Articles - Page 256

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

msalvatierra

<img title="openedit" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/openedit_vv9jiq.jpg" />Our latest interview is with Openedit founder Christopher Burkey. Openedit is an interesting project that was founded approximately 10 years ago and utilizes java as it's base. We always find it very interesting to get a chance to talk with people who have been indepth in the industry for quite sometime as there's always an opportunity to learn something new. So sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy the read!
Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.
CC: You began development of Openedit approximately 10 years ago, is that correct? What prompted you to begin this project?
CB: Yes, many people don’t realize we have been developing OpenEdit for over 10 years, using our own development team, as well as developers from the OpenEdit Community. OpenEdit began with a multi-year project for General Electric Aircraft Engines. The project required us to develop a web application, which would allow GE to capture technical data on jet engines. Each feature of OpenEdit had to be self-contained with as few interdependencies as possible. The idea was to allow any feature of OpenEdit to be able to interact with, or even within, other parts of their application. From this, OpenEdit evolved into a web application framework used to create and maintain dynamic websites and custom web applications, most notably, Digital Asset Management, Content Management and Ecommerce.
CC: Why did you choose to go open source and what other services does your company provide in order to remain profitable?
<img style="max-width:150px" title="Christopher Burkey " src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/chris-140x150.jpg" alt="Christopher Burkey " />
CB: Sharing knowledge and allowing developers to have the source code in hand empowers them, it drives innovation. Most of the features in OpenEdit were developed for and by organizations with specific Content Management and Digital Asset Management requirements in their work environment. OpenEdit users have seen that open source provides freedom of setting up their systems as they wish and freedom in the long term. A software company can give their software away and make money on services or add-on’s. Or perhaps a company can sell the software for a high initial price and provide support for free. When a company sells software and support, many times, it results in the customer becoming frustrated, because they don’t understand the reasoning behind paying for a software they have no control of and also paying for its support and services. OpenEdit sells installation services, project work and hosting – there is no charge to download, use and upgrade OpenEdit.
CC: What is the primary objective and/or target market of your product?
CB: Our primary market is Marketing and Creative Services departments within large firms. OpenEdit offers the best web based, open source Digital Asset Management and Content Management software used across the enterprise. Our focus is on workflow, search, management and collaboration, multi-media, repurpose of assets, PDF and image format conversions. Today, OpenEdit is used by marketing and creative services departments having thousands of users and managing millions of digital assets across the enterprise.
CC: What separates Openedit from similar platforms? Is there a specific functionality that makes it stand out?
CB: OpenEdit is the most feature rich platform for DAM and CMS. We offer the only Digital Asset Management solution that includes a full Content Management System, integrated Blogging, eCommerce, Events Calendar, Multi-language support and Social Networking tools. Every feature of OpenEdit is all-inclusive, we don’t charge for add-ons 
or even upgrades for that matter.
CC: Given the current state of the economy, what objectives does your company have for 2009 in order to “stay afloat” during these difficult times?
CB: Our approach is to keep focusing on Digital Asset Management integrated with Content Management. Make sure that our clients are treated like royalty and that OpenEdit is flexible enough to keep up with the latest feature requests from our target market.
CC: If there was one thing you would change about your platform what would it be and why?
CB: The one thing we would change is to package our product better. We want to make multiple flavors of OpenEdit that match the needs of certain groups of clients. We believe in permission marketing within software. What that means is if a customer gives us permission to sell them something then we should provide a version of OpenEdit that is tailored to their needs. For instance, OpenEdit comes with all of our feature sets but narrowing down or expanding those features for specific types of users will make OpenEdit more appealing to that audience. As an example, we have a solution available online today, it’s directed toward large marketing departments but we also want to make an eCommerce flavor of OpenEdit that is packaged for photographers to sell prints of photos online.
CC: What do you feel is the most overlooked feature or functionality of your product?
CB: The most overlooked feature of OpenEdit is the Debug Mode. This mode allows users to change any part of any web page within their site. The changes that they make are stored in a separate folder structure so it is easy to track what has been customized for a specific client. This allows us to support hundreds of installations of OpenEdit with customizations and still be able to upgrade them regularly without too many problems. With Debug Mode developers can provide continuous integration and quick, agile development.
CC: Where do you see the future of the content management system industry going?
CB: Our philosophy has always been that CMS and DAM is a great fit for one another. OpenEdit began with a pure content management solution, in which General Electric could capture data and it naturally evolved into the inclusion of a Digital Asset Management solution, this direction continues to prove itself.
We have already seen growth in the interest of open source CMS and DAM for 2009. Search methods will continue to change, so individuals can search the way they want, rather than being forced to search a specific way. Social networking is something we see our CMS and DAM users have an interest in. The Web Browser makes a great desktop replacement, thus online document editing capabilities will see continued growth. Corporations need a suite of integrated web based document management and editing tools that they can host and use within their entire enterprise.
CC: Where do you see Openedit fitting in with this future?
CB: OpenEdit is an extensible and flexible enough platform to be used within a huge variety of enterprise environments. Every business has custom needs, which is why OpenEdit was built from the ground up based on real work agile development. OpenEdit is a major force in the future of CMS and DAM and will continue to add and refine our features as CMS requirements grow for our users.
CC: Do you plan to offer SaaS options for Openedit?
CB: OpenEdit has offered reliable and inexpensive hosting for clients who do not have their own servers for over 10 years.
CC: What are your favourite implementations of your product? Can you share some websites that use your product that you find interesting or innovative?
CB: My favorite implementations include:
<ul>
<li>Slamdance Film Festival – uses all the parts of OpenEdit for a very low cost implementation. OpenEdit hosts this one: 
<a href="http://www.slamdance.com/">http://www.slamdance.com</a></li>
<li>Proyecto Piloto – I like this one because it is in Spanish and was put together and maintained by non-technical users and it features lots of images: <a href="http://www.proyectopiloto.cl/">http://www.proyectopiloto.cl</a></li>
<li>WWE – World Wide Entertainment – This is an eCommerce site that is used to sell licensed media to their partners. This site requires a login.</li>
</ul>
You can see a list of our clients on our website <a href="http://www.openeditdam.com/">http://www.openeditdam.com</a>
CC: How do you feel Openedit compares with other open source projects in the ECM market such as Alfresco for instance?
CB: The most striking difference between OpenEdit and traditional CMS's is the use of a database. Most CMS's start with a database then they build editing and management tools around the data. OpenEdit starts with the HTML User Interface and the data is defined on the fly as needed. This allows us to create entire web applications stored within a file sub-directory. It is very intuitive and flexible 
to create new applications just by creating more folders. It is not intuitive for users to have to create or alter database schemas each 
time they want to create a new simple web application.
CC: Can you provide us with some insight as to future modifications or upcoming changes?
CB: In the immediate future OpenEdit is working on data mining tools that will help a business search across all of their media repositories. We plan to provide detailed summary reports and navigation tools to simplify searching for all digital files, such as video, images, documents, brochures, logo’s, etc.
CC: Do you have any parting comments for our readers?
CB: OpenEdit has proven itself to be a powerful CMS and DAM solution for many companies and organizations. The OpenEdit community is of the utmost importance, as they keep coming up with innovative ways to use OpenEdit.
The progression from a content management solution into one which also integrates full digital asset management capabilities seemed obvious to us years ago. Integrating the management, collaboration, sharing and reuse of all digital assets across web content management and digital asset management is achieved using OpenEdit.
We always welcome any sort of feedback about OpenEdit, please feel free to post here in our online user forum <a href="http://www.openeditdam.com/OpenEditDAMblog/index.html">http://www.openeditdam.com/OpenEditDAMblog/index.html</a>
The OpenEdit developer website can be found at <a href="http://www.openedit.org/">http://www.openedit.org</a> and our website devoted to OpenEdit DAM and CMS is <a href="http://www.openeditdam.com/">http://www.openeditDAM.com</a>
We think that Java is the best tool for Enterprises, that’s why we use Java and Object Orientated development to build OpenEdit. We feel that choice has been advantageous by allowing our team to re-use and constantly refactor our code for over a decade without ever starting over. Our competitors who are using PHP, Perl and proprietary software systems such as Microsoft, seem to have to re-architect every few years to avoid endless mounds of confusing spaghetti code or to adapt to new technology such as Ajax. Java has been great for our clients and OpenEdit.
Thanks for this opportunity!

