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In this age of austerity, Contensis has signed a money-saving agreement with public authorities in Greater Manchester.

The framework agreement with AGMA – the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities – could see possibly up to 18 councils and other local public bodies signing-up to use the Contensis web content management system.

Public procurement is an expensive business and when Government is trying to improve efficiency and make saving throughout the public sector, framework agreements are one area which can help.

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I finally got my introduction to Telerik Sitefinity! I was not only the moderator for a panel at last week's CMS Expo, but I also had a chance to attend a few of the many sessions being offered during the conference. One of the first sessions I attended was a presentation focused entirely on Telerik's Sitefinity CMS with Pat Harlow as the presenter for this flyover session.

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François Hollande won the presidential election in France last week, with the help of an impressive campaign and content management system SilverStripe.

Hollande’s website http://francoishollande.fr was the web-based focal point of the door to door campaign and functioned as the main communication tool throughout the whole election period. In the month before the election, the site had three million unique visitors and ranked 15th most visited information site in France.

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OpenCms Days 2012 will take place from Monday, September 24 to Tuesday, September 25, 2012 in Cologne, Germany.

Conference Program - First topics have been fixed

Experts from around the world will share their experiences with this latest OpenCms release. The first sessions of the conference program are already fixed and give an overview on the multiplicity of OpenCms 8. Nevertheless we are still looking for session proposals, bringing up project-reports and experiences around OpenCms 8.

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After months of site development, code, more code, and long hours, launch day arrives. A site launch can come as a relief, create a bittersweet moment, or one filled with pride and a sense of accomplishment, not unlike a parent sending a child off to their first day of kindergarten.

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Nashua, New Hampshire, USA, May 10, 2012 – Kentico Software,  the Web content management system vendor, announced today integration of their Enterprise marketing Solution (EMS) with Jigsaw’s database, the world's largest database of complete contact and company information. The Kentico Data.com Connector enables website to easily importation contacts’ details into Kentico EMS.

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dotCMS, an open source, Java-based web content management system, is pleased to announce the release of v2.0.  This latest release continues dotCMS’s pursuit of providing one the most scalable, powerful and easy-to-use web content management platforms in the marketplace today.   No spin or catchy titles, just good, meaningful tools and functionality for both commercial-grade and multi-tenant content driven web applications. 

“dotCMS 2.0 is our response to the on-the-ground, real needs of both business users and developers,” announced Will Ezell, CTO of dotCMS.  “We have exciting plans for the 2 series, which will continue to rapidly improve upon our already robust enterprise content platform”.

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Jay Gilmore tweeted me this morning to be sure that I made a note of the latest version of MODX Revolution that was released a couple days ago. MODX Revolution 2.2.2 includes a number of important fixes, some performance improvements, and two new wizards to make it easier to create User and Resource Groups in the CMS.

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The Tiki Community is proud to announce the release of Tiki 8.4. This release, with more than 150 code contribution by eight Tiki Community members, includes several fixes and updates.

Among the new features are:

• Several new, detailed user permissions
• Support for stateful SOAP sessions
• UI enhancements

You can refer to http://doc.tiki.org/Tiki8 and the Tiki 8.4 Release Notes for details.

This is the last planned release of the Tiki 8.x branch. Tiki Administrators using the 8.x version are encouraged to upgrade to this latest release, and then to Tiki 9.0 when it become available.

For information on these releases and future Tiki plans, see http://dev.tiki.org/Roadmap. You can obtain Tiki 8.4 (as well as all other Tiki releases) from http://tiki.org/download .

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Nashua, New Hampshire, USA, May 3, 2012 – Kentico Software, the Web content management system vendor, announced the integration of their Enterprise Marketing Solution (EMS) with Salesforce.com, the world’s most popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The Kentico SalesForce Connector enables website contacts to replicate into your SalesForce organization as leads. 

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The XOOPS Project is proud to present XOOPS 2.5.5. This release is focused on fixing open bugs and on updating external libraries to their latest versions:
 

• phpMailer 5.2.1,
• TinyMCE 3.4.9,
• jQuery 1.7.2,
• jQueryUI 1.8.18,
• HTML Purifier 4.4.0,
• phpThumb 1.7.11,
• jGrowl 1.2.6

It also included security fixes, and therefore it is recommended for all XOOPS users to update to this version.

