Aaron Winborn

The Plone community has raised the bar on their flagship content management system with the release of Plone 4. With the unveiling and release announcement of Plone 4, this is proving a busy week for fans of this CMS that runs on the Python-based Zope application server.

"Plone 4 is much faster, requires less memory, and performs well even when serving up massive files. ", says Plone co-founder and Firefox User Experience Lead Alexander Limi. “They [Plone users and developers] also didn't want us to sacrifice what we do well to get there — and we haven't. Plone 4 is not just more powerful — it continues to improve in areas Plone has always been known for: usability, security, and a CMS that is easy to install, upgrade, and looks great right out of the box.”

Some of the significant changes and improvements in Plone 4 include:

• Notable performance improvements
• New theme
• Search and indexing improvements
• Group Dashboards for a Customized User Experience
• Massively improved handling of large files & media
• New, faster folder implementation
• Improved management of users and groups
• Dynamic forms framework based on jQuery Tools
• Improved first-run experience
• Smooth upgrade experience
• Reduced memory footprint
• Upgraded infrastructure

Interestingly, the announcements and even the Plone 4 download page discuss the "under the hood" improvements available in the CMS in preparation for Plone 5. That's right, they're already talking about Plone's future with Plone 5.

For addttional details about the Plone CMS be sure to visit Plone.org.

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Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware has been awarded a 2010 Bossie award (Best of Open Source Software) by InfoWorld, in the Applications category. InfoWorld's Best of Open Source Software Awards (aka the Bossies) is chosen annually by Test Center editors and reviewers, and recognize the best open source software for business users.

The editors called Tiki "a powerful, integrated, Web-based application" that can "build and maintain websites, wikis, groupware, CMSes, forums, blogs, and bug trackers, as well as make them multilingual."

The review continues, citing Tiki's "fine-grained role-based privilege system" as a differentiating factor against classic wiki models, such as MediaWiki. Read the full article on InfoWorld.a: http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/b... .

And don't forget to nominate Tiki for the Packt 2010 Open Source Awards  (http://info.tikiwiki.org/article105).

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Auctori:city, a web content management system designed for municipalities and built for SEO, is a sponsor of the National Association of Government Webmasters (NAGW) National Conference which will be held at the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri September 22-24, 2010.

A silo of the search engine optimization friendly web content management system, Auctori, an innovation of Unidev, the Auctori:city solution provides cities with the opportunity to strengthen their Internet presence and their overall brand reputation by giving users a professional city website design and the power to maintain their web content in real-time.

“We are looking forward to attending this highly anticipated conference and introducing Auctori:city to the NAGW community,” said Andrea Bemis, Brand Manager, Auctori. “Our unique CMS integrates controls that give individual departments the power to edit components of their website, such as news, community calendars and business directories, making the general maintenance of a city website very straightforward and less time consuming for webmasters."

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I'm not much of a programmer but I can appreciate the value of a good programming language when I see it. While I know Python and dabble with PHP, I've always appreciated Ruby and Ruby on Rails. There is something about the Ruby development scene that perks my interest in this programming language.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 was just released this week. The development of Rails 3.0 has been two years in the making. David August writes:

Rails 3.0 has been underway for a good two years, so it’s with immense pleasure that we can declare it’s finally here. We’ve brought the work of more than 1,600 contributors together to make everything better, faster, cleaner, and more beautiful.

Some of the biggest changes and additions in Rails includes:

• New Active Record query engine - makes it easier to build complex queries over several iterations.
• New router for Action Controller - the syntax has been modified to to favor the REST style
• New Action Mailer
• Manage dependencies with Bundler - Bundler allows you to specify the libraries, frameworks, and plugins that your application depends on.
• XSS protection by default
• Encoding issues resolved
• Active Model: Validations, callbacks, etc for all models
• Official plugin APIs
• Documentation

If you're interested in Ruby on Rails 3.0, check out the download page at RubyonRails.org.