Openedit Founder, Christopher Burkey Interview

mike-johnston

We were very pleased to have a chance to interview Dries Buytaert, founder of the legendary <a href="http://drupal.org/" target="_blank">Drupal</a> content management system. He shares his thoughts on its success, future and how it came to be in this intriguing and indepth discussion. We had so many questions, that we are only publishing part one while he works on the second half.
Here you go.
CC: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today, Dries. We'd like to cover a few areas during this interview.. specifically Drupal and your latest venture, Acquia.
Can you tell us a little about your background and how you became involved in the world of Content Management Systems?
DB: I was a student at the University of Antwerp in Belgium around 1999. I was doing web development with CGI and server-side includes, but I wanted to learn more about technologies like PHP and MySQL. Also, at the same time, we had the need for an internal messaging system at our student dorm. So, I wrote a simple message board. Then when I graduated, I decided to move my internal message board onto the internet.
CC: Our understanding is that Drupal originally started as a BBS system, having been very involved in the BBS realm ourselves, we find this very interesting. Can you tell us a little bit about how it came to be and was it as popular as a BBS as it is today?
DB: Drupal began as an internal message board that I used to manage my student activities. We just used it in my student dorm to communicate about dinner times, etc. Once I graduated, I began transforming it into a news and discussion website: <a href="http://www.drop.org/">www.drop.org</a>.
After a year or so, I released the software behind drop.org as Drupal 1.0.0, and Drupal officially came to be on January 15, 2001. Contributors still celebrate this as Drupal’s birthday every year.
CC: According to sources, Drupal’s name came about by accident. Is this true? Can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with the name?
<img title="Drupal Content Management System" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/drupal-141x150.jpg" alt="Dries Buytaert" />
DB: Yes. Initially, I wanted to register the site under the Dutch word “dorp” which in English means “village” or “small town”. While registering the domain, I made an error and typed “Drop” instead of “Dorp”. I was shocked to see that Drop.org was still available, so I decided to keep the domain. As such, the first Internet website powered by an online version of Drupal was Drop.org. Drupal did not get its name until I released it as open source software in early 2001.
CC: Did you ever expect Drupal to get to the level of popularity it is at today?
DB: Not at all, I started all this as a hobby and quickly got out of hand. After I moved it to the public internet, I continued to build on it for over a year and added a lot of features. But, it continued to be an experimental platform to learn from and apply new web technologies such as RSS feeds and content and user rating.
I increased my experiments and development and drew the attention of an audience that was also interested in the future of the internet. This audience provided suggestions and was also active with state of the art web technologies and they increasingly began providing me with feedback. At a certain time the feedback took on such a level that I thought I should provide the engine to them so they could start there own experimenting and applying there own suggestions to it. This is how it got moved to Open Source, and also how the community started.
I must say though that I felt good making it available to the Open Source community. I had looked at other similar systems such as phpnuke but with my background in computer science I could really say that the architecture and design were much better. People were asking for modifications but I thought it was really well and worth of being seen, especially compared to other state of the art Content Management Systems written in PHP. So made available without too much expectations but it got the reputation after all. I of course continued to work hard on it.
CC: What do you feel are the core strengths of Drupal and why?
DB: The core strength of Drupal is definitely the open source community that is behind the project. I am constantly amazed by the innovation that comes out of the thousands of dedicated Drupal contributors. There are thousands of add-on modules that can be used to successfully power online communities, blogs, and collaboration environments. Furthermore, Drupal’s modularity makes it much easier to use and extend than traditional content management systems.
CC: With the numerous other open source projects on the market today, what separates Drupal and helps it stand out from the pack?
DB: Drupal has been a pioneer from the start by embracing new technologies and being on the front lines when it comes to web development. But what separates Drupal is its modularity – the combination of a core package and then task-specific modules that can be added as needed.
This modularity was part of Drupal’s initial design. I was sort of shocked that most of the other systems didn’t have a modular design — to me, with my background as a computer science student, that felt like a very natural thing to do. I was also involved in the Linux project back then, working on wireless network drivers. That’s also obviously a modular system, so I may have gotten some inspiration from there as well.
Drupal’s modular design makes it attractive to both technical and non-technical users. If you look at Content Management Systems, they have eliminated the traditional role of the webmaster. This role has evolved more into a role of content editor.
My vision for Drupal is to do the same for the developers (role). I think there is a lot of room to eliminate the traditional web developer, eliminating might be a bit too strong, but re-define the role of the web developer at least. The way we try to accomplish this in Drupal is with a modular approach so users can build web sites quickly without having to do any programming, in other words one does not have to be a true developer to build a feature rich and interactive web site. I hope we can make a big step forward with this in the next five years.
CC: There are some who say that Drupal is trying to do too much too quickly… and its hard to keep up. Specifically, if you visit the Drupal site today there are 4 versions that modules are being created for. What is your response to this?
DB: A huge community has grown up around Drupal, with thousands of active contributors to the open source project, including nearly 2,000 community-developed modules for extending Drupal functionality. Drupal’s thriving, vibrant ecosystem is the very reason that Drupal is so successful – it is its greatest strength. However, it’s true that Drupal can be overwhelming to those that don’t have the time or resources to invest in staying on top of Drupal’s latest offerings, updates, etc., which is why I founded Acquia. Acquia addresses these challenges by packaging some of the best software from the project and by providing continuously available support.
CC: What are the largest sites you are aware of that run on the Drupal platform and why do you think they chose it?
DB: A diverse list of organizations are using Drupal including Lifetime Television, MTV UK, Universal Music, SonyBMG, Warner Brothers Records, New York Observer, Forbes, The Onion, Harvard University, Amnesty International and tens of thousands more. I believe there are 2 primary reasons people have chosen Drupal. The first is the Drupal community – it consists of thousands of passionate, talented people who believe in the future of the Web and invest their time and energy to contribute to the project. Second, Drupal’s modular architecture makes it a flexible platform to build great websites.
CC: How does someone decide whether to install Drupal 5 or 6? It seems that in order to use the majority of available modules, one must use the 5.x edition? What do you say to this?