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Although, I like to consider myself unbiased when I blog about content management systems, it is no secret that Drupal holds a special place in my heart. Drupal was one of the first CMSs I used that didn't "dead-end" me on a project I was required to support. Over the years, the Drupal community has treated me well, even during those times when I was very wrong in my judgment of Drupal. If Drupal was not a part of my world, I'm not sure I would even be blogging about content management systems. Drupal is the open source standard for which I judge other CMSs.

So, it should come to no surprise to anyone that when John Coonen inquired if I would moderate a Drupal in the Clouds panel at CMS Expo, I jumped at the opportunity. I am excited about the high caliber people that will be on this Drupal in the Cloud panel. The panelists include Joni Klippert from Standing Cloud, Kieran Lal from Acquia, and Jeff Walpole from Phase2 Technology. If you're trying to figure out what is involved in getting your Drupal site, services, and support to the Cloud, these are the people you want to have in the room answering your questions.

Even if you have no interest in Drupal for your CMS, I encourage you to attend this panel to learn more about content management in the Cloud as well as SaaS and PaaS. Like many of you, I've had my concerns and doubts in the past about the Cloud. Is all this talk about the cloud and SaaS a marketing gimmick? Is there any real benefit for my business to putting content into the cloud? During last year's CMS Expo I got my initial answers to these questions after talking to the folks at Acquia, Accrisoft, and Agility. The move toward the Cloud and software-as-a-service for content management is the real thing. It wasn't just the people from these companies that convinced me but their customers too. 

If you are at CMS Expo this year, be sure to attend this 3:30 PM Drupal in the Cloud session on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. If you're worried that you may not know enough about Drupal or the Cloud to enjoy this session, please attend anyway. CMS Expo is geared for the newbie as well as the expert and I think this will be a great session for everyone to attend.

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At DrupalCon Denver, I announced the need for a strong focus on Drupal's authoring experience in my State of Drupal presentation. During my core conversation later in the week, I announced the creation of a Drupal 7 distribution named "Spark" (formerly code-named "Phoenix"). The goal of Spark is to act as an incubator for Drupal 8 authoring experience improvements that can be tested in the field.

I hope for Spark to provide a "safe space" to prototype cutting-edge interface design and to build excellent content tools that are comparable with the experience of proprietary alternatives. While not a final list, some initial thinking around the features we want to experiment with is:

• Inline editing and drag-and-drop content layout tools ("true" WYSIWYG)
• Enhanced content creation: auto-save, save as draft and more
• Useful dashboards for content creators
• Mobile content authoring and administration support

The vision behind the Spark distribution is to be "the Pressflow of Drupal authoring experience". Pressflow provided a "spoon" of Drupal 6 with various performance enhancements that made their way into Drupal 7 core while it was in development. The same improvements were made available to Drupal 6 users so they could easily be tested in the field. With Spark, we want to test authoring experience improvements in Drupal 7 on real sites with real users and real content. We also want to target the best improvements for inclusion into Drupal 8 core.

I'm excited to announce that Acquia will fund the Spark distribution. Core developers Gábor Hojtsy and Wim Leers will work on Spark full-time starting in late May. They will work along side Angie Byron (webhchick), Alex Bronstein (effulgentsia), myself and other members at Acquia. While we have some promising candidates so far, Acquia is still seeking applicants to join the Spark team (with a strong preference to candidates located in or willing to move to the Boston area):

• Drupal UX Interaction Designer, who can conceptualize and prototype cutting-edge interface design.
• Senior Front-End Engineer, who eats, sleeps, and breaths JavaScript and jQuery (Drupal experience optional).

The Spark team will collaborate with the Drupal usability and the core development teams.

WordPress as a content management system is often debated among CMS enthusiasts due to it being known so much more as a fantastic blogging platform. However, with the right plug-ins, WordPress can be setup also as a great CMS too. This list is dedicated to those that love to make such lists that weigh the pros and cons of a particular CMS.

There are some definite advantages as well as drawbacks in using WordPress as a CMS platform.  This list is dedicated to those that love to make such lists that weigh the pros and cons of a particular CMS.

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Adaptive Print Studio Accelerates Media Publishing, Saving Production Time and Design Costs

San Francisco, CA – April 30, 2012 – Sitecore today announced availability of its new technology that enables marketers and Web designers to utilize Sitecore’s Web platform as a central hub for all Adobe InDesign content including document layouts and settings. Sitecore Adaptive Print Studio brings together print and Web design teams to deliver more dynamic, personalized, customer-facing print media including annual reports, whitepapers, data sheets, brochures, catalogs and magazines.

