Articles - Page 249

Not All Heroes Wear Capes. Here's Why CMS Is Your 'Unsung Hero' in 2025

janus-boye

Today, we had the pleasure of having a conversation / interview with <a href="http://jxtended.com" target="_blank">Louis Landry</a> of the <a href="http://joomla.org" target="_blank">Joomla!</a> project. During our discussion Louis takes us on a journey through his time with the Joomla! project and his thoughts on the project and it's future. It is one of our favourite and most fascinating interviews to date.
Thank you to Louis for taking the time, enjoy the read everyone.
CC: What is your background with the Joomla! project? Can you tell us a little about your time on the project and what got you involved in the first place?
LL: I started using Mambo back in 2001, I believe. It was the 4.0.14 release and I had need for building a site for a friend… and was simply tired of doing everything in Dreamweaver. I existed around the edges of the Mambo project, harassing some of the developers with feature requests and a patch here and there right through the split to Joomla.
This coincided with Hurricane Katrina … which had a heavy blow on my life and direction.
During the split I was in close contact with a couple of the core team members and in the short period after Katrina I started working more closely with the developers and found myself spending a great deal of time working with Joomla.
I was asked onto the core team in late 2005 and joined in early 2006 and started off as a developer. I was an architect of the Joomla Framework that Joomla 1.5 was built on and was elected a Project Manager in 2007. I held the role for a little over a year, at which point i stepped down for someone else to take it on.
I have been the communications team lead and have since relinquished that role as well. Now i serve as a development coordinator and am focusing on future endeavors.
CC: Without getting too personal,  how did Hurricane Katrina come into the fray direction wise?
<img title="louis-avatar" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/louis-avatar.jpg" alt="louis-avatar" />LL: Well i was born and raised just outside of New Orleans and was in the final stages of signing on to work for NASA as a computer security engineer at <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/stennis/home/index.html" target="_blank">Stennis Space Center.</a>
I was supposed to go in for the last meeting before paper signing the Monday after Katrina hit. It was an interesting time.
I lost everything i owned as well as the job i might have had as Katrina wiped the buildings i would have worked in off the map ?
What it did for me was give me time and what i did with that was to find something positive to focus on, that was Joomla!
CC: So in a way, Joomla was somewhat of an outlet initially then for you?
LL: Ultimately i think it was just one of those situations where, to borrow a cliche, God closed a door and opened a window.
Joomla is something i was loosely involved with before  but it was something i could grasp on to. It helped me keep my mind sharp and there was obviously no programming jobs or work to do.
I graduated the year earlier with a computer science / history degree and i wanted to stay sharp. it was an outlet the people were great, the coding was fun and the purpose was positive.
CC: How do you feel about it's progression since you came aboard? Do you have any regrets or wish you had not left some of your previous roles?
LL: Thats a good one ? I think for me, I don't particularly have a lot of regrets… and I have tried to give as much as I can along the way. Project Manager was a tough role when i held it. I was dealing with project issues 14-16 hours a day most days… which seriously cut into my ability to make a living. I was glad to do it and I think I achieved most of the things I set out to achieve along the way.
I feel the progression is good, its in the right direction, but as with anything as big as Joomla… change happens slowly. We are still a very young project and it's easy to forget that because of the scale of things. We are going through growing pains, and finding our best processes as we go.
None of us have really done this stuff before, and I think given the amount of time people have to give… and the overall direction of things I believe we have done a good job. I would say, we are on the right path… with the right direction.
There are lots of changes happening in the project and not all of them are readily apparent I would say, and some of them require mindset changes so they will take a while to really sink in. Culture change is the hardest to come by ?
CC: You speak of changes coming to the project, are you referring to directionally or within the people themselves?
LL: I think Joomla is going through an evolution of sorts. What we are seeing right now … from the inside-out is a transformation where we are looking for ways to bring more people in and open up previously closed processes we are working through ways of solving problems in more of an “open” approach.
I'll give you an example.
Traditionally, development has been done by a relatively small group of people. Patches have always been “accepted” but in practice have never really been a part of our process. It's always been about a group of around 15-20 people with commit access just hammering away at the core code base and of those people there are generally about 5 that are highly active and driving the direction. We've had closed mailing lists and while the source was open, the process wasn't.
We've been actively trying to change that culturally and it takes a while. We have opened up 3 new development mailing lists and have published processes for getting feature patches accepted into the core and are looking to change the model altogether.
We are currently working on another initiative that will hopefully help to open up development even further by providing a sort of “playground” for joomla developers to play with technology in a common sandbox. This process is something that is happening all over the project, and will take time to implement and grow but i do think its in the right direction.
Oh and as for people… there is always an ebb and flow
CC: It sounds like somewhat of a maturing of the organization as a whole, which takes time like any good project. What can be said for sure is that it's remarkable how much of an impact Joomla! has had on the open source market. Exposure wise, I doubt anyone could have expected where it would be today in comparison to some of the other players.
LL: I think i would agree with that characterization and the shock in that impact is certainly not lost on the project leadership. I am personally looking beyond CMS because I think the traditional CMS is probably not going to be the focus of the web in the near future.
CC: As you are aware, there was a lot of opinionated commentary on my recent article entitled “What everyone ought to know about Joomla!” What points did you most strongly disagree with and why?
LL: In reference to #1, Poor out of the box SEO: I think that evidence will show that the SEO out of the box is actually not poor, but then again I think SEO is such a generalized term that you could say it is poor of any system depending on how you frame the topic. I would say that our standard markup is less than ideal and certainly not semantic there is a good reason for that.
The URLs you mention, very nice URLS can be achieved “out of the box” in Joomla 1.5 (1.0 was a mess), but I would certainly agree that improvements can be made. One of the biggest issues we have with that is that we do not have a unified content model with Joomla. All components are black boxes with respect to each other and with respect to the Joomla application, because of this it is difficult to solve the problem “correctly” in a complete way.
Its something we are certainly aware of and are working towards but I would say that there are lots of Joomla sites all over the web that are very well search engine optimized out of the box without needing hacks.