DB: As with any software package, someone building a website in Drupal must map their requirements to the modules and capabilities available. From the beginning, I chose not to preserve backward compatibility because doing so requires that you drag historical baggage along, and in interpreted languages like PHP, this comes at a significant performance cost.
Our mission has always been to make Drupal fast, small, clean and on the bleeding-edge of technology. In the early days I focused completely on the aesthetics of Drupal's code. I spent days trying to do something better, with fewer lines of code and more elegant than elsewhere. And with me, many others. It was the right thing to do. Over the years, we've seen a lot of innovations happen that would not likely have happened while preserving backward compatibility – the node system being one of the most prominent examples.
Developers always had free reign to implement their ideas in the best possible way. It is something that Drupal has in its favor compared to many other content management systems. It's been interesting to see how Drupal has spread and how it has grown to be more flexible and cover more niches than many other systems. If anything, this needs to be attributed to the fact that we haven't cared much about backward compatibility, and our single-mindedness to get the technology right.
Over time, the vast library of Drupal modules is upgraded to support each major release – given the number of modules, this, admittedly, takes time. As part of this process, we seek to bring popular modules into Drupal core to ensure that capabilities that everyone uses are brought into the core upgrade process.
CC: Can you provide us some details on future development initiatives? Any new changes coming down the pipeline?
DB: We are currently working on Drupal 7 and I named Angie Byron, aka webchick, as my Drupal 7 co-maintainer at Drupalcon Szeged in August of this year. We are focused on improving Drupal in a number of ways – adding features in core, improving usability and performance, creating a test framework and adding lots of tests and simplifying the upgrade process.
Longer term, I see tremendous opportunities for the semantic web and search. For Drupal, this means making Drupal emit structured information. Hundreds of thousands of Drupal sites contain vast amounts of structured data, covering an enormous range of topics, including product information. Unfortunately, that structure is hidden deep in Drupal's database and doesn't surface to the HTML code generated by Drupal. As such, search engines can't pick it up as a product, and they'd fail to include it in their world-wide product database.
Technologies like this disintermediate so many existing websites and organizations that it makes my head spin. It is too great an opportunity for us to pass up on. By adding semantic technology to Drupal core, I think we can make a notable contribution to the future of the web.
CC: Tell us a little about Acquia and why you formed this company.
DB: Acquia helps accelerate Drupal usage by contributing to the advancement of the core technology and offering products, services, and technical support to simplify the deployment and management of Drupal websites.
As a thriving open source project, Drupal changes at such a rapid rate that it can be challenging to find the most useful and relevant modules, keep systems secure and up to date, and find real-time expertise and support to quickly resolve issues. By reducing or eliminating these issues, Acquia improves the effectiveness of organizations already using Drupal and brings the power of Drupal within reach of more organizations who are exploring Drupal for the first time.
CC: How successful have you been so far with this initiative? Who are your biggest customers?
DB: Acquia just launched the general availability of Acquia Drupal and the Acquia Network on September 30, 2008. We’ve had more than 4,000 downloads of Acquia Drupal since we launched. We’ve received significant interest in subscriptions to the Acquia Network and have a handful of beta customers already leveraging the Acquia Network including Adobe, which is using Acquia Drupal and the Acquia Network to power Flex.org.
The feedback we’ve received so far has been extremely positive supporting my initial suspicion that commercial grade support will lead to increased adoption of Drupal – especially in the enterprise.
CC: What makes the Acquia version of Drupal different from the readily available version we all know and love?
DB: There are thousands of modules available for Drupal. Acquia Drupal is simply a packaged collection of some of the best software from the Drupal project to simplify the process of getting started with Drupal. For experienced Drupal developers and users, it speeds the process of assembling the pieces to start building a website, and it provides a supported foundation should the developer, or in many cases, their clients decide they want to purchase commercial technical support.
The code – Drupal core and all the community modules – in Acquia Drupal is the same code that is available on Drupal.org. Its GPL-licensed and available for free to anyone who wants to use it. Our engineering team works closely with the community module maintainers to contribute back any and all patches we write, making them available to the entire Drupal community whether they choose to use Acquia Drupal or not.
CC: Is your goal to move Drupal away from Open Source and more into a Commercial product offering?
DB: No. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Drupal open source community members have made Drupal the innovative and widely popular social publishing system that it is today. The Drupal community is the foundation for the company and is dependent on the continued development by Drupal community members.
Acquia does not want to take Drupal away from the open source community. Rather, Acquia is stepping up as a community member to collaborate in Drupal code development, increase the industry profile for Drupal, and introduce convenient packaging, support, and remote network services that will make Drupal even easier to adopt and use. Additionally, Acquia Drupal is offered as a free download and all software included in the distribution is licensed under the GNU Public License and contributed back to the Drupal open source project.
CC: Can you tell us a little bit about each of your offerings: Carbon, Spokes, Caliper and Yellow Jersey?
DB: Acquia Drupal (previously code named Carbon) is our commercially supported distribution of the Drupal social publishing system. It is a packaged collection of some of the best software from the Drupal project offering an advanced starting point to quickly begin building social publishing Web sites that blend static pages, blogs, wikis, discussion forums, mashups, and custom content types.
The Acquia Network (previously code named Spokes) provides the essential support and remote network services to efficiently operate sites with Acquia Drupal sites. All subscribers to the Acquia Network gain access to the Acquia Network’s subscriber forums, remote network services such as software update notifications, uptime monitoring, Mollom spam blocking, and Acquia Drupal documentation. Caliper was the code name for the Mollom spam blocking service we are offering through the Acquia Network. Additionally, premium subscriptions provide Web-based ticket management, as well as email and telephone support. The Acquia Network functions as an operations portal for managing Acquia Drupal sites and connecting to Acquia support channels.
Finally, Yellow Jersey is the code name for the training and certification program we are developing. For more information on Yellow Jersey, as well as the future roadmaps for Acquia Drupal and the Acquia Network, check out the community section of our website, <a href="http://acquia.com/community" target="_blank">http://acquia.com/community</a> and share your thoughts about where we are headed.

