user-defined category levels that allow for the creation of a category tree with as many or as few levels for organizing articles and other content as needed.
• One-Click Extension Updates - Allows users to keep sites secure and controlled by simplifying the process of updating extensions.
• Semantic XHTML Layouts - Provides a better baseline for content presentation.

In addition, developers and implementers should enjoy the new ability Joomla 1.6 provides in allowing extensions to be built with granular control and permissions. This feature will make it easier to create more advanced, enterprise-focused applications and extensions for Joomla.

“With the release of 1.6, The Joomla Project is transitioning the development process to a more iterative, time-based release cycle,” said Louis Landry, a lead developer and community member of The Joomla Project. “This new approach will help streamline the production of new code and better ensure timely releases around product updates. I’m very excited about the beta release and look forward to working with the entire community as we continue to refine the system.”

Launched recently is the new .NET CMS from Media Courtyard, currently in its second beta stage and due for final release over the coming months.

What makes this .NET CMS stand out is its use of the new Microsoft Silverlight 3 plugin which gives content editors an easy to use WYSIWYG interface.

The beta version can be freely downloaded and installed on a shared server to keep costs low.  In terms of features it has all the usual CMS functionality such as page metadata, indexed search, dynamic news/rss generation, membership and a whole lot more.

The beta version and documentation can be found at www.mediacourtyard.com.

Geeklog, an open source blogging application, just went into its first beta. This release incorporates some of the work done in projects implemented during the 2008 Google Summer of Code.

New features and improvement you can expect in Geeklog 1.6.0 Beta 1 include:

• Site migration support and easier plugin installation, by Matt West
• Improved search, by Sami Barakat
• Comment moderation and editable comments, by Jared Wenerd
• A new plugin to produce proper sitemap.xml files, by mystral-kk
• Bug fixes and performance improvements

The Geeklog beta is available for download at the projects official site.