Again though, I would certainly acknowledge that improvements need to be made
#2 with respect to the vulnerability causing plugins, I would say that this is the danger of any open platform accepting third party plugins. I will say this though, we do need to do a better job of educating people about best practices and security. I think one of the odd positives that I see in this is that amateurs feel comfortable developing on our platform.  Granted, they should learn best practices.
We do unpublish all extensions as soon as a vulnerability is reported. We need better systems and we know that, but there is only so much you can do with a distributed model like that
#3. We do not have a figure head, we have a body of leaders. I don't think we would be comfortable as an organization with a figure head. I actually think culturally this may have arisen out of the mambo/miro fiasco.  If you have a group of open source developers and they have an overlord, even if its percieved, and they are decieved by that overlord they will be really weary of having anyone take on that role again.
I liken it a little to the US government i guess. When the colonies revolted, they didn't have a king, so many of the leaders didn't want one. Largely I think because of the bad experiences they had under one.
Whether thats true or not I don't know, but we do seem to generally work pretty well as a team and we build consensus around things. We do need to do a better job of having contact/press details. We used to have a page for that i think on joomla.org and in the redesign last year, it got lost.
I don't believe we need to have a figurehead
Who is behind joomla? The community, not a person. A collective.
We get flack for not living up to that all the time but its what we strive for.
CC: It is indeed an interesting arguement. I think one of the things that people seemed to come under the impression that I was implying is that there needs to be a central figure for Joomla! as a whole. More so, I was attempting to point out that without someone at who people can point and say “that's the man to talk to”.. for someone new to the organization or project, it can be a little confusing and discouraging trying to find the right people. I agree that Joomla! needs to be a community and as a community that is how it has gotten to where it is today..
LL: I do think we don't do a fabulous job of directing traffic like that its sort of luck of the drawbut at the same time most of us don't do Joomla full time. I mean… the president of our non-profit is a university professor in sociology and she gives more time than she should ?
One of the most passionate contributors I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Most of us should make ourselves more available. I think on some level we see it right now as not a big priority. I guess i should speak for myself but right now my principle concern is sorting out any organizational issues we have to facilitate the growth of the project and the evolution of culture. Outreach isn't something most of us have been involved in lately and as you rightfully point out to our detriment.
At the very least we should have a more available contact us form or something ?
LL: #4 Ease of use. This is such a difficult topic. I've heard so many people scream to the rooftops how much easier Joomla is than Drupal.
I think you hit on one of my biggest gripes in usability for #4 . Just adding a page takes too many steps. Its on our minds for sure but as far as what is easy or not i think thats more attuned to what flavor ice cream you like.
There are people who think Joomla is dead simple. People who think Drupal is and EVERYONE thinks wordpress is ?
Ultimately its all about the mental model you have and how that maps to the software. If joomla was exceptionally hard to use we wouldn't have the download numbers and the installed userbase.
As they say, people talk with their feet but… again, you hit the nail on the head in a couple of areas where we could really use some improvement.
What is not spelled out well is that the “menu manager” is really closer to a “page manager” than it is a menu manager. It's just somewhere in the middle, in limbo.
CC: Rewind 1 year. What would you change about a) Your current situation within the project b) The project itself?
LL: One year ago we were a month or so past the 1.5 release. If i were to do it all over again, I would probably have tried to rally the troops more. 1.5 was an epic release, it was 2+ years in the making and most everyone was just exhausted and took a long (and deserved break).
I think we lost a lot of momentum there and i think from a development perspective we didn't pick up quickly enough and get back into the saddle. Maintenance processes have been great, our Joomla Bug Squad is spectacular but as far as innovation and building to the next releases it all sort of stagnated and it didn't have to.
I guess if i had it to do over again i'd have likely gotten more dirty with development and helped encourage new things for the next release and tried to rally people around that.
CC: What areas of the project do you feel need the most focus at the moment? I ask on the chance that someone reading may wish to contribute in some way.
LL: Well, I am single minded at the moment… and that is development. I think we need to focus on building the platform such that it can stay relevant and innovative in the years to come, and for that we need developers.
CC: What is the biggest change forthcoming in 1.6?
LL: By and far the biggest change in 1.6 is the much anticipated access control system.
CC: Can you elaborate on the access control system for us?
LL: Certainly.
The system is inspired in design by phpGACL and has an inherited model. With 1.6 we have not exposed the entirety of the system because we don't believe it to all be necessary but all the power is underneath, and we believe that third party developers may come in and provide interfaces to it to do more complex things.
It adds configurable user groups that inherit permissions, assets, rules and asset groups. What we have done is provide an easy way for third party developers to attach the ACL system to their existing systems and built it to scale such that many things other than just the Joomla CMS can use it.
CC: Can you provide me an example of how you envision this being used?
LL: The way your average user will use it is that they will create “access levels” in the member manager. An access level will have a name and some number of user groups. When managing content or menu items they will apply that access level and only people in those user groups will be able to view those items.
Its much akin to how Joomla currently has the hard coded access levels of “public, registered, and special.” There will also be a provision for site administrators to choose which user groups can edit and/or manage different areas of the site.
CC: Will it offer tie ins to more traditional systems such as AD (active directory)?
LL: Great question! One of the things we are doing with this system is allowing you to sync up user groups via plugins in the same way you can sync up users in 1.5 via plugins. This is being built specifically so taht you could manage your users/usergroups in AD or LDAP and then that will be mirrored in Joomla.
Thats the extent of it as i know it, but with plugins, anything is possible
CC: Do you see yourself taking on any other roles in the future?
LL: I don't think so. I am pretty well happy in where I am and what I want to do. I suspect I may emerge as more of a platform advocate in the future but that will likely be still within my role as development coordinator.
Traditionally i have gone where the pain is. ?
CC: Does Joomla have any financial backing?
LL: Nothing formal. We have google adsense on our sites, some of them. We get some donations from individuals and we have a great hosting partner that donates so much time and infrastructure.
CC: If someone wanted to donate, how would they?
LL: Well the most important donation we can ask for is time