Drupal founder, Dries Buytaert Interview

After many a poking and prodding and finally having to show him some whisky to get him off his pirate ship, we finally managed to snag some time with Franz Maruna of Concrete5. Be prepared for an entertaining read.
CC: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today, we know it's hard to find time amidst developing to break for some good quality questioning ?
FM: <a href="http://www.concrete5.org/" target="_blank">Concrete5</a> is revolutionizing content management. It’s so easy to use – people can’t believe it. Finding the time to talk to people about c5 always easy and fun. Thanks for listening!
CC: Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to get involved in the CMS world.
FM: I have a background in both software engineering and liberal arts. I was programming by first grade, running BBS’s in the 80’s, and doing multi-media art throughout. When I went off to college to study art and philosophy, I had pretty much burned out on computer science.
Strangely, in school everyone was making “pages” about their cats and girlfriends, and sharing them on the internet – which to me had really only been a way to &lt;pause&gt; well… make long distance calls for free. It quickly became clear that a technologist with an eye for design would be in demand. I dropped out of college, and I started as a web production programmer. Through the years I have done absolutely every job in the spectrum of rolls that now go into delivering top-notch websites.
In the early days we were using Server Side Includes and then simple header calls to make our lives easier. Over time the web became more of a middleware, and now a browser based development environment. Concrete5 is the result of years of these trials and tribulations.
CC: What is Concrete5 CMS and how did it come about?
<img title="Concrete5 Content Management System" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/concrete51-141x150.jpg" alt="Franz Maruna" />
FM: Concrete5 is a building material for great websites. It runs in PHP and MySQL on your live web server. It adds a toolbar at the top of your website, so you can easily make changes and additions as you browse. It does this with out creating restrictions around what a designer and developer can dream up.
It started as an internal toolkit we developed for some client work in 2003. We sold it as a commercial product, and after a complete interface and architecture overhaul, we gave it away for nothing under the very flexible MIT open source license this summer.
CC: Who are the other key players in the organization?
FM: Concrete wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for Andrew Embler, our brilliant CTO. Every day he battles client challenges in new projects, trouble shoots servers and systems that are already built, maintains the core c5 code base, and periodically listens to me dribble on and on about what we’re going to do next. That man deserves an award. I’m sure he appreciates that you’re reading this instead of him.
There’s a long list of freelancers and employees who have contributed over the years, but we really also owe a lot to Ryan and &lt;coughs&gt; el Nino – as well as Matt, our interface designer.
CC: What makes Concrete5 different from myriad of other CMS' on the market?
FM: There are so many CMS’ today because it is a real need that isn’t yet being well served. People desperately want to express themselves as freely online as they can with a pen and paper. If FrontPage, a blog, and MySpace templates is as good as we can do; we’ve failed. It’s impossible to do a market comparison in a couple of paragraphs, but there’s a few huge differentiators that make us unique:
It’s TOTALLY open source. The MIT license because it lets you do ANYTHING you want short of suing us. If you’re building a startup, and you want to get a jump on the competition but truly own all the code you write – our MIT license makes that very easy. As a developer you don’t have to submit your code back to the project. For all I care you can package c5 up exactly as it is today, call it ‘cement6’ and go sell it on CDs in Wal-Mart. We also went ahead and chose SourceForge for hosting the files, so this decision can’t really be un-done later. C5 is free. Period. We strongly believe in the power of free information, so after years of pretending we didn’t, this complete openness makes us feel great.
It is middleware based, not a “publishing system.” A lot of solutions like FrontPage or Contribute let you edit your website locally and then “publish” up to the live site. We think that is awkward at best, and misses a huge opportunity for interactivity and communication with your audience. If you can’t easily put a form on a page, you’re just making a brochure on the web.
It wasn’t something else first. A lot of what the world uses as CMS actually started as a specific app. We use WordPress for our corporate blog today, because it’s a great blogging platform. That doesn’t mean it’s great for everything else too. The same can be said for any number of news portal apps that are considered general CMS.
Concrete was always designed to be a site building toolkit. We’ve got a flexible permission system and a very intuitive user experience, so we’re not giving you app you have to hack into something else. I remember working on a Mambo project years ago where I was asking myself “gee should I handle these pages with ‘sections’ or ‘topics’ – they seem to basically be the same.” That’s not good. C5 is the building material that brings blocks of content and functionality together into ANY type of website you choose, with ease.
All these other apps are GI-Joes and Barbies – great for playing one type of game. We’re Lego’s – go get creative!
It’s written in the best platform for the web. I know I’m gonna step on toes with this one, but I don’t care. LAMP is still where it is at. Don’t believe me? Go ask Twitter how Rails is doing, ask Friendster about Java, and if you feel a need to ask Microsoft… well, meh. I don’t know why people think PHP has gone out of vogue. It still serves almost all the porn on the web, let the biz dev wankers make idle promises about that! &lt;pauses for laughter&gt;
Now to mitigate the flame war I’m starting, let me point out I think smart programmers with good communication can make a stellar application in anything – even Cold Fusion…And vice-versa is true; no language guarantees a great product without a great process… But, PHP is free, it’s everywhere, it’s fast, it’s OOP (yes c5 is object oriented) and it has stood the test of time as a basic part of the web’s infrastructure. We want to be right there with it as part of the glue that holds the web together.
Most importantly, we have a unique perspective we’ve put into c5. Fundamentally we think there will always be two types of parties working on a web site – the builders and the owners. A builder might be the neighbor kid with a hacked version of Photoshop in his basement, or it could be Razorfish; their goal is to get in and out successfully.
Owners have to live what these builders made. They need it to last for years, not months. They need it to change with them as their
businesses and organizations change. They need to actually be able to use the thing in new ways without being afraid. We think most of our competition serves one side of this equation or the other, and few demonstrate deliberate thought about that conundrum. C5 serves both sides very well. 
CC: You recently were honored with Project of the Month @ Sourceforge. Why do you think that is?
FM: I hope SourceForge appreciated our passion and dug it. This isn’t some business we’re hoping to flip in 18 months, we genuinely think the web could have the same impact on the world as the printing press did, if it gets easier to use.
I also think they played with the app and were impressed. I’d encourage everyone to take 5 minutes to mess around with the shared demo at concrete5.org/demo – you’ll get why it’s compelling pretty quickly. We’re only a 3 month old project, but we’re growing fast, I believe <a href="http://sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">SourceForge</a> saw an opportunity to help some good folk trying to do a great thing. We appreciate the honor very much.
We’re very appreciative about being here too, CMSCritic is a great site that is as comprehensive as you can get in this huge space.
CC: What drove your decision to take what was once a commercial product and make it open source?
FM: Sleeping at night, or lack of it. I just had my second kid. I wasn’t doing anything meaningful, just selling software like my dad. It was time to make a difference in the world. It was always a pleasure seeing the faces of our clients’ light up when we sat down for training at the end of a project and it ended up being just 30 minutes of “hey if you want to change that, just click it. – good luck!” I wanted more people to have that experience, and I didn’t want to run a web shop with 50 employees.
CC: Do you have any regrets with this move? How has it impacted you from a financial standpoint?
FM: I have absolutely no regrets, going open source easily ranks in the best half a dozen decisions of my life so far.
Giving away free software is expensive. Producing Open Source Software (by Karl Fogel) argues that it actually costs more to get to market going open source than going commercial. I don’t know if that’s true yet, but having done both, I can tell you it is quite different. ? So buy a c5kit on our site, or choose us as your hosting provider! Help feed a generous developer!
CC: There are so many big names in the CMS market today, how do you see Concrete5 performing in the next year in comparison?
FM: Being big doesn’t help you deliver great software; in fact the opposite is true. Typically big ideas come from small teams in basements and garages. We’re in a really unique position here – we’ve had the benefit of being a commercial product for years, but we never had so many clients on previous versions of concrete that supporting and updating their installs became overwhelming. We’ve got all the passion of a garage team, but with the experience of a jaded old web shop under our belts. We also don’t have $7m of someone else’s money we have to spend quickly, and make a 20x return on. The way I see it; we’re in an enviable position.
I hope we continue to see exponential growth over the next 14 months. Being the underdog right now is a real pleasure, and keeping the flexibility to act quickly is important to me.
CC: What are your favorite Concrete5 driven websites?
FM: I love the promise behind <a href="http://schoolpulse.com/" target="_blank">SchoolPulse.com</a>, the design behind <a href="http://monsoonworks.com/" target="_blank">MonsoonWorks.com</a>, and the purpose of <a href="http://jtfp.org/" target="_blank">JTFP.org</a>. You can check out a bunch more at getConcrete5.com
CC: If you could change anything about C5 what would it be and why?
FM: I would stop time, go to a beautiful house on the beach with Andy, and write a thousand pages of documentation around how to best use c5. I guess we don’t need the house on the beach, and that does read a little weird now that I’ve written it, but I still think it’d be nice.
CC: How can the community help?
FM: Help yourselves first – design themes or build new blocks, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do with projects that have been open source for much longer. We have a marketplace in the works where you’ll be able to sell your work, or give it away for free.
Help others get going. People need help with everything from installing to building. Start playing around so you can become an expert early, as the market for c5 developers is now emerging. Tell us what we should be doing differently. Send us links to your c5 sites. Tell your friends to check out c5.
CC: Are there any themes or plugins available for C5?
FM: C5 is built around a Themes, Blocks, and Apps architecture that makes it inherently easy to customize without compromising further extendibility.
People around the world are already making stuff for c5 as I type. We’ll be launching a marketplace for them before the end of the year. We’ve got a forum app and an eCommerce app that we’re porting from the previous version of concrete and hope to launch on the marketplace quickly.
CC: What other services does your firm offer? Is CMS your only product offering?
FM: We sell a few smaller software products including AjaxFTP and FlashFloorPlan. We do some high-level support work for other web shops that handle most of the client facing c5 opportunities we hear about. We still do build some web apps and online communities for experienced entrepreneurs, so if you’ve got a big idea you should certainly ask us what we think about it.
CC: Can you provide a sneak peak into upcoming features or changes?
FM: Some small improvements around validation in the blocks that come bundled with the core. The big thing we’re working on now is multi-language support for the dashboard and editing UI. We’re also working on that marketplace &amp; community I mentioned.
CC: Any parting comments?
FM: We’d like to thank CMSCritic for giving us the opportunity to pontificate. Keep up the good work.

Concrete5 founder, Franz Maruna Interview

WordPress is perhaps the best known name in the world of Blogging, CMS' and Open Source and most certainly is a massive entity with over 4 million blogs alone on WordPress.com and countless millions of downloads of their open source cms platform.
All of this in thanks to one young man (and his team of crack developers of course), Matt Mullenweg. We recently had an opportunity to ask Matt a few questions, and here are his replies:
CC: With the recent injection of funding into your company, can you tell us a little about what your plans are and where you plan to take Automattic now that you have some solid funding?
MM: There aren't really plans to change our direction significantly from what it was before. We raised funding because things were working well, not because we wanted to do the opposite of what has worked thus far.
CC: With the recent aquisition of Gravatar and the past formation of Akismet, WordPress, BBPress and your other projects, you've positioned yourself and your company AutoMattic into quite the comfortable niche market. It's obvious that WordPress has become somewhat of the darling of the blog market, if not the CMS market as well. What drove you to make these choices in life and do you have further plans to enhance your offerings with further acquisitions or are you comfortable with where you are in the market today?
<img title="WordPress Content Management System" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mcm_22771-141x150.jpg" alt="Matt Mullenweg" />
MM: Generally the decision to acquire something vs just building it is a matter of time, cost, and how much momentum the existing service has. With Gravatar, for example, it was trivial to replicate technically but already had a great community and was already built in to a million places.
CC: There have been numerous articles touting WordPress as the future of Content Management Systems. What is your view on this? How do you define content management and how it relates to your platform?
MM: I'm not crazy about the term content management. I don't wake up and say “I want to manage some content today!” I want to blog. I want to podcast. To the extent WordPress is a competitor in the CMS space I think it's because we try to re-examine common assumptions that traditional bloated CMSes make.
CC: What do you see as the future of the blog platform?
MM: I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that rich media like slideshows, audio, and video are going to be a big part of it.
CC: What is the future direction of Automattic? Where do you see your company taking you in the next few years?
MM: With Automattic our goals are somewhat modest: to continue to grow our personnel in an organic fashion and keep up with the explosion of usage in our main products like WordPress.com.
CC: What prompted you to write BBPress? I understand it was written over a couple of days back in 2004. Do you foresee any future merging of the two platforms?
MM: Nope, bbPress and WordPress will always be separate, though I think their integration could be better. I wrote bbPress because after a ton of research I couldn't find anything out there that fit my needs. For example as far as I know bbPress was the first forum system to use CSS instead of tables for layout. It was basic stuff like that.
CC: It's no secret that you are a promotor of Open Source software. What prompted you to choose this route?
MM: I've benefited so much from Open Source in my life it just seems fair to give back.
CC: If you could change one thing about your product or it’s offerings what would it be?
MM: At the data layer I'd like if the database names and organization in WordPress were a little more consistent, they sometimes vary in capitalizations and such because of the legacy of b2.
CC: What makes WordPress better than the numerous other open source CMS and Blog platforms on the market today? What differentiates your product?
MM: I don't think it's any one feature or thing, it's the thousands of plugins and themes available for the platform. That community is impossible to duplicate.
CC: Can you give us a sneak peak of upcoming features we can expect?
MM: In 2.7 look for a redesigned dashboard, drag-and-drop reorganization of the dashboard and write pages, and a built-in plugin browser and installer.
CC: In what ways can WordPress/Automattic use our help as users?
MM: First and foremost would be to introduce the people you care about to blogging and help them with the technical management and upgrades of using WP.
Second I would say that our support and documentation teams could always use more help. However little you think you know, there's always someone out there that knows less and could use your help. Plus doing support is the single best way I know of to learn WordPress inside and out.
CC: Thank you very much for your time, Matt. We look forward to speaking with you again soon!
Matt's personal blog is at <a href="http://ma.tt">Ma.tt</a>

