November 2007

The anticipated SilverStripe 2.2 was released this week.

SilverStripe 2.2.0 is a major release containing a staggering quantity of new features and work from our ten Google Summer of Code students and an equally impressive effort from the core team.

Lots of new features and enhancements with this version of SilverStripe. Some of the new features and changes for this CMS include:

• Redesigned interface and workflow

• Multiple language support

• Google Sitemaps support (improves search engine optimization)

CMS Made Simple 1.2.1 is now available. This version is a maintenance release and, refreshingly, not a release needed to address security fixes.

New features and additions to this version of CMS Made Simple include:

Drupal 6.0 Beta 3 was released just before the Thanksgiving holiday. As in the past, I wanted to use CMSReport.com as a "live" test site for the beta/release candidates of Drupal as I did with Drupal 4.7 and Drupal 5. However, as this site has matured, so has my reliance on too many contributed modules currently not supporting Drupal 6. So for now, I've decided to place Drupal 6 in a subdomain, drupal6.cmsreport.com.

I am excited with what I have already seen in Drupal 6. I consider version 6 to be Drupal on steroids. Drupal 6 has a lot of performance and power improvements that are already apparent even in the Beta. Put it this way, the day the Views module is ready for Drupal 6, is the day I go live with running CMS Report on Drupal 6.

Mozilla's Firefox 3 Beta 1 has been released. The announcment from Mozilla Developer News:

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is now available for download. This is the ninth developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• Improved security features such as: better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, and version checking for insecure plugins.
• Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista and Mac OS X.

As we mentioned more than a month ago, Firefox 3 is expected to sport a new look. Some of the more popular online magazines are starting to take notice and helping to fan some excitement on the new look. On a blog at Wired a Firefox 3 related post can be found, Catch a Glimpse of Firefox 3's Sleek, Sexy New Digs.

Some of the changes planned for the final release of Firefox 3 include a complete visual makeover with platform-specific skins designed to integrate the look of Firefox into your OS of choice.

Since dotCMS is a "new" CMS that we're focusing on, I'm needing to add some content. This was announced a couple weeks ago, but still worthy of posting if you're trying to catch up like we are on what dotCMS is all about.

dotCMS 1.5.1 released – Open Source CMS, Web CRM and eCommerce - Dotmarketing released dotCMS 1.5.1 today which provides over a 150 fixes and improvements to a feature rich, open-source J2EE enterprise class web content management system.

New features included in this version of dotCMS are:

Yesterday, I upgraded the PHP version on my server from 5.2.4 to 5.2.5. PHP 5.2.5 brings improved "stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 60 bug fixes, several of which are security related". I also reintroduced eAccelerator back onto the server. I stopped using eAccelerator last spring, not so much because I had any real issues with it, but because I spent the summer months hosting my sites on the cheap.

"While Drupal's growth is impressive, it won't be reaching its potential if it resists incorporating learnings from other systems (e.g. 'this is Drupal, not Wordpress')."

- theneemies, "Chris Messina's Drupal 6 review", Open Source Community, November 14, 2007

A couple months ago, I experienced a number of errors at my Drupal site that all pointed to a corrupted database. I believe the problem likely was the caused by a sloppy export/import I performed with the MySQL database while moving the site to a new server.

While my particular database problem was an easy fix, if you really don't know much about databases you may find that you really need some guidance on how to solve problems like these. This article is the process I went through to correct this particular MySQL database problem in Drupal 5 and some general database rules that show why this problem occurred in the first place.

I came across another one of those "top ten" lists, this time, "Ten Reasons to choose Wordpress". Among the ten reasons to choose Wordpress were:

• Wordpress is used the world over
• Famous bloggers use Wordpress
• Wordpress is free

I've used Wordpress before and I have to say I chose it for its functionality and not whether a million zillion people used it. I know there are people who use, join, and buy something because it is popular. However, I have thankfully never been one of those people.