A Conversation with Louis Landry of the Joomla! CMS Project

mike-johnston

Today marked the day of the very first “Ultimate Showdown of Content Management Systems” which occurred at <a href="http://sxsw.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">South by Southwest Interactive</a>.
This event was an attempt to pit open source content management systems against each other in an effort to determine which one was the greatest. With a presentation style reminiscent of Iron Chef, the popular Cooking television show.. Open Source CMS leaders <a href="http://joomla.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Joomla</a>, <a href="http://wordpress.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">WordPress </a>and <a href="http://drupal.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Drupal</a> were pitted against one another.
The goal? To design the same website in each system and have the audience decide which one was the clear winner.
The websites which were created are available for viewing at: <a href="http://drupalshowdown.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Drupalshowdown.com</a> ; <a href="http://wpshowdown.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">WPShowdown.com</a> and <a href="http://joomlashowdown.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Joomlashowdown.com</a> respectively.
The unique part of this even wasn’t just the myriad of developers all fighting to do the best job possible, but that almost the entire event was covered on Twitter. The hashtag of choice? #cmsshowdown.
When it came time to ask the audience to pick a winner, there was a resounding ‘No’ and they decided that they wanted to learn more about all three projects before determining the winner. So who wins the CMS Show Down?
The answer is simple:
You do.
In the spirit of Open Source and friendly competition.. all three teams came together to remind us why we all love these projects and why they are icons for the industry. Working together, these groups created some amazing sites showcasing their respective systems in a very short time, with a lot of camraderie and a whole lot of fun!

#CMSShowdown: Ultimate Showdown of Content Management Systems

Today we unveil our choice for Top 10 WordPress Themes for the first quarter of 2009. This will be one of many new features on this site.
There are so many themes put out daily that it was tough to weed through them all and find the ones we thought were the best.
Let us know your thoughts and feel free to contact us if you think your theme should be considered for the next Top 10.
<h4>#1 – <a href="https://www.cmscritic.comhttps://www.cmscritic.com/themeforestitem/design-photograpy-portfolio/31774" target="_blank">Portfolio by Themeforest</a></h4>
This goes without saying. We think it's an incredibly beautiful and visually unique theme.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/portfolio-300x271.jpg" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
<h4>#2 – <a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/28/vintage-and-blues-wordpress-themes/" target="_blank">Vintage by Smashing Magazine</a></h4>
This incredibly beautiful theme comes from the fine folks at Smashing Magazine and has some of the most gorgeous imagery we've seen in quite some time.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/vintage1-300x225.jpg" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
<h4>#2 – <a href="http://www.studiopress.com/themes/streamline" target="_blank">Streamline by StudioPress</a></h4>
The Streamline theme comes from one of WordPress' top designers and is a beautiful choice for any site.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/streamline-300x165.png" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
<h4>#3 – <a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/28/vintage-and-blues-wordpress-themes/" target="_blank">Blues</a><a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/28/vintage-and-blues-wordpress-themes/" target="_blank"> by Smashing Magazine</a></h4>
Another beauty from the fine folks at Smashing Magazine.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/blues-300x225.jpg" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
<h4>#4 – <a href="http://www.studiopress.com/themes/album" target="_blank">Album by StudioPress</a></h4>
Another great theme from Brian and crew at StudioPress
<h4>
<div class="mceTemp">
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/album-300x165.png" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
#5 – <a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/23/magazeen-free-magazine-look-wordpress-theme/" target="_blank">Magazeen by Smashing Magazine</a>

</div></h4>
Smashing Magazine is at it again with another great looking theme release for free.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/magazeen-300x195.jpg" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
<h4>#6 – <a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/10/download-imprezz-a-free-wordpress-theme/" target="_blank">Imprezz by Smashing Magazine</a></h4>
These guys release a lot of great themes, as you can tell since they have landed in 4 places on this list.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/imprezz-300x273.gif" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
<h4>#7 – <a href="http://iacobionut.com/proudblack-free-wordpress-theme/" target="_blank">Proudblack by Iacob Ionut</a></h4>
Clean, functional and easy on the eyes.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/proudblack-300x153.jpg" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
<h4>#8 – <a href="http://web-kreation.com/demos/oneroom/" target="_blank">Oneroom by Web Kreation</a></h4>
Attractive, well laid out theme with nice design touchs.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/oneroom-300x150.jpg" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
<h4>#9 – <a href="http://bizzartic.com/archives/projects/wordpress-themes/igloo-news-theme/" target="_blank">Igloo News by BizzArtic </a></h4>
Cool design elements and nice use of colours.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/igloo_21-300x167.png" alt="igloo_21" /></dt>
</dl>
<h4>#10 – <a href="https://www.cmscritic.comhttps://www.cmscritic.com/themeforestitem/business-professional-package-wordpress-edition/30008" target="_blank">Business by Themeforest</a></h4>
Simply put, a damn fine looking business theme.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/business-300x286.jpg" alt=" " /></dt>
</dl>
<a href="http://www.netidnow.com">Create an eCommerce Website</a>