WordPress CMS Founder, Matt Mullenweg Interview

Liferay, Inc., provider of Liferay Portal, the world’s leading enterprise open source portal, recently announced the availability of Liferay Portal Enterprise Edition (EE). The new commercially licensed version of the award-winning open source product, which is offered by subscription with guaranteed long-term support and maintenance, provides organizations a low risk alternative for adopting and maintaining cutting-edge open source technology.
Liferay Portal EE is made available via Liferay’s Enterprise Subscription and Support, a combined support and maintenance subscription that also provides business-critical service level agreements up to one hour response times, 365 days a year and 24 hours a day. In addition, a longer support period provides stability and ongoing updates to organizations seeking to use a single version of the portal over several years. Each enterprise version will be supported with ongoing bug fixes and security and performance enhancements made for the life of a subscription. Liferay Portal EE’s inaugural release includes over 200 enhancements in the areas of security, performance and persistence.
“Enterprise Edition addresses a previously underserved market segment: enterprises seeking the optimal balance between long-term stability and cutting edge technology,” said Bryan Cheung, Liferay’s CEO, “Liferay Portal EE offers an adoption and maintenance strategy for customers unaccustomed to the open source software model, offering the benefits of cost reduction, innovation and flexibility but at a lower risk and with higher predictability.”
Liferay’s Enterprise Subscription and Support offering is rounded out with a customer service portal, web-based incident tracking, an enterprise knowledge base, and a web-based update repository where organizations have direct access to service packs for their version of Liferay Portal EE. Software indemnification and legal indemnification is also available. For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.liferay.com/products/ee">www.liferay.com/products/ee</a>.
The open source distribution of the product, Liferay Portal Standard Edition (SE), will continue to be offered freely to the public under the business-friendly MIT license. Those seeking to download and test-drive the very latest features of Liferay Portal can still do so at <a href="http://www.liferay.com/downloads">www.liferay.com/downloads</a>.

Liferay Portal Released in Enterprise Edition

Have you been waiting for an opportunity to transfer your blog from one format to another but have had to hold back because of time constraints or too much content? Well look no further than the new Google Blog Converters Project launched by the brilliant minds of the Google Data Liberation team.
From the website:
<blockquote>
This new Open Source project provides the ability to easily move blog posts and comments from service to service. This initial release provides Python libraries and runnable scripts that convert between the export formats of Blogger,  LiveJournal, MovableType, and WordPress.
</blockquote>
Interested? You can download now from the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/google-blog-converters-appengine/downloads/list">Google Blog Converters website</a>

Got a blog? Need to move it? Google to the rescue!

Semrush - Be an SEO hero

Be an SEO hero with Semrush

#ffffff

Spoonlabs is proud to announce the arrival of 4.1 version of its flagship content management platform to its growing community of webmasters, developers, design studios, entrepreneurs and technology partners.
Vivvo CMS is an intuitive content management system atop a powerful programming framework, empowering numerous industry leading online newspapers, magazines, journals, and TV and radio stations. It benefits from a large client-base with several thousand websites developed in over 20 different languages, including right-to-left languages (RTL).
After almost a year in development, the new version of Vivvo delivers a secure, scalable and robust platform with a specially designed template engine (VTE) that enables rapid development of feature-rich, Search Engine-friendly websites. Vivvo 4.1 incorporates several important performance and scalability improvements as well as significant usability enhancements based on the feedback received from the active community of users. Special emphasis has been placed on Search Engine visibility and as a result the new version of Vivvo significantly increases page views and website traffic due to its built-in Search Engine-friendly layout and logic.
<a href="http://www.vivvo.net">Vivvo</a> v4.1 also introduces a fast caching system, document and asset management, advanced multilingual capabilities and URL management as well as easy access to over 100 downloadable assets such as widgets, plug-ins, templates and other goodies.

Spoonlabs releases Vivvo Content Management System 4.1

Finally, the day is upon us. WordPress 2.7 has been released to the public and is now available for immediate download from WordPress.org.
This latest version features some interesting changes such as a redesigned administrative interface and improved drag and drop dashboard layout.
<img title="WordPress 2.7 Screenshot" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ss-4.png" alt="The New WordPress 2.7 Dashboard" />
Beautiful isn't it? Here's an into video:

Finally, WordPress 2.7 is officially launched!

Microsoft has released an early version of Oxite, it's Open-source Content Management App geared towards developers who build large blogs or expansive websites.
A simple blog engine written using ASP.NET MVC, and is designed with two main goals:
<ul>
<li>To provide a sample of ‘core blog functionality' in a reusable fashion. Blogs are simple and well understood by many developers, but the set of basic functions that a blog needs to implement (trackbacks, rss, comments, etc.) are fairly complex. Hopefully this code helps.</li>
<li>To provide a real-world sample written using ASP.NET MVC.</li>
</ul>
The framework offers many features common in blogs, including pingbacks, trackbacks, anonymous or authenticated comments with the option to moderate comments, RSS feeds for any page and a Web administration panel.
One of the key objectives appears to be the ability to add or create new pages with ease. While it could become a competitor down the road for blog engines such as MovableType and WordPress, that doesn't appear to be the focus at the moment.
More info available at the <a href="http://www.codeplex.com/oxite">Microsoft Oxite</a> website.

Microsoft enters the Open-Source Content Management scene with Oxite

Watch for a review of this CMS very soon. For those of you who have never heard of or used Elxis, it's based on Joomla/Mambo and is amazingly search engine friendly and far more secure. Their previous release was very intriguing and this one promises a ton of new changes, we've been anxiously awaiting this one to try it out.
Some of the key features of Elxis are: automated tasks, AJAX technology, multi-lingual interface.
For Security you get: Elxis Defender, FloodBlocker, Logins Recorder, extended access control and administration login page cloak.
Integrated mechanism for creating search engine friendly URLS called SEO PRO making it optimized for search engines, is XHTML/CSS valid and table-less.
AND fully adjustable members list and complete users profiles. You can set the users access to any section of the CMS.
We were pretty pumped to try this out and see if the wait was worth it. You should check it out too and can do so here: <a href="http://elxis.org">Check out Elxis</a>
Elxis 2008.1 (Nemesis) changelog
<ol>
<li>You can set new users to be approved manually before they are able to login for the first time. After an administrator approve a new user registration, a notification e-mail, written in the user's preferable language, is sent to him to notify him that his registration was approved.</li>
<li>Integration of component eBlog. eBlog (Elxis Blog) is a full featured Blog component for Elxis CMS. You can create unlimited user blogs and assign an owner to each one.</li>
<li>Users can post comments on eBlog posts. Commentary support for third party components. On the next release user commentary will be supported for the normal content items too.</li>
<li>Updated TinyMCE to the latest version for better XHTML compatibility.</li>
<li>Updated ADOdb database library to the latest version.</li>
<li>Oracle database support (experimental)</li>
<li>SEO PRO upgrade. A totally new language handling system developed for SEO PRO enabled web sites. The language information is now stored temporary in the url. For each language Elxis generates sub-folder like URLs (except from the default site language). Htaccess file was also updated.</li>
<li>Elxis became PHP 5.x only compatible (recommended PHP 5.2 or greater).</li>
<li>Multi-lingual module titles for standard modules.</li>
<li>Multi-lingual menu items titles for standard menu items.</li>
<li>Option to generate RSS feeds for any content item regardless if it is published on front-page or not.</li>
<li>RTL improvements (thanks to Farhad Sakhaei).</li>
<li>Updated language files.</li>
<li>Updated automatic translation feature.</li>
<li>Updated web site screen shot feature for component Weblinks.</li>
<li>Updated Elxis installer.</li>
<li>Option to change the default username (currently was admin) during Elxis installation.</li>
<li>Some improvements to the default template (okto).</li>
<li>FTP improvements to work with open_basedir restriction enabled.</li>
<li>New error management function. Error messages are now more informational.</li>
<li>Support of XML schemas version 0.3</li>
<li>Updated security images (captcha) feature.</li>
<li>Option to auto-publish submitted content items from front-end based on access manager permissions.</li>
<li>Added database table #__comments</li>
<li>On database table #__banners the column “date” renamed to “dateadded”</li>
<li>Implementation of user uploaded files on their own directory (currently used on eBlog)</li>
<li>Fixed menu link creation in component typed content</li>
<li>Many other small fixes, improvements and additions.</li>
</ol>

The Elxis team releases Elxis CMS 2008.1

Packtpub has announced the Finalists for the 2008 Open Source CMS Awards:
“As usual, judging comes from a panel of experienced and respected figures from the Content Management and Open Source industry. They will be selecting their top three based on a number of factors including performance, usability, accessibility, ease of configuration and customization, scalability and security.”
“The final judge is made up of votes from customers and visitors to <a href="http://www.packtpub.com/award/cmst" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.PacktPub.com</a>. You have the chance to support your favourite Open Source CMS by submitting a vote when the final five are announced.”
Here are the finalists.
Overall Open Source CMS Award
<ul>
<li>DotNetNuke CMS</li>
<li>Drupal CMS</li>
<li>Joomla! CMS</li>
<li>Plone CMS</li>
<li>TYPOlight CMS</li>
</ul>
Most Promising Open Source CMS
<ul>
<li>CMS Made Simple</li>
<li>Impress CMS</li>
<li>Mia CMS</li>
<li>MemHT CMS</li>
<li>SilverStripe CMS</li>
</ul>
Best PHP Open Source CMS
<ul>
<li>CMS Made Simple</li>
<li>Drupal CMS</li>
<li>eZ Publish CMS</li>
<li>Joomla! CMS</li>
<li>XOOPS CMS</li>
</ul>
Best Other Open Source CMS
<ul>
<li>dotCMS</li>
<li>DotNetNuke CMS</li>
<li>mojoPortal CMS</li>
<li>Plone CMS</li>
<li>Umbraco CMS</li>
</ul>
You can vote here: <a href="http://www.packtpub.com/award/cmst" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Open Source CMS</a> Awards