CMS Made Simple© “Geek Moot” Conference

CMS Made Simple hosts its annual conference, “Geek Moot”, in Amsterdam September 15th – 17th

PHILADELPHIA – CMS Made Simple© (“CMSMS”), an open source content management system, is hosting its annual international conference, “Geek Moot”, scheduled to take place September 15 through 17, 2010, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Geek Moot is the official international conference for the CMS Made Simple content management system platform. CMS Made Simple founder Ted Kulp will be presenting “The State of CMS Made Simple” on September 16th; also celebrating the recent milestone achieved of generating 1 million downloads.

Attendees of this conference will consist of CMS Made Simple users of all expertise, including technology firms, marketing and advertising agencies, web designers, developers, and other users and fans of the platform.           

September 15th, the first day of activities, will be filled with pre-conference educational workshops discussing various topics facilitated by experts in their respective fields. These topics will consist of “Advanced Design Integration, “Instant Modules”, SEO & CMS Made Simple”, “A Beginner’s Walkthrough of CMS Made Simple”, “jQuery”, and “CMS Made Simple Extensions”.

September 16th & 17th are going to be information-packed conference days, full of sessions discussing topics such as the much-anticipated launch of version 2.0, current and future marketing efforts, e-commerce, mobile, modules and development, front-end users, flash video, along with time for Q&A with members of the development team.

Registration for Geek Moot Amsterdam is only €150. All attendees will be able to attend two full days of sessions and lunch will be provided. Register at http://geekmoot2010.eventbrite.com/. All workshops are priced individually.

To learn more about “Geek Moot” Amsterdam 2010, please visit http://geekmoot.com/2010/.

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Enterprise-wide projects require clear vision and effective leadership. This is especially true if your company engages in business process management (BPM) with the goal of maximizing efficiency gains enterprise wide. Since your everyday processes are built around your mission-critical content, a thorough understanding of your data, routine processes, and the interrelationship of one business area to the next is crucial.

Establishing a grand vision isn’t necessary for a successful enterprise content management (ECM) and BPM implementation. Developing and communicating a clear vision based on an understanding of your company’s long-range goals, prioritization of needs, and knowledge of constraints, however, is.

Assemble the right team

Establishing a vision for BPM requires a strong team comprised of executive-level and IT leadership, line-of-business managers, and a dedicated project leader. Since a detailed understanding of your company’s content (data) and how it is used daily is vital, ground-level knowledge workers must also be represented on the team. Their involvement in day-to-day information gathering and processing brings critical knowledge and valuable insights into how your business operates, as well as potential improvements. As your team defines long- and short-term goals, understanding your current processes is as important as defining long-term business needs, technology capabilities, and budget constraints.

BPM requires that you view your business as a series of intertwined processes driven by people, data, and events. The data that feeds and drives your processes may be found in legacy systems, line-of-business software applications, paper, voice mails, and other media. Wherever it resides, it must be accessed, controlled, and manipulated intelligently so you can leverage it wherever it’s needed to drive efficiency. Understanding the sources and function of data within your organization is vital.

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Security concerns are in the news a lot lately. The government has issued public alerts against terrorist activity. Military experts are debating how to maximize armed forces’ safety amid intensified conflict in Afghanistan. Medical experts are producing vaccine to combat Swine Flu. Each issue focuses on the need to ensure public safety. Yet most businesses – including agencies that rely on timely, accurate information to make decisions about public safety – overlook a serious risk that jeopardizes their effectiveness and ability to survive. The threat? Inadequate document security.

Businesses need secure access to accurate information to make smart decisions. Usually information is scattered:

• on paper (subject to deterioration, misfiling, security breaches, and loss);
• trapped in the minds of executives, managers and workers (subject to unintentional alteration and selective memory); and
• stored in electronic documents and software applications (subject to inconsistent rules, conflicting policies, and difficult to lock down).

A recent 2009 AIIM report entitled Electronic Records Management – Still Playing Catch-up with Paper shows 60% of managers surveyed couldn’t be confident their records hadn’t been altered, deleted, or inappropriately accessed if they were challenged. More than 70% had no provisions for long-term electronic record archival; 31% had twenty or more content repositories that could be usefully linked (and presumably weren’t, complicating access and security). Many respondents described their electronic records as unmanaged; most lacked email management policies. It doesn’t take an expert to uncover a foul brew of document security concerns. Ignoring document security invites trouble.

