Bryan Ruby

Alkacon Software GmbH with the support of the OpenCms developer community have recently released OpenCMS 8.5. OpenCms is an enterprise geared WCM solution built in Java and XML from open source components. OpenCms 8.5 introduces a number of  modern CMS features including inline editing, CMIS, and integration with the search platform Solr. Overall, there are some very cool new features and enhancements in OpenCMS 8.5 that makes this CMS worth the effort to knowing more about it.

Some of the most significant new features of OpenCMS 8.5 include:

A few days ago, we relaunched CMS Report with a new layout and under a much different content management system than we've used in the past. This journey began more than two years ago after realizing this site needed to evolve beyond my comfort zone. After being approached by Agility nine months ago, new ideas quickly took form and I decided to host the site using Agility's Magazine Publishing Suite. We're still smoothing out the rough edges of the new site but I think we've taken some important first steps.

Two years ago I began a process to consider how best to evolve CMSReport.com beyond where it is today. I've known for some time that I needed to take some risks, get out of my comfort zone, and perhaps change how I maintain and run the site. Given the opportunity and in the spirit of taking risks I've decided to no longer run CMS Report on Drupal. That's right, after running this site on Drupal for more than six years on Drupal I've decided to use another content management system.

DotNetNuke World 2012 is fast approaching and I promised some DotNetNuke friends that that I would mention the upcoming event here on my blog. DotNetNuke World is the annual user conference specifically designed for developers, web designers, administrators, business decision makers, and end users on the DotNetNuke Platform. This year the conference will be held in Orlando, Florida on October 10th through the 12th.

Yesterday, a press release submitted by Kentico Software regarding JaxReady came across my desk. JaxReady is a smartphone app created by the City of Jacksonville to keep local residents informed in the event of a natural disaster and is built on the Kentico CMS. Over the years, I've worked with a number of emergency managers and almost everyone of them will tell you that the biggest difficulty they face as EMs is having the general public take interest in emergency preparedness well before a disaster hits. 

I spent most of the last two weeks camping and hiking in the Grand Teton National Park of northwest Wyoming. If you've never visited this national park then take my word on it that Grand Teton is one of the most beautiful places a person can visit in this world. The mountains in this place peak near 13,800 feet and rise from the valley by almost 7,000 feet. Despite the warm summer much of the United States experienced, ice glaciers can still be accessed through a number of day hikes. For anyone that loves the outdoors, this place has everything in the form of wildlife, scenery, and activities. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending from your perspective), what the Grand Teton doesn't have is good 3G or 4G cell phone coverage.

Yesterday afternoon, Christine from Igloo Software contacted me to dicuss a new version of their web-based social software geared toward business. This new release of Igloo is nicknamed Pearl. The Pearl release offers a number of new significant features including multilingual content, integrated social analytics, enhanced file sharing, and social content archving.

If you follow me on Google+ or Twitter, you likely already know that I am not a tablet fan. I know the statement is contradictory when coming from a techy person like me. I have a hard time seeing the benefit of a tablet in my day to day life. I already own a great smartphone (the Android-based Droid Razr) and I prefer the ease of a physical keyboard on my computer and notebooks when writing content is crucial. Overall, I'm just not convinced that a tablet will allow me to do anything more than what my current devices already do. Perhaps this is a sign of my age, but I lost my "wow" some time ago for new technology.

A couple days ago, the Plone community announced the release of Plone 4.2, the newest version of  their open-source content management system. Plone has nearly 340 core developers and more than 300 solution providers in 57 countries. The project has been actively developed since 2001, is available in more than 40 languages, and has one of the best security track record of any major CMS.

Call me a sucker for education, but despite the fact that CMS Report retired Moodle from our Top 30 list last year, I still insist on posting Moodle articles from time to time. The supporters and developers of Moodle have released Moodle 2.3, a new version of their open source CMS. The "CMS" in this case stands for Course Management System. In order to avoid confusing the Moodle CMS with the other type of "CMS" we typically cover here, I will continue to stick to calling Moodle a Learning Management System  (LMS) or even an LCMS.