2008 Open Source CMS Award Finalists Announced

Elxis is an interesting cms that expands upon traditional mambo code by adding an amazing set of SEO features (something sorely lacking in Joomla and Mambo by default) and enhanced security among other improvements. In this Elxis review, let's examine their latest edition and see how it looks.
As you can see from the picture below, they feature an attractive installer with several options such as quick links to their help forums, the ability to click ONCE and restart the installation (which is a very sweet addition.. thank you Elxis team).. as well as a percentage complete and tons of quick notes to make sure you are well informed as you proceed through the installation.
I'm one for appreciating tips and stuff that not just expand the knowledge of the user doing the install… but helps them understand what and why they are entering the data they are entering.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis1.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
Once you've passed this stage, you will get the screen below:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis2.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
Accepting this license agreement will allow you to proceed:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis3.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
Fill in your database details, select a sample data package and you are ready to proceed. Elxis has a very solid selection of database options as well.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis4.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
Select your language, site name, timezone offset.. and continue:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis5.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
Enter in your admin settings on this screen. I like the fact that it auto generates a very secure password for you.. you are of course not forced to use it but it's nice to have the option (although admittedly with my memory, there'd be no way I'd manage with something as obscure.. )
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis6.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
Configure FTP access if you like, the only reason I can see doing this.. is to allow file attributes to be changed by the installer instead of having to do them yourself.. Personally, I prefer to maintain control.. but I like the fact that I have the choice.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis7.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
Now we are ready to get to the test site and see how she looks:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis8.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
What I like about the default page is that it covers each of their major features such as SEO Pro and serves as a nice set of instructions and documentation for making the most out of their package. It's a nice looking default template and works well with typical expectations.
There currently aren't a huge amount of themes and templates available but it wouldn't be tough to port over a Joomla or Mambo one as they are basically the same framework. I haven't tested to see if they work by default but if someone knows, please let me know.
Plugin wise, I do know that I tried a few Joomla plugins and they worked fine so I suspect it's a trial and error situation there as well. Again, if someone has more detail, please advise.
On the topic of plugins though.. I admittedly don't think you would need much. The fact is, Elxis has pretty much everything I'd need from the get go without the need to install third party apps… a fact that I think is one of it's strengths for sure.
The admin panel is a redesigned mambo one with a few additions.. not much of a surprise and very usable and clean:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis10.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
This new version also boasts the addition of eBlog component.. which is very nice! Here is a screenshot of it's configuration page:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis11.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
One other thing before our rating that I wanted to point out and that's this nice little addition that I just noticed in the content section.. When you choose to add a new content item, it gives you the choice to have an SEO Page Title or SEO Post title generated and also gives you a Validate link:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elxis12.png" alt="Elxis Content Management System" />
That is a brilliant addition and something that may have been present in 2008.0 but I certainly don't recall it. I'll have to ask the developers about that..
On with the ratings:
Community 7/10 – Not super active yet, but maybe after this review things will improve ? 
Expandability 8.5/10 -Not alot of expansion required, but several options available if needed.
Themability 8/10 – Needs more but I love the ones it has.. for instance, there is a CNN clone!
Useability 9/10 – Very usable, very well thought out and easily outclasses Joomla and Mambo in my eyes.
<h2>Overall Score: 8/10</h2>

Elxis Review - a look at Elxis CMS 2008 series

Originally started as a BBS (Bulletin Board System) by Dries Buytaert, Drupal was turned into an Opensource project back in 2001. Since then, it has expanded to become one of the largest content management systems on the market today. With a huge number of promoters and an enormous community, Drupal continues to expand and grow far past what was initially anticipated back in 2001. Today, we're going to share with you our look at version 6 in this Drupal review.
<div class="content">
Upon starting the install, we are greeted with the screen below. Drupal has several language options that are available, but of course the default is English.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/d1.gif" alt="Drupal Review" />
Clicking on Install Drupal in English leads us to the database configuration screen below.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/d2.gif" alt="Drupal Review" />
Drupal makes a good effort at explaining what the fields are for. There is also an advanced options dropdown should you need it.. but hidden by default, which is a good choice in my opinion. After configuring the database, we are taken to this screen which identifies that we should now remove certain permissions to certain files. I'd like to note that it would be nice to see a CMS that does this automatically, I know there are a few but it would be a nice touch. You then fill in your site information below: <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/d3.gif" alt="Drupal Review" /> One other thing which I liked was the inclusion of the “Check for updates automatically” box. This is something that was not there in previous versions and is a nice touch. We then proceed below: <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/d4.gif" alt="Drupal Review" /> As you can see, installation is now complete. Let's proceed to the default site: <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/d5.gif" alt="Drupal Review" /> Here is the default Drupal website. The theme it is running by default is called Garland, a very interesting theme that was the first to use a new colour selection feature that let's you customize every colour about this theme using a colour wheel.
It comes with some nice default choices and then you get to also see what your changes look like on the fly. This is an excellent default theme and a very solid introduction to the power of Drupal. I've seen quite a few sites running just this theme with slight colour mods. I would consider this Drupals' most popular theme in fact. We now proceed to the administration panel below: <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/d6.gif" alt="Drupal Review" /> Drupal has an excellent and well laid out Administration panel. It's easy to find what you need (despite some obscure naming in a few areas) and it gives you notices in very easily identifiable colours and shades as you can see from the screenshot.
A couple of things to note, however. Drupal is not for the feint of heart. If you aren't willing to invest the time to learn and to customize Drupal to suit your needs (which can be a bit of a learning curve) then it's not the right CMS for you. Often called a Content Management Framework, Drupal can be very overwhelming and by itself.. does not contain much “out of box” functionality compared to most other options in the CMS world.
The caveat, however, is that Drupal has a massive module respository and a huge community. If you are willing to invest the time learning (a process which can be quite fun and fulfilling once you get started) then there is not much Drupal cannot do. There are a ton of resources available and like i said before, the community is huge. This makes it easy to find or get the answers you need quickly. I also found the community extremely kind and eager to help new users.. which is a bonus.
You can also adjust the permissions of every single module and every piece of Drupal.. in one simple view:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/d728129.gif" alt="Drupal Review" />
This is great and keeps the webmaster in control of their content and their site to the Nth degree. A feature I quite like.
Drupal's module listings are huge. There are tons of modules for almost any category. To give you an idea, as of this writing there are an amazing 3,650 modules in their database in 31 categories! That's what I call a well supported CMS.
One of Drupal's weak areas is theming. While it's possible to make wonders happen if you are a designer.. the theme choices for new people are quite unattractive. There are a few nice ones.. but personally, I found most unappealing. Thankfully, there are quite a few new sites cropping up that have started offering more Drupal themes.. ie: TemplateMonster and DrupalShark to name a few.
If you consider this great CMS for your project.. here are a few good links that you'll want to have:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/handbook/customization/tutorials" target="_blank">Tutorials</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/handbook/customization/howto" target="_blank">HowTos</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/node/266179" target="_blank">Comparisons of contributed modules</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/handbook/config/contribmodules" target="_blank">Contributed modules</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/node/196218" target="_blank">Contributed themes</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/handbook/customization/snippets" target="_blank">Snippets</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/node/269999" target="_blank">Understanding Drupal</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/handbook/customization/videocasts" target="_blank">Videos and slides</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/theme-guide">Theme guide (Drupal 6)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/theme-guide/5">Theme Guide (Drupal 5 and previous)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drupal.org/forum/0">Support forums</a></li>
</ul>
Overall, Drupal is a great framework and it's no surprise why it keeps getting so much attention. Some very large sites run Drupal with heavy customizations.
A few I can think of off the top of my head are: PopSugar, SpreadFirefox, Ubuntu and Sony's MyPlay to name a few. Check them out, I'm sure you'll be surprised at the capabilities of Drupal.
Our ratings are below:
Community 10/10 (I would dare to say it's the largest and most active)
Expandability 10/10 (There's not much you can't do with Drupal)
Themability 6/10 (It's getting there, just not at the stage it needs to be to be new user friendly and attractive without some design skills)
Useability 7/10 (Can be overwhelming but the administration interface is outstanding. Could work on renaming a few things to make them more user friendly.. and automate some tasks)
<h2>Overall Score: 8/10</h2>


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