WordPress 3.9 has been released with a number of refinements that WordPress hopes you'll "love". The changes and new features are solid but perhaps not as many as we've come to expect given past WordPress point releases. Some of the new features that can be found in WordPress 3.9 include improvements in the media editing experience, gallery previews, and live editing of widgets and headers.
Paul Rubens’ February article in CIO magazine, 7 Reasons Not to Use Open Source Software, has received quite the backlash in open source circles. I’d like to take a moment to add my own two cents, but I won’t be fanning the flames of the hardline open source fire. Let me be clear—I take issue with this article, but I don’t disagree with most of it. Instead, I think it only tells part of the story, failing to give open source credit where it’s due.
A few days ago, I received an advance copy DPCI's press release announcing that DPCI has contributed an open source module to integrate Drupal with the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. As far as I can tell, the Drupal 7 module is currently a sandbox project but I assume it will eventually be released as a full module once the code is worked out.
Jimmy Atkinson from The Web Hosting Database recently sent us a note about WHdb.com updating their Top 50 Drupal Reference & Tutorial Sites. Jimmy asked us to help spread the word about the page (see his email attached below).
Moodle, an open source software package for producing Internet-based courses and web sites, has released it's latest version...Moodle 2.6.1. This latest version provides a number of bug fixes and small improvements as well as fixes to security vulnerabilities that were recently discovered. The new features in Moodle 2.6.1 include:
Years ago, I quickly discovered there was great public interest in comparisons of open source content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla. When you throw WordPress into the mix and you can attract an even greater audience. Despite how much traffic such headlines draw people in, CMS Report has been pretty selective when we provide or point to such articles. There is some uncertainty whether there is genuine value being provided in feature comparison articles which is why I've shied away from them in recent years.
Over the weekend, I spent some much needed time doing some maintenance work for my wife's photography site which runs on WordPress. One of the concerns I had with the release and automatic update of WordPress 3.8 is how it might impact the Photocrati theme package my wife uses for the site. So far, I haven't found any issues related to the WordPress 3.8 upgrade. I am a little concern we may have an issue with the Photocrati gallery not allowing her to add additional photos to a current gallery, but as far as I can tell this is a separate issue.
A couple years ago, if you would have asked me what I thought about Joomla! I would have told you I think they've lost their way. Their community of developers seemed to be searching on how best to innovate and take risks with a well established stable content management system. I feared that the open source group was stuck looking back and that all we could expect was dull incremental changes to their CMS. Despite the fear, I knew better. Open source communities have a way of reevaluating their priorities and creating spectacular results where you least expect them to do so.
Yesterday, The Joomla! Project and Community announced the availability of Joomla CMS 3.2.0 Stable. Since the release of 3.1.5, over 1085 commits have been made to the code base with 50 different people contributing to commits. But this release has a lot more than just bug fixes and includes a host of long awaited features for the open source content management system.
Some of the new features in Joomla 3.2 include: