Articles - Page 253

What I Mean to Say: A Practitioner Perspective on AI, Semantics, and Content Evolution

msalvatierra

There are way too many extensions in the Joomla directory to truly make a Top 10 list since so many of them are excellent.
We do, however, have some favourite we thought we'd share in order to help them get some more exposure.
Here they are in no particular order or ranking:
#1 – JomSocial 
JomSocial is an excellent addon reminiscent of Community Builder in that it provides some very cool add on functionality that turns Joomla! into a more social environment. JomSocial has quite a few options and we find it a bit more attractive in that it seems to blend well into the system and provide for a more attractive look.
<img style="max-width:489px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/splash_image_2.png" alt="jomsocial" />

Our Top 10 Favourite Joomla Extensions

mike-johnston

SocialEngine has been around for a few and we've enjoyed trying it out and seeing it develop into a more and more powerful system as the years go by. We decided to share the experience with our readers and show you the true power this system possesses. If you are looking for a system that's affordable and works well as a social networking product.. then this is definitely a very solid choice and one of the better options on the market today. It's also very reasonably priced at about $250 for a license. Let's examine it in today's SocialEngine Review
Here's how the install process looks for those interested:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine1.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
Now that you have your login information, you can proceed to the control panel and get started by playing around with it.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine4.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
Above you can see the default look of the system before you do any modifications. Let's create an account and play a bit shall we?
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine6.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
SocialEngine also has a number of plugins which can be installed and configured for use. Plugins are available for between $30 to $50  depending on the plugin. In this case, we have all of the plugins that are not third party.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine8.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" /></dt>
</dl>
There is some pretty amazing functionality built into SocialEngine. Let's install some of the plugins and see how they work/look.
Here is the compose screen from the blog editor. once installed, it's fully functional and works very well. Looks like it uses TinyMCE by default.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine-blog.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
Here is a screenshot of the classifieds section (once the module has been installed). This particular module is a great way to monetize your site as well should you choose.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine-classified.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
This plugin is for music uploads. One comment on it would be that it lacks an effective admin entry and there doesn't appear to be an easy way to modify the number of files or file sizes (that I could find).
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine-music.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
And finally, the last plugin we tested was the videos plugin. It works beautifully with Youtube and uploads.
<div class="mceTemp">
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine-video.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" /></dt>
<dd></dd>
</dl>
Overall, We'd say this is one heck of a great collection of modules and software that can be used to put together one heck of a killer social network.
It's easy to theme and easy to customize as well so you can create your own unique look without much effort. For the cost they are charging for this, you could put together an amazingly well equipped social network with very minimal effort.
The admin panel is incredibly straight forward and simple as well.
The SocialEngine team has done an outstanding job on this great product. It's no wonder it has such a large number of users.
<a href="/social-engine" target="_blank">Check out SocialEngine</a>

</div>

SocialEngine Review - Is it Good Enough for your Social Network?

Today we're going to expose you to a new and fast cms called SkyBlueCanvas in this SkyBlueCanvas Review. This little content management system has a lot of gusto and provides an easy to use interface. It is small, open source and best of all, free.
Let's take a look at the install.
<img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb1.png" />
<img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb3.png" />
I wasn't too keen on seeing an advertisement on the end screen, but in the same aspect, I can understand that open source projects usually are running on the steam of a few developers who do not get paid. I suppose this is one method of trying to earn a few bucks.
<img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb5.png" />
Above you can see the default look of the website once it's installed.
<img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb7.png" />
As you can see, the editor is pretty simple and straight forward.
<dl>
<dt><img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb9.png" /></dt>
<dd> </dd>
</dl>
The included meta page is nice a well, and allows full control over SEO functions and RSS inclusion. (nice touch).
As you can see, this system is very easy to use and incredibly straight forward. We recommend this for anyone looking for a simple and easy management interface for their website.
You can find more about it here: <a href="http://www.skybluecanvas.com">SkyBlueCanvas</a>

SkyBlueCanvas Review - Point Click Publish.

SilverStripe, originally cofounded by Sigurd Magnusson is a small CMS with incredible potential. Despite the amount of competition in the Content Management market, they have managed to continue to maintain a steady flow of new projects such as the Democratic National Convention which chose their CMS as its choice to host its website, as well as having recently won the 2008 Most Promising Open Source CMS Award. Today, we bring you our SilverStripe CMS Review!
In their latest release, they promise the addition of the increasingly popular Mollom (the SPAM fighting company founded by Drupals' Dries Buytaert) as well as some very nice improvements to its SEO functionality. We've been meaning to do a review of this system for quite some time, but chose to wait for this release.
<h3>The Installation</h3>
Ladies and Gentleman, be prepared for the worlds longest screenshot. Beginning the SilverStripe install, we are presented with the following ‘all-in-one' screen:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/silverstripe1.png" alt=" " /> So we made our selections and clicked on the Install SilverStripe button and off went the installer:
And ladies and gentleman, thats all their is to the installation process. Amazingly, SilverStripe has managed to create the fastest installation we have ever seen of a CMS including that of the venerable WordPress. That is, indeed, something pretty remarkable. We can recall previous releases that we've tested being more involved but it's definitely nice to see that the SilverStripe team has put forth such a solid amount of effort towards making this an easy to install system.
<h3>Post Installation</h3>
There have been some other notable changes as well like the addition of the “click here to delete installation files” option, which is something we've been mentioning and asking for from all CMS' for quite some time. It would appear that SilverStripe has spent a good amount of time listening to people and their suggestions. Kudos to them for this simple, yet time saving addition:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/silverstripe3.png" alt=" " /> Once we chose to delete our install files, we were offered the option to enter the CMS itself and take a look at the administrative interface.Upon choosing this option, we also made note that it appears SilverStripe has worked to improve the load times required by their admin engine as it seemed faster than previous versions.
I've always liked the SilverStripe admin engine, I find it very appealing and well organize:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/silverstripe5.png" alt=" " /> SilverStripe is different from other CMS platforms we've used in that it separates themes and widgets completely from the CMS. Meaning, installation typically involves grabbing an extension from http://silverstripe.org/extending-silverstripe/ and uploading it to your site directory and flushing the database. This may sound more complicated than it is, but believe me, it's very simple.Each page also has a tab for Metadata which allows you to instantly edit page titles, keywords, url and descriptions directly. You can even create redirector pages with the click of a button, which is another nice addition.Media management is also very simple, just upload your files from the Files and Images tab and you can change and preview details on each of them directly from there with a few simple clicks.Comments can be managed from their own screen and viewed by Approved or Spam flags with minimal effort.Creating and editing Security groups and individual users is very very simple with this system. It gives you complete control over individual permissions:
And it doesn't stop there, you can tell they have put a lot of thought into security because they've even gone so far as to add  restriction of accounts based on IP address, as you can see here:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/silverstripe7.png" alt=" " />
There help system is also very good with a quick click you are on their help site with a fully searchable database of instructions. The forum is well administered and active with fast replies and they have a nice, close knit community of users who don't just use SilverStripe, but promote it and actively engage in the forums.
Overall, it's an exceptional system worthy of the attention its been getting. SilverStripe is not just a the little CMS from New Zealand, but a strong competitor and with their continuing efforts towards improvements, it wouldn't surprise us at all if in a few years they became a top contender in the Open Source market.
Homepage: <a href="http://silverstripe.org" target="_blank">http://silverstripe.org</a>
Corporate Presence: <a href="http://silverstripe.com" target="_blank">http://silverstripe.com</a>

SilverStripe CMS Review - The Open Source CMS from New Zealand

<a href="http://feed.us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Feed.Us</a> is new and unique way of pulling and publishing RSS feeds from various sources to anywhere. It functions on tons of platforms and essentially works by pre-caching the RSS feed to a local file and then displaying it as needed.
We took some time to sit down with <a href="http://feed.us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rick Stratton</a>, founder of the project and get into the nitty gritty details.
CC: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?
RS: I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After college (1995), I worked for NBC and the USA Today in Washington DC on early web-related ventures. Eventually landed a job as a webmaster for a large outdoor company and started building some basic web publishing applications.
Which lead to a dotcom in 1999, Guitar.com.
We put together what could be called a social networking site for musicians. I helped create our own CMS, on the design side. When that company fell on hard times, we bought a copy of the software and started a company to do web projects for newspapers. That was called 1871 Media.
1871 Media sold in 2007 to a company called uxCast.com. 1871 was fine, but it wasn't great. Our main problem was that we were building, designing websites and then also building/managing a CMS for those sites. We realized we couldn't do either very well. That's how we started thinking about Feed.Us.
CC: Now, you mentioned that 1871 sold to uxCast.com in '07. What is your current role within that firm?
RS: Once we sold, I went on my own for Feed.Us. Our CTO of Feed.Us was also the CTO of 1871 Media.
CC: What was the initial idea behind the concept for Feed.Us? Something must have triggered you to purchase the domain.. what was your first idea for use?
RS: I'm not a developer and when we had projects at 1871 that were small and quick, I used to hack some stuff together using RSS feeds and javascript. It dawned on me that a very light weight CMS that created feeds could be used to make websites very quickly.
And again, we always thought that the CMS at 1871 Media limited the design and construction of the websites. We realized early on that the CMS could be and should be separated from the structure of the website. I was basically “feeding” content to websites. That was the main impetus of Feed.Us.
Plus the domain name was for resale for $300.
CC: In a previous interview of yours, you mentioned that your partner basically dreamed up the idea of the current Feed.Us Model.. perhaps you can take us through that?
RS: The first version of Feed.us basically used a javascript widget and some CSS to put content on “outside” (not hosted by us) websites. There are a number of problems with this, but the biggest is that google can't see content within a javascript. It's a dealbreaker. But John Welborn, our CTO, had a dream about using a caching system as a way to download content to a local file.
And our “FeedUs Grabber” system was born. It loads content into webpages via one local file and two lines of code.
CC: For the less technical, can you give us an example of how this may be used on a traditional website.
RS: Feed.Us is built to work with CSS and will work on PHP or ASP or ASP.net or even Ruby on Rails. So you don't need to download and install the CMS software. You build a site in CSS and then make it into PHP, for example. Then just upload one Feed.Us file on your server.
Then within Feed.Us, we have a series of drop downs that allow you to create two lines of code that can be copied/pasted into your php files. That code will then pull in the dynamic content.
CSS is great to work with. It's so easy to read. You don't need to learn a new process or a new system. Also there's nothing to download/unpack/install/update.
CC: Do you have a live example somewhere of an implementation?
RS: It works nicely as a CMS, but the customers that we're going to have are probably going to use us for syndication rather than CMS. One site in particular, <a href="http://www.winetweets.com/">www.winetweets.com</a> is a good example because it's a Twitter “bot” website and it's built in php and uses some custom code to download tweets from Twitter. But it uses Feed.Us just for one area of content management.
CC: How do you plan to make money from Feed.Us? What is your business model?
RS: We're about to launch. Feed.Us will have a free, simple component. Then we'll have three pay plans that will be signup and pay us monthly. Plans will depend on demand and storage and cost between $25-$100 per month. But we'll sell a customized version of Feed.Us that will be more expensive. With Feed.Us, someone could make their own private label niche CMS or someone could syndicate all their content to other websites via our system.
We're working on a few projects for large publishers where we import their content from RSS or XML and then they can provide that content to their partner websites via javascript widget or serverside widget. Then these publishers can publish and control content on 100s or 1000s of websites very easily, and put ads on those sites as well. I think that is where we will make a business, rather than trying to compete with all the other great CMSes.
CC: When is the launch date scheduled for ?
RS: We're past our deadline. Which is mainly my fault because I keep moving the goalposts. Our updated version is due to all of our current, beta customers next week. Then we need to finish all the help stuff we can and get the payment system finished.
Meanwhile we've been adding ‘beta' customers and working on projects… so we're like partially launched. I don't want people to sign up and be frustrated. I want it to work really well when people signup on their own. That's the key.
CC: Any major players on board yet or still working on that?
RS: Not officially. But we've got two large newspapers demoing right now. But if anyone is interested, they can contact me and we'll put them through a demo and help setup the project if they want/need it!
We have 12 paying customers. And Feed.Us is working on over 100 sites now.
CC: What separates feed.us from something like just importing rss feeds using wordpress plugins?
RS: There are plugins for Drupal and for WordPress that probably do similar stuff but you can't put that stuff anywhere – it has to installed, then setup and the site has to have wordpress. Feed.Us will work on any site. It'll work within other CMSes
CC: I assume speed wise it performs well?
RS: Speed wise, we think it's superior. My partner/CTO has built some huge sites, so we have a lot of experience. But the key is that it is completely cached and it's just CSS and a local text file. There's no database running locally, etc.
CC: If someone wants to get a hold of you or is interested in the project, how can they do so?
RS: email – rick@feed.us
CC: Thanks for your time, Rick. We look forward to talking again in the future.
RS: Thanks Mike.

Feed.Us - An Introduction and an Interview with Rick Stratton

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

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

Semrush - Be an SEO hero

Be an SEO hero with Semrush

#ffffff

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

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

Weglot - The easiest way to translate a website

The easiest way to translate a website

#18164c

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