2012 may indeed be the “Year of Web Content.” Actually, so was 2011, 2010, 2009…  But this article on the Forbes Marketwatch blog describes how some big brands are attacking content marketing and content curation to help fulfill their brand promise.

Amongst content management insiders, there has been an ongoing acronym war over what the technology systems should be called that help companies manage their content online -- which quite frankly, end users care very little about.

With a smile on his face, Scott Liewehr sent me a tweet the other day letting me know that he briefly plugged my name while co-hosting CMS-Connected. CMS-Connected is a 60-minute monthly news show, streamed live on the TPN Network with a focus on the web content management industry and includes CMS related news and commentary from leading CMS expert analysts and participating guests. It's a very good video production and well worth your viewing time if you have any interest in content management.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, the release of Joomla 2.5 on this day was expected.  Surpringly, knowing the release date seemed to make the wait longer. Without a doubt, Joomla.org will be a busy place the next few days. Joomla's marketing people tell me that Joomla! has been downloaded more than 28 million times and powers more than 1.6 million. Those are pretty significant numbers and this new version of Joomla! is expected to help continue the popularity of this open source CMS.

As I discussed in my previous articles, Joomla! for the first time includes multi-database functionality, beginning with Microsoft SQL. If you read the article, you also know that Joomla 2.5 also includes more than a dozen new features. You'll can also check out those features by going to https://www.joomla.org/core-features.html . But before you hop over to another site, you can find some additional details about Joomla 2.5 right now in this exclusive press release that we've acquired from sources secretly embedded in the Joomla! community.

Yesterday, the Argus Leader announced that they will be moving toward a subscription model for their online content. Readers no longer will be able to visit ArgusLeader.com and expect to be able to read all the content for free. I didn't visit the website too often, but I'll miss the freedom to come and go as I please without being an online subscriber.

I'm a huge fan of eGovernment and Government 2.0 initiatives. A few years ago we started seeing government sites adopting open data initiatives and adding features that allowed the public to provide more feedback to the government that served them. Changes such as these are good initiatives by governments as they continue their evolution into the digital age. Recently, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts redesigned their official website, Mass.gov, using the Percussion CM System.

There has certainly been a lot of debate about Web Experience Management. Some analysts like Janus Boye have called it "meaningless vendor jargon". Some others like Scott Liewehr of Gilbane have said that understanding Web Engagement Management is "crucial to your business". Forrester has attempted to create its own definition – calling it "customer experience management". And, finally, others such as Julie Hunt – have written how Web Engagement Management even extends into the intranet of Enterprise 2.0 – and how content should be utilized to engage employees.

So here’s my take on it:

The trend in Web Content Management for the last couple of years has been Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - and it was all about getting your audience to your site. Period. Just make sure they find you. But then what? What happens once they get there? How do you keep them on your site? How do you make sure they come back later, how do you get them to start doing business on your site? How do you make your visitors fall in love with your site?

That’s Web Experience Management. It’s whatever comes after they’ve found you.

A few days ago, the Liferay product and engineering teams announced the release of Liferay Portal 6.1 CE. Last fall, during the Liferay West Coast Symposium, CMS Report was able to get a sneak peak of the features that Liferay Portal 6.1 had to offer. We were impressed then and we're even more impressed now with the changes that have been made since then.

Liferay Portal ships with broad product capabilities and provides more function than you would expect from a traditional portal. Besides having the capability as a web platform, Liferay Portal is also capable of supporting content and document management (including Microsoft office integration). Additional capabilities include:

• Web Publishing and Shared Workspaces
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Social Networking and Mashups
• Identity Management

Liferay issues their portal software under two licenses, an open source community edition and an enterprise edition. The Liferay community edition we're talking about in this article is specifically designated as Liferay 6.1 CE GA1.  In addition to the numerous bugs that have been fixed since 6.0 GA4, many new features and improvements have gone into this release.

The release of Joomla 2.5, a popular open source content management system, is expected to occur within the next few weeks. This release gives Joomla! fans a reason to celebrate and those new to the CMS a chance to consider Joomla! for thier next project. Like clockwork, the Joomla community is preparing the way by educating the masses on the new features and enhancements included in this version. I'm not an expert on the Joomla! development process, but I'm going to do my best here in summarizing the information that I've gathered so far on Joomla 2.5.