I'm working on an ecommerce site using osCommerce to enable the shopping cart functionality for my client's online store. This is the first time I've used osCommerce so I'm still working on improving my comfort level with the application. osCommerce is open source and released under the GNU General Public License. According to the osCommerce site:
"The label 2.0 has become so overused that it is now a tic, a reflex action, a device that gets trotted out because someone thinks it sounds both hip and techie. And it did — for a while. Now it’s tired."
-Steve Fox, "Too Tired of 2.0", InfoWorld, June 26, 2006
Given that this site, CMS Report, is less than six months old...I am truly amazed with the number of visitors the site receives in a day. While the number of visitors may be small compared to other well known sites, this is the first time I've had a site of my own that has drawn some attention. What a cool experience this has been!
I was flattered to see Drupal blogger, Greg Knaddison, mention CMS Report in one of his posts. Mr. Knaddison could have chosen for discussion so many other Drupal sites but for whatever reason he likes what he sees here. However, as postive as his message was for CMS Report, he also indicated through his post that the current mix of original content and aggregated news isn't for him.
With a tip of the hat to CMSReport. CMS report aggregates lots of content about all CMS, but they also have some original content. I'd prefer more of the latter and less of the former, but that's just me.
While CMS Report still needs to evolve and mature, its purpose was defined from the beginning. The primary mission of the site is to inform readers of the latest happenings in the world of content management systems. Now how that job gets done is another matter and readers have preferences.
Mambo 4.6 is expected to be release soon. While interest in the content management system has diminished over the past year (due to increased interest in Joomla) the open source project and community still remains active. Mambo is by no means a dead project.
With Mambo 4.6 currently available as a release candidate the folks at MamboServer report the following as the most significant new features and enhancements you can expect in the new release:
No matter how big or small you are, does it not seems that the marketing department always lures us into these discussions?
I had mentioned a while back that we planned to call the version of IE7 in Windows Vista “Internet Explorer 7+”. Well, the feedback we got on the blog was overwhelming – many of you didn’t like it. So, as we’ve said on our website, we heard you. I’m pleased to announce that we’re switching the name back to “Internet Explorer 7”. No plus. No dot x. Just “Internet Explorer 7”.
I have two Ping-O-Matic related questions that I cannot find answers too. Maybe someone can help me find the answer to these two burning questions:
"The results we saw with the WAMP [Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP] stacks were probably the biggest surprise in our entire test. Enterprise IT managers shouldn't hesitate to look into the option of deploying open-source stacks on a Windows Server platform.
For some businesses, this will truly be the best of both worlds."
- Jim Rapoza, How the stacks stack up, eWeek, July 10, 2006
Last month, it was announced that Drupal will have an installer included in the next major release of Drupal. The installer will not only automate the creation of the required Drupal database tables for you, but should also allow for the creation of "install profiles".
However, this patch is more than just usability: it supports "install profiles" so that anyone can create a distribution out of Drupal core, contributed modules, and themes. This will begin a new era in Drupal's life. Without a doubt, there will be a Drupal for blogger distribution, and a forum distribution is already in the works. Also, new installations of Drupal will only contain database tables for the modules you've actually enabled.
While the announcement of this installer was last month, I really have not had much time to actually check how the installer will actually work. While I would expect the installer to work as easily as installers in other content management systems, I've learned over the years to not count my chickens before they hatch. Today, someone has posted a very good article on what Drupal users can expect in the next major update of their application.