Critic's Choice: Top 10 WordPress themes for first quarter 2009

Joomla! is a popular Content Management System (CMS) with numerous followers. Just like any good system it has it's share of good and bad points.
The Bad
Issue #1: Poor out of the box SEO. 
This is likely going to get people riled up but for a system that has as much notoriety and popularity on the market today, it's simply not acceptable to have such poor out of the box SEO. Joomla's URLs, even with their “Search Engine Friendly URLs” option enabled, are still poorly optimized.
Take a look at other products such as Elxis and see the difference. Elxis has incorporated an extreme amount of SEO optimization and is similar in a large number of ways to Joomla!. The difference? Joomla! has the press whereas Elxis does not, even thought it's deserving of it.
Case in point… <a href="http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/3778/details" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this patch</a> has been available since January 26, 2008 and has continually been updated for each version which indicates to us that the Joomla! team obviously isn't too concerned with fixing the issue it addresses. This is something that should have been included immediately in the next release.
Issue #2: Vulnerability causing plugins.
There are too many poorly written extensions that can cause massive vulnerabilities in the system. A prime example of this is this forum: <a href="http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=296&amp;start=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=296&amp;start=0</a> which has been put in place to specifically address security vulnerabilities brought on by third party extensions. Is this the fault of the system? No. It is however, a concern. Perhaps the <a href="http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=262&amp;t=356189&amp;start=30" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">change to the JED that is happening in June</a> will help address some of these issues.
Issue #3: Lack of Representation
If we ask you who the person is behind WordPress, you'll likely know that it is <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/wordpress-cms-founder-matt-mullenweg-interview" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Matt Mullenweg</a>. If we ask the same of Drupal, you'll likely know <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/drupal-founder-dries-buytaert-interview" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dries Buytaert</a> is the man. If we ask you who is behind Joomla!, we'll likely get a blank stare.
This may come across as nitpicking to some of you but realize that proper representation can have huge impacts on the success and growth of a product. Matt and Dries combined have done wonderful things for their respective CMS projects whereas if you try to reach someone to comment about Joomla!, you'll have a hard time doing so. Representation is simply poor. Three times, for example, we have attempted to contact members of the Joomla! team for interviews. Have we had any replies? Not one. Yet we've had excellent response from every other CMS project we've reached out to.
In fact, if you are a Press or Marketing person and want to reach that specific area of the Joomla! team.. you will not find a single link on their <a href="http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">About</a> page pointing you in the right direction. Yet, smaller projects with very little notoriety make that effort to at least have an email that is staffed and checked on occassion.
Issue #4: Ease of Use
Joomla! simply isn't an easy system to use. The menus are still complicated and poorly labelled for new users, and publishing a simple article is still harder than it needs to be. Go ahead and install Joomla, you may find it installs fine and then when you go to install a module, plugin or template it will fail. You'll just get a “Warning! Failed to move file.” message. If you don't look under the Help-&gt;System Info-&gt;Directory Permissions menu you'll never find the solution is a permissions issue. They really need to move this and/or make it more visible.
Issue #5: Component, Modules, Plugins oh my!
Someone please tell us why we need 3 different names for extensions and why we can't simply have them all identified as plugins? We realize they each serve different purposes, but talk about confusing the heck out of a new user. That is all.
The Good
Positive #1: Joomla! has done a wonder for the Open Source CMS community
There is no question that Joomla has given the open source community a huge boost when it comes to notoriety. Joomla! is an enormously popular platform and one of the top searches on Google when it comes to Content Management Systems. Without it, we doubt there would be anywhere near as much activity in the industry.
Positive #2: Best Templates on the ‘Net
There is no doubt that Joomla! has some of the nicest and most attractive and diverse themes available on the net for any content management platform. Don't believe us? Check out some of the beautiful designs by <a href="http://Rockettheme.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rockettheme.com</a> or <a href="http://joomlashack.com">Joomlashack.com</a>
Positive #3: There's money to be made in the Joomla! world.
Due to the extreme size of the community and the number of users actively using Joomla, a good company with solid plugins or themes can easily step in and make some good revenue. Companies that specialize in providing solutions for Joomla! are already seeing the rewards of supporting something with this many followers. Theme clubs do very well and even commercial templates have a large number of sales.
Positive #4: Diversity
Joomla! has one of the most diverse communities with a huge following and tons of user groups in various countries donating their time and efforts to improving the platform. Our hope is that with this huge number of followers, some of the issues we addressed above can be handled and brought to the forefront to improve this system and make it more user friendly.
Positive #5: Award Winning
Joomla! has done well for itself and won many awards since it's formation and continues to gain more and more publicity in the marketplace. Packt Publishing has recognized it numerous times and continues to shed light on this great CMS.
Conclusion:
We would like to see Joomla! get to the point of being more user friendly and having a more organized approach to addressing some of these long standing concerns. It's a CMS that is here to stay and has certainly earned it's notoriety but there are still plenty of things that can be done to make it even better.
We're sure there are many people reading this who either agree or disagree. We don't claim to be Joomla! experts but these are concerns we've seen in the system and we'd be happy to hear your solutions.

What Everybody Ought to Know About Joomla!

<a href="http://kentico.com" target="_blank">Kentico</a> recently released version 4 of their ASP .NET CMS which comes with three different example sites to choose from: eCommerce, Personal and Community. We will be evaluating Kentico using their virtual lab which, if you'd like to try their product yourself, is accessible at<a href="http://www.kentico.com/Demo/VirtualLab.aspx"> http://www.kentico.com/Demo/VirtualLab.aspx</a>
Kentico is an advanced system that offers extreme usability and point and click editing, but can they hold up in a market where so many other systems exist? Let's find out.
Version 4.0 cites such improvements as the integration of Social Networking and other improvements which you can read about <a href="/kentico-cms-4-0-brings-social-networking-features/" target="_blank">here</a> or at the following locations:
<a href="http://devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Petr-Palas/February-2009/Kentico-CMS-4-0-Released.aspx" target="_blank">http://devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Petr-Palas/February-2009/Kentico-CMS-4-0-Released.aspx</a>
<a href="http://www.kentico.com/Company/News/Kentico-CMS-4-0-Brings-Social-Networking-Features.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.kentico.com/Company/News/Kentico-CMS-4-0-Brings-Social-Networking-Features.aspx</a>
<a href="http://www.kentico.com/getdoc/e6b7c83a-c06c-4bc1-b818-3e96b7ce9a1f/Version_history.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.kentico.com/Download/Version_history.aspx</a>
Today, we are going to examine this system and see what features it brings to the table.
Now, First off.. this is the Personal site template/theme:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-personal.png" alt="kentico-personal" />
Nice isn't it? Pretty good considering this is a sample of what it can look like.
Here is the Corporate starter site:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-corporate.png" alt="kentico-corporate" />
These are all very beautiful themes so far. Two more to go. eCommerce:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-ecommerce.png" alt="kentico-ecommerce" />
We can't say this enough times.. for starter templates, these are better than some professionaly designed ones we've seen. Finally, here's the one we've been waiting for…
The Community starter site:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-community.png" alt="kentico-community" />
For the purposes of this review, we're going to test it out using the above Community starter site. It seems fitting since the latest 
release focused largely on social and community enhancements.
When you first log in to the Community starter site, you'll notice some new menus appear in place of the Sign in box:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-5.png" alt="kentico-5" />
Let's explore these a bit. Click on My profile takes us to a pretty good looking profile page with options to view our blogs, leave us a 
message, see what groups we're a member of, etc.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-6.png" alt="kentico-6" />
Clicking on the Edit my profile link lets us modify our avatar from a pretty decent selection. It also lets us upload our own if we choose to do so:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-7.png" alt="kentico-7" />
There are groups and blogs as well.. which look very nice:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-8.png" alt="kentico-8" />
The abilities that Kentico has for developing a really nice social networking site go above and beyond what we've seen in similar 
products. They've done an amazing job of integrating an attractive interface, ease of use and group membership functionality into one simple platform.
There are so many changes in this release that we can't even begin to cover all of them and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Let's examine the administrative interfaces next.
Kentico has two different Admin panels so to speak. One, which is called CMS Desk allows multiple options such as the ability to 
interactively design the site and the other is called CMS Site Manager, which we'll get to in a moment.
First the CMS Desk:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-9.png" alt="kentico-9" />
From here you are able to edit, preview and manage your site content from an easy to use and nicely laid out interface. By switching to design mode, you can edit and modify any of the elements on any of the pages with ease:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-10.png" alt="kentico-10" />
There are 3 other sections of the CMS Desk. You can switch the My Desk which allows you to manage your content, approve content that has entered the workflow process, etc. There is also the Tools section which allows you to managed Media, Create forms and much, much more:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-11.png" alt="kentico-11" />
The Administration menu allows you to managed users, review your banned IP addresses , etc.
Ok. We're impressed. Let's see what their other control panel looks like shall we?
Switching to Site Manager you are immediately presented with all running sites in a simple list with quick management buttons:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-12.png" alt="kentico-12" />
Then there is the Administration Tab, which provides you with the following management menus:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-13.png" alt="kentico-13" />
Followed by the Settings Tab:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-14.png" alt="kentico-14" />
Just when you thought it couldn't get better… they added the option to allow you to manage payments with Paypal and Authorize.net.
It gets better. Are you ready for this? Check out the Development tab:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kentico-15.png" alt="kentico-15" />
We think that's enough screenshots to get across the point.
In summary:
Wow. Kentico has done an outstanding job on this release. We're fairly comfortable saying that we don't think there's anything we can 
think of that they missed. In fact, in our opinion, they've gone above and beyond. If you are looking for a CMS for any need, Kentico 
definitely fits the bill. This is an amazing product at an amazing price.
You can find out more on the pricing at their website here: <a href="http://www.kentico.com/Buy.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.kentico.com/Buy.aspx</a>
This was a great product to play with and has the potential of creating some incredible sites, we can only hope that someone takes 
advantage of it and puts it to use creating the next big thing on the web.
Ratings wise, it's uncomparable. There literally is nothing on the market that comes close to touching this software as far as Social 
Networking integration goes that we've tested to date. (If you know of something, definitely let us know.)
With the options it presents, we're very very excited to see what they could possibly improve in their next release.
The only thing that prevents Kentico from getting a 10 is that the help system built into the admin pages is lacking and needs to 
be improved upon.
Our final score:
<h2>9/10</h2>

Kentico, the CMS for the .Net Generation

There is a new release of Plone, the popular Zope powered content management system (cms). Plone is an extremely powerful and popular CMS and this new release offers “unifying the dependency and package management across all platforms.
All the installers (Windows, Mac, Linux/BSD/UNIX) are now based on the Unified Installer, and they are all using <a href="http://buildout.zope.org/">Buildout</a> for configuration/deployment management. Additionally, the Mac OS X installer ships with both Intel and PPC binaries in the same download.”
Latest version available at <a href="http://plone.org/download" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Plone.org</a>

