Bryan Ruby

TYPO3 has announced the discontinuation of TYPO3 CMS 4.7 and TYPO3 CMS 6.1. Both versions reached their end of life in in October 2014. Their latest versions are 4.7.20 and 6.1.12 which were released two weeks ago mark the last ones in these branches.

Jahia Solutions Group, the vendor behind the leading open source "Digital Industrialization" platform, announced today that Kevin Cochrane has joined Jahia’s Board. Cochrane is a former marketing executive for both Adobe and OpenText. As a board member, Cochrane is expected to provide strategic support to the company he recognizes as a major disruptor in the market.

Over the years, I've made it an unwritten policy not to sensationalize bug fixes and security vulnerabilities in content management systems. While there may be great interest in such stories, I believe such stories have a tendency to cause more harm than good. When sensationalized, such articles tend to cause customers to address security concerns with emotion instead of logic which is never a good thing. So, when the security vulnerability known as "Drupageddon" broke and Drupal developer Bevan Rudge posted "Your Drupal website has a backdoor", I knew this story was going to eventually reach mainstream media.

Moxie Software recently unveiled a new mobile chat solution and their press relations folks have been in full gear briefing tech blogs on the benefits of the new software. That's alright because besides the marketing aspects they're also throwing some interesting information our way. A new study commissioned by the Moxie reveals 62% of survey participants expect live chat to be available on mobile devices, and 82% would use it. There are a lot of interesting stats in the study that impact the role live chat may have in the customer experience and surprisingly the numbers reveal chat may have more influence on sales than social media does.

This week, the Board of Directors for the Content Management Professionals announced the ending of CM Pros. The decision to close down the organization was evidently made by the Board in Summer 2014.

A couple years ago I joined CM Pros, paid for membership, never got billed, and never heard back from the organization. Knowing that some good people were involved in the organization told me that they were facing an uphill battle. The battle for an organization to have identity and play a role in the industry they wish to advocate.

Acquia has announced the appointment of Christopher Stone as senior vice president of products and development. Stone has more than 30 years of experience in software development and pioneering open source solutions for the enterprise. Stone will be responsible for engineering, DevOps, and product management of the Acquia Platform, helping lead the expansion of the company’s suite of SaaS solutions for building and managing integrated digital experiences.

Last week, Sitecore announced Sitecore 8, the next version of its Sitecore Experience Platform. Over the past few years, Sitecore and almost every other CMS provider has focused on providing marketers and other users with as many analytic tools as possible. In their campaign for this new version, Sitecore has stated a belief that when it comes to raw numbers, enough is enough. It's time to return the focus back onto the art of marketing.

Earlier this week, I questioned whether social media could replace my need to blog. In my article, I mentioned that Google+ and LinkedIn as social network platforms are able to provide near blog-like functions. Since that article posted, I've already heard comments from my Facebook and Twitter friends that no one uses Google+. I respectfully disagree with my friends. While people like to call Google+ a ghost town the numbers would indicate otherwise.

A few months ago, I had a problem. After eight years of non-stop writing, I found myself exhausted of all enthusiasm to blog. Let me tell you, it's a sad day in Web City when an advocate for content management systems has no real desire to author new content. I was also questioning in this age of "always on" social media whether the traditional blog had lost value not only to me but my readers. If content is no longer king, why should I spend so much effort creating new content? So as summer approached, I decided to take a break from blogging.

This week, Kentico Software announced the release of Kentico 8.1. According to the company, Kentico 8.1 features a variety of new enhancements that bring greater website performance and ease of use to the digital marketing activities of today’s digital agencies and professional marketers. With new “Buy X, get Y” discount capabilities, Kentico 8.1 promises to offer customers new ways to maximize their online sales.