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Composite C1 is ready with yet another release featuring over 20 new functions and improvements.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark 30thApril. Composite is proud to announce the release of Composite C1 3.2, the newest version of the top rated free open source CMS, which recently surpassed 20.000 installs worldwide.

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Agility recently announced an update to their Agility CMS which they've labeled under the "May 2012 Release" header. The Agility May 2012 Release offers a complete revamp of their digital asset management system, a whole new system for generating image galleries and thumbnails, and the ability to store and retrieve file and image assets in Agility's new Azure-based content delivery network.

In discussing the redesigned digital asset management system, Agility's Joey Varty blogged about the new features in this release and he highlighted what impressed him most.

You now have sections for Media (which matches the old "Documents" section), a new Image Galleries tab, and a Recycle Bin.

One of my favorite things is the new "Show As Grid" option, giving you thumbnails of all files and images in a folder.  Take a look at the new media selection dialog:
 

You'll notice that the selection dialog looks almost exactly like the Media page.  That's on purpose, of course, and your most recent folder and viewing styles are remembered by the system. There is a  lot of passion behind the development of this release of Agility CMS due to the new features that should be welcomed by authors and site administrators. For example, Agility CMS now includes an image editor that gives authors and administrators the ability to crop, resize, flip, rotate, add text. It's the little things like the automatic generation of thumbnails, drag and drop uploads, and movement of items in content that while minor on the feature list are of subtle importance to a good content management experience. This new release of Agility CMS brings all these features to the user.

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ImpressPages CMS has been updated to version 2.1 and I have to say I'm blown away with the new features included in this open source PHP-based CMS.  Last year, I told you that we all needed to keep an eye on this relatively new content management system. Almost from the start, ImpressPages contained some pretty impressive features including the ability to have most of its content administered directly in the website so you can see what the site looks like as you edit.

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For many years now, developers around the world have celebrated and promoted the numerous benefits that open source has to offer IT and business communities. Despite the flare for technology innovation and bringing new offerings to market, the real value of the open source community is the culture of the people that represent it. A shared ethos, coupled with a collaborative working model and mutual respect has delivered and will continue to deliver cutting edge software offerings that are increasingly competing with traditional proprietary vendors.

But open source has moved beyond simply being a novelty or hobby, as its potential for huge cost reductions and delivering significant savings to the bottom line have become recognized by hard pressed businesses around the globe. Implementations of open source projects can also now be found in many countries in the government sector, with the UK, US, and France being notable examples. Only recently, it was announced that Iceland was shifting over to an open source model to help make savings and reduce the deficit.

For those of us working in the community, the only surprise with these headline-grabbing government sector implementations was that they weren’t happening faster.

When making the case for open source, despite the numerous benefits on offer, it’s vital that providers demonstrate they have the same structure and ecosystems you would expect from a major proprietary software vendor. In this context, open source offerings need to be appropriately packaged up with hosting, consultancy and the support network that many IT decision-makers consider to be a necessity for implementation. That’s why I founded Acquia, which serves as a commercial vehicle for enabling Drupal open source adoption into enterprise-size organizations, offering support and service level agreements that enterprise users expect.

But the open source community has recently seen two major developments that have fundamentally changed the perception of everything we have to offer. The first being Red Hat reaching the $1 billion USD revenue mark, which provided a huge confidence boost to open source developers that their business model is profitable and can be successful. This landmark achievement will open the floodgates to more developer-focused organizations achieving unprecedented success and puts further pressure on the traditional proprietary vendors that have dominated the IT landscape for so long.

Another landmark announcement is that Microsoft has chosen to move into the open source space, a signal of just how seriously the value of community development has become. Some expected this news to be met with a negative reaction, but the open source community should celebrate the fact that a large proprietary software organization is investing in open source and extend a warm welcome to Microsoft.

With businesses looking for IT solutions that can deliver both innovation and cost savings, there has never been a more exciting time to be involved in open source. With open source businesses reaching the $1billion dollar revenue mark and leading proprietary firms opening up new subsidiaries to invest in open source, the open source community should feel that the best days are still yet to come. Once a fast growing self-contained community, open source is now recognized as a genuine alternative to proprietary software with a serious offering that will empower businesses across the globe.

http://2012.tcdrupal.org/ Fri, 05/18/2012