Bryan Ruby

Earlier this week, I announced a new site that I'm working on under the domain SocPub.com. What I didn't say in the announcement was which CMS I was going to use for the site. I also didn't say that my choice in the CMS version could be considered by some as risky. I have decided to use the alpha/beta/release candidates of Drupal 7 for the SocPub site.

ocPortal 4.3 was released this week. The new version of ocPortal introduces a number of "bug fixes, performance improvements, and usability improvements". However, ocPortal also introduces some new features to make upgrading to the new version more enticing.

The new features that have been implemented in ocPortal 4.3 include:

Last week, I announced the addition of three CMSs to CMS Focus. CMS Focus is my top 30 list of content management systems that interest me the most. Because I limit the list to only 30 CMSs, there are obviously a good number of quality Web applications that are missing from this list. A CMS that arguably should be on the list is the Kentico CMS.

Kentico's PR Manager recently sent me an email to make his case for why Kentico should be included in the CMS Focus list. I likely will not be making any new changes to my top 30 list until June, however I will definitely consider Kentico the next time I update CMS Focus.

Hi Bryan,

I remember that Kentico CMS hasn't quite made it on your CMS Focus list.

Today, I would like to briefly comment on the criteria for selecting CMS on the list you published:
 
1. First, the application has to add something I haven't seen in a CMS before.

In case of a Kentico CMS it’s a set of its features that makes it unique. There are plenty of CMS that offers source code, hundreds that have multisite and multilingual support, dozens with open and well documented API, some that are SEO friendly, few that are fully rebrandable... And now will there any remain if you add 200+ web parts and 36 modules to cover the needs for building either Corporate Web Site, E-shop, Social Network or Intranet (=simply to allow your web site to grow in any direction)?  How many CMS vendors have 7 days bug fixing policy? Highly responsive support is something hard to prove, but please go ahead and do some “Mystery Mailing”, I’m sure that our support team won’t disappoint you (evaluators have right for 10 support tickets – so really please try this).

This week we added three Web applications to our CMS Focus top 30 list.  The CMSs and ECMs listed in CMS Focus are not necessarily the most popular in content management and are not meant to meet everyone's requirements for a CMS. Instead the content management systems that make up this top 30 are what I consider content management "game changers" or "attention getters". New to CMS Focus are the following CMS/ECM: EPiServer, Umbraco, and an unknown CMS called Omeka.

Since the early days of CMSReport.com, I have been providing a list of the top 30 Web applications that interest me the most. This list is called CMS Focus. If you take a close look at this list, you will find that I currently need three additional content management systems to complete the list of thirty. Which CMS/ECM would you recommend be placed on my list?

Copyright Criminals, which airs its documentaries on PBS, has an upcoming show on the rise of sampling in hip-hop music. While, the documentary focuses on copyright laws covering music it's not too difficult to apply lessons learned for other content including text found on web sites.

A few years ago, I had developed an online store for a buddy of mine using osCommerce. I had hoped to use Joomla! or Drupal for the site but at the time wasn't satisfied with the shopping cart extensions or modules that were available for either CMS. Shortly after developing that site a new eCommerce module for Drupal became available called Ubercart. I've never had taken on the task of building another online store (it was a lot of work) but I've always kept my eye on Ubercart just to stay informed.

Alfresco Software today announced the availability of Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.2, the latest version of its enterprise content management (ECM) product. With this release, Alfresco enables cloud-based deployments, streamlines email management and archiving and enhances team-based content collaboration. In addition, the Alfresco Enterprise 3.2 Records Management module is the only supported open source solution to have been certified to the 5015.02 standard.

This release builds on Alfresco’s ability to deliver low-cost, innovative and interoperable open source ECM solutions. New features and benefits included in Alfresco Enterprise 3.2 are listed below.

Enables efficient and easy ECM in the cloud:

• Multi-Tenancy – Alfresco natively supports multi-tenancy, a critical component of multi-company cloud implementations as it maximizes use of hardware and simplifies administration of multiple instances of Alfresco.
• Cloud-deployable – Alfresco now supports multiple deployment options from traditional on-premise to full cloud deployment ranging from a simple AMI to a fully-configured, fault-tolerant and load-balanced Alfresco cluster.
  

At the start of every year, I like to resolve to read a number of IT, CMS, and business related books. The Internet is a good resource, but perhaps because I'm too old school I still like to learn a thing or two from a book. So far I have three books on my reading list for 2010.

I plan to review each of these books at a later date but since I'm a slow reader I thought I'd share them now. Links to the books go to Amazon for a possible purchase are our available in CMS Report's Amazon store.

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 5.01 - commercial license
• Movable Type Open Source 5.01 - open source license

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.