Michael Beck

Member for

12 years 7 months
About

A self-confessed Open Source addict. Before moving to the PHP world, Michael was heavily involved in Delphi, starting the most popular Open Source component library for Delphi: the JEDI VCL. He is now an “Evangelist in Residence” at XOOPS Project, helping to coordinate it, and promoting it wherever he can.

Latest Posts

XOOPS Project wins SourceForge award and releases XOOPS 2.6.0 Alpha 1

After winning the “Project of the Month” Award in August at SourceForge, world’s largest repository of OpenSource projects, the XOOPS Project is proud to present XOOPS 2.6.0 Alpha 1.

This is a brand new XOOPS series, with several major changes and enhancements to the Core. You can review the current XOOPS 2.6.0 Roadmap to find out additional information.

The main goal of the 2.6 series is to update the XOOPS Core and all classes to PHP 5.4, refactor old legacy code, and separate all HTML code from PHP.

XOOPS 2.5.4 Final Released

The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce that a new version, XOOPS 2.5.4 Final, is available for download and testing. In addition libraries have been updated to their latest versions:

  • phpMailer 5.1
  • TinyMCE 3.4.6
  • jQuery 1.6.4
  • jQueryUI 1.8.16
 
The major focus of this release is on updating all Core modules (PM, Profile, Protector) to our new ModuleAdmin GUI, so all of them have a consistent "look & feel": 
 
XOOPS Module GUI
 
The new Module GUI will be the official GUI for all modules supported by XOOPS, and  will drive:
 
  • Increased productivity
  • Decreased training and support costs
  • Reduced development time and costs
  • Reduced maintenance costs
  • Increased customer satisfaction
 
As next step, we'll be working on a "Basic Module Pack", which will contain the most popular XOOPS module in one user-friendly package, all with the new Module GUI. 

XOOPS 2.5.2 RC released

The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce that a new version, XOOPS 2.5.2 RC, is available for download.

This release is focused on fixing bugs from previous versions and on security. As a result, over 60 bugs have been fixed, as well as several new enhancements have been added, among them:

  • improved Captcha system
  • improved Protector module with links to stopforumspam 
  • improved PM (private messaging) module

For more info and download please click here

XOOPS Logo

XOOPS 2.5.0 Final Has Been Released

The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce that a new stable version of the Top 5 Finalist of 2010 Packt Open Source CMS - XOOPS 2.5.0 Final is available for download.

The XOOPS 2.5.0 release is a major redesign of the System Module which has been AJAX-ed with jQuery. Some of the new features are truly amazing, like the visual placement of blocks, and we're sure that the System Admins will love them

Other major improvements/additions include:

  • Help System for Admin and modules
  • MySQL Dump in Maintenance
  • New Redirect messaging
  • Column sorting in tables
  • Smarty plugin for icon pack
  • Smarty plugin for breadcrumb navigation
  • jQuery plugins for display popup or manage drag & drop
  • File Manager (Plugin)
  • Maintenance with Cache Clean-up, and Tables Maintenance
  • Visual module ordering with drag & drop
  • Visual block placement with drag & drop
  • Refactor all PHP code for use XOOPS API
  • Use template in the same way that front user, admin side for module can call a main template define in xoops_version.php
  • Allow override of template in admin theme like frontend if we set template in ADMIN_THEME
  • Manage editor for blocks, comments and for all module if module developper want to use it activate or deactivate system section
  • Choose number of line for admin section
  • Display or hide tips

For more info and download please click here

New Xoops Engine (X3) Goes Zend Framework

We are very pleased to present you X3, the new Xoops Engine for the next generation of XOOPS powered web application development.

XOOPS LogoThis new Xoops Engine was long time in coming. During that time, we went through different phases of trials and errors, but we believe that we finally have the best combination of features and technologies to strategically position XOOPS as one of the top Web Application Platform solutions.

The new Xoops Engine has been re-designed from the ground up to take advantages of third-party frameworks like Zend Framework and Smarty 3.

Why did we rewrite XOOPS?

XOOPS is one of the most successful Open Source CMS and portal solutions, constantly placing in top places in various competitions, and receiving various awards. But it is showing signs of aging, that would require major rewrites of the Core.

In order to keep us focused on creating a flexible and extensible development engine for developers and a high performance application platform for end users, the development team has decided to use industry-standard frameworks. By doing so, we can focus our limited resources on aspects that make XOOPS unique and special, while leaving standard functionality to be addressed by off-the-shelf frameworks. This way we can take advantage of latest internet developments already included in those frameworks - it's like getting suddenly a whole new team of some of the best and brightest PHP and RIA programmers joining XOOPS!

After much research, we've selected a couple of frameworks at this stage:

PHP: Zend Framework
Template: Smarty 3
JavaScript: jQuery

Meanwhile the multi-engine mechanism of the Xoops Engine will ensure the possibility of adopting other excellent frameworks in the future, like Yii Framework, Dojo Toolkit, etc.

XOOPS: the exclusive CMS for Government of Paraná in Brazil

On March 24th, the new portal of Government of Paraná went live. This new communication tool was presented at the weekly meeting of the School of Government by the President of the Company Informática do Paraná (Celepar), Mr. Vanderlei Iensen.

Among the main features of the new website is the color-based visual model to differentiate between the content for its relevance and ease of maintenance, and statewide access to government services.