Plone Content Management System 3.2 is out

Semrush - Be an SEO hero

Be an SEO hero with Semrush

#ffffff

A new version of Pegboard CMS has been released. Pegboard is an ASP .Net CMS that is fully brandable and easy to use. Now in version 5.2.3, it offers the following feature enhancements.
<ul>
<li>Members Integration with ecommerce, Product % and Qty Price Breaks, Product Promo Codes, ecommerce credit surcharges, Aust Post Postcode Search (Radius Search)</li>
<li>Products and Product options check box list. Flash Banner ads, Auto submit to Forms.</li>
<li>Ability to submit a content page and any other type of content to the website through the new members content module. This content can be paid for, moderated and edited at later stage (This applies to a single item).</li>
<li>Ability to purchase a user subscription, search and list other members within the members module.</li>
<li>Ability to include a rating (either text or graphical) with each blogs comment. This is part of the blogs module.</li>
<li>Ability to Bookmark content on the website and  email Friends the details using the forms module.</li>
<li>Ability  to add custom fields in ecommerce shopping cart for products and inline edit these fields in the shopping cart whilst a client is purchasing.</li>
<li>Ability to import/export separately via excel for all modules.</li>
</ul>
For more information or to view a demo, visit<a href="http://pegboardcms.com/FlashTours/PegboardOverview.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Pegboard</a>.

New version of Pegboard ASP .Net CMS is out.

Flypaper, developer of the popular Flash Content Management platform of the same name, have released version 2.0 of their award winning product.
Flypaper 2.0 includes nearly 30 new features that allow for greater end-user control and customization. Key enhancements include: automatically add one element to all pages with just a click; lock certain elements or entire projects so other users can’t make changes; and add custom fonts. These updates, as well as many others, make the Flypaper Flash Content Management Platform even more intuitive, user friendly and efficient for end-users.
The following are some key features and benefits:
<ul>
<li>Enterprise repository – Companies will have their own private repository where content and entire projects can be stored, accessed, modified and reused across the entire organization. This is especially useful for companies that are creating and repurposing content throughout several different departments and need quick access from one central location.</li>
<li>Collaboration – Users have real-time, Web-based collaboration capability and can export any element of a project then collectively mark up, edit, make notes, chat online, and view all collaborators per project.</li>
<li>Software Development Kit (SDK) – An ideal development solution for Flash programmers producing high impact Flash programs for corporations. The Flypaper SDK allows Flash programmers to create and convert Flash files to the Flypaper format, making Flash programs and components editable by the customer for the first time ever. It frees the Flash programmer from mundane maintenance, allowing them to focus on the highly creative elements they love. The component SDK includes templates for Flash, Flex and ActionScript3, along with complete documentation.</li>
</ul>
Here is one of many demo videos available on their website:

Flypaper releases 2.0 version of their Flash Content Management Platform

After 2+ years of research into content management systems and how they function with search engine optimization, Pixelsilk has launched their CMS platform that both addresses and complements these requirements.
<a href="http://pixelsilk.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Pixelsilk</a> is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) provider and is confident that their new system is “not only SEO-friendly, but truly meets the standard of SEO Best Practices.”
From the announcement:
 
<blockquote>
Pixelsilk is a scalable, Web-based CMS that provides SEO, marketing and Web development teams with the features they need to maximize their online initiatives and gain a competitive edge in their organic search engine rankings. Cutting-edge tools that allow full control of the HTML code, the ability to interact with business and social media applications, open framework structure, real-time SEO feedback and true theme and navigation flexibility are among some of the features that set Pixelsilk apart from any other production-level CMS available today.
Pixelsilk is a web-based application. Users simply administer and access their Web sites from any internet connection and popular browser. The Pixelsilk CMS is a proprietary system designed for mid-sized businesses to succeed online. Pixelsilk's client and server APIs allow for the development of custom business objectives that extends the already flexible features of the Pixelsilk system. From social applications like Facebook and Twitter to back-end CRM and sales systems, integrating third party software is made easy through Pixelsilk's extensible framework.
</blockquote>
There's a good video that provides a tour of the new system, which you can <a href="http://www.pixelsilk.com/tour/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">watch at Pixelsilk</a>.

Pixelsilk brings SEO to CMS

The SkyBlueCanvas Development Team has announced the official stable release of version 1.1 of the SkyBlueCanvas Lightweight content management system (CMS).
The new version includes several updates including better performance, improved Search Engine Optimization tools and support for the TinyMCE and FCKeditor WYSIWYG text editors.
“Our goal is to make SkyBlueCanvas the most user-friendly web site tool on the market and the web site software of choice for small business owners”, says Scott Lewis, the project manager and lead developer.
“We spent a lot of time evaluating the Admin interface from the user's perspective and making improvements as necessary. We think this version is the most mature and easy-to-use version of the software to date”.
SkyBlueCanvas Lightweight CMS is an open source, free content management system written in php and built specifically for small web sites. The software runs on the Apache web server and is compatible with PHP versions 4 thru 5. The system requires no configuration or special modules. You simply upload the software to your web server and start creating your content.
The system is licensed under the GNU/GPL v3.0 License. Service packages for business owners including site setup, customization and design are also available from the development team.
Demo: <a href="http://demo.skybluecanvas.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://demo.skybluecanvas.com</a>
Download: <a href="http://www.skybluecanvas.com/download" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.skybluecanvas.com/download</a>

SkyBlueCanvas releases version 1.1

If you are keen on testing or playing with Alphas.. Kajona has a new alpha of what will be 3.2.0. You can check it out, break it and bend it to your will by grabbing your copy from their website.
New features/changes include an image editor which allows you to crop and rotate images right in Kajona, a comfortable multiple file upload with progress bar, rewritten session-management and the module “rating”.
<a href="http://www.kajona.de/changelog_32x.changes...en.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.kajona.de/changelog_32x.changes…en.html</a>

Kajona 3.1.9 (3.2.0 Alpha) available

Kentico, a powerful and intuitive ASP .NET based CMS has come out with version 4.0. Version 4.0 adds a new social networking platform with blogs, forums, groups, friends, wiki, media libraries, message boards, one-click AJAX, URL aliasing, taxonomy, content rating and other great features.
This new version offers tons of exciting new features and improvements such as:
Membership improvements: 

<ul>
<li>Improved user interface (alphabetical sorter, advanced user filtering)</li>
<li>Double opt-in registration through an e-mail</li>
<li>Registration approval by administrator</li>
<li>Avatar gallery</li>
<li>Customizable registration form</li>
<li>Display on-line users</li>
<li>Mixed mode authentication – use both forms and Windows authentication on a singe site</li>
<li>Mass e-mail to users</li>
</ul>
Community features: 

<ul>
<li>Community Groups (similar to Facebook)</li>
<li>On-site management of blogs, forums, polls, etc. without accessing the CMS Desk</li>
<li>New Community Starter Site</li>
<li>Friends</li>
<li>Bad words</li>
<li>Badges</li>
<li>User profile – configuration of user information displayed on the web site</li>
<li>Report abuse</li>
<li>Content rating</li>
<li>Time zones</li>
</ul>
Blogs:
<ul>
<li>Categories, tags and tag cloud</li>
<li>New comments module with trackbacks</li>
<li>Ping</li>
<li>On-site editing</li>
</ul>
Message Boards: 

<ul>
<li>with moderation and subscriptions</li>
</ul>
Notification engine: 

<ul>
<li>E-mail or other notification when content is changed or some other event occurs in the system</li>
</ul>
Improved link management:
<ul>
<li>Internal document links without GUIDs (for better SEO)</li>
<li>Unlimited number of custom URLs for the given document</li>
<li>Configurable extensions for the files (e.g. .pdf instead of .aspx)</li>
</ul>
Forums:
<ul>
<li>Attachments for posts</li>
<li>Support for inserting images</li>
<li>Advanced moderation options</li>
<li>Improved search with advanced options</li>
<li>Quoting</li>
<li>Lock or hide forum/topic</li>
<li>Private messaging integration</li>
<li>Mark as answer</li>
<li>On-site administration</li>
</ul>
Media Libaries:
<ul>
<li>Build media libraries with pictures, music and video</li>
</ul>
One-click AJAX Support
<ul>
<li>Web parts can now be configured to use AJAX just by one click</li>
</ul>
URL aliasing 
<ul>
<li>Support for creating unlimited number of URLs for a single document</li>
<li>Customizable extensions of URLs</li>
<li>SEO-friendly document links with history for keeping old links valid</li>
<li>Support for dynamic SEO-friendly URLs with macros</li>
</ul>
Taxonomy 

<ul>
<li>Categories</li>
<li>Tags and tag cloud</li>
</ul>
Content rating
<ul>
<li>Allow visitors to rate content</li>
</ul>
Image Editor 

<ul>
<li>New on-line image editor for basic operations (resize, rotate, convert, grayscale)</li>
</ul>
… and others. You can find the complete list in the <a href="http://www.kentico.com/getdoc/e6b7c83a-c06c-4bc1-b818-3e96b7ce9a1f/Version_history.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">version history</a>.

Kentico CMS 4.0 Brings Social Networking Features

<a href="http://silverstripe.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">SilverStripe</a> have released their latest RC3 for 2.3.0. This new release candidate incorporates a <a href="http://open.silverstripe.com/wiki/ChangeLog/2.3.0-rc3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">huge number of changes</a>.
Some of the new changes include:
<ul>
<li>ModelAdmin: a mechanism for easily creating administration UIs for any data set that you can dream up.</li>
<li>Out of the box RESTful and SOAP APIs for your site's content and data.</li>
<li>An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.2 to provide much improved content editing.  For example, the editor now has a built-in spell-checker.</li>
<li>Hundreds of automated tests to help keep the product stable as we work on it.</li>
<li>Better security settings for deciding who can view and edit pages on your site.</li>
<li>Improvements to internationalisation of the CMS.</li>
</ul>
We look forward to the stable release.

SilverStripe v2.3.0 release candidate 3 is now available

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