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Elgg 1.7.2 was released this week and it is primarily a bugfix release. I usually don't post stories about web application releases that add no new features but felt inclined to do so this morning. Elgg is one of those social media applications that I've always wanted to use for a project but never got around to using. If I can't find the right project to need Elgg then at least I can talk about it and keep it in my thoughts.

Some of the more significant bug fixes in this release include:

• Saving drafts and previewing blogs works as expected.
• Page titles can now be edited in the Pages plugin.
• Group names no long show up in Friends Collections.
• Added a group member listing page.
• Group forum topics can be edited.
• User data for usernames with UTF8 characters are correctly migrated to the new data scheme.

See Brett Profitt's post for additional details about Elgg 1.7.2.

Humans have hunted from the earliest times. Maybe that’s why we often accept the burdensome quest for information. We’re accustomed to the chase—even fooled into thinking we’re doing something valuable. Yet time lost in pointless pursuit means something is sacrificed. In the case of college enrollment, a drawn-out chase can mean losing top candidates to other institutions and ending up with a mediocre catch.

During peak season, enrollment office employees frenetically pursue information and answers, compiling scattered documentation in the hope of making quick, prudent decisions. Admissions, student aid, registrar, scholarship committees and other areas each have separate forms requiring distinctive information.

Yet as each department collects what it needs, useful information that could be shared is often requested again…and again. Information that could move decisions forward sits idle, garnering little or no attention.

Regrettably, as processes are deferred, institutions risk losing top candidates to other institutions.

Make informed decisions, quickly

Whether we’re considering undergraduate or graduate admissions, student financial aid, scholarship applications, or faculty search, the overriding goal is to garner and retain top people. Even though roles and responsibilities differ among departments, most draw vital information from transcripts, applications, test scores, essays, and references. Often, specific data found on forms is valuable in multiple places. Unfortunately, departmental software systems that store this precious information create data silos, resulting in information that is unknowingly collected multiple times for varying purposes.

Gathering information several times—even if it’s done efficiently—wastes resources, results in redundancy, generates errors, and causes delays.

Why not re-use your information to satisfy current needs and anticipate what lies ahead? Enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management (BPM) software, integrated meaningfully with your business systems, redefine efficiency. By centralizing and securing access to content, then pushing and pulling information wherever it’s needed according to your pre-set business rules, ECM and BPM free your staff to work efficiently and focus on the services for which they were hired.

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“Work faster.”

“Get everything right the first time.”

“Outperform our competitors with better service.”

In challenging economic times, these goals are imperative. Yet achieving all three simultaneously is improbable unless you have the right tools to assist you.

Fast, accurate, friendly service helps you to be viable and competitive. At the same time, being effective is vital to cost-efficiency and customer loyalty. Unfortunately, however, fast work often generates mistakes, while meticulous attention to detail slows progress. Whether you are investing in technology and growth or are focused on doing more with fewer resources, electronic forms (eForms) and intelligent automation can help you get ahead.

According to AIIM’s State of the ECM Industry 2010 report, 41% of businesses aren’t confident that their digital information (except emails) is accurate, accessible, and trustworthy — a severe obstacle to efficiency. Forms are a small part of the web of business information. Yet when content is captured accurately and managed properly, eForms address the challenges of accuracy, accessibility, and trustworthiness while transforming service, increasing profitability, and encouraging sustainability. How? By:

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"We're entering a new era of the web. To the ignorant masses, this transition will go largely unnoticed; they'll enjoy increased usability and convenience, with more robust functionality and more relevant data at hand. And they'll mostly just take it for granted.

However, for web designers, front-end developers and data system programmers, we have a lot of work to do."

-Laura Scott, PINGV, HTML5 + RDFa = time to get rid of that 20th century furniture, August 23, 2010

At the most recent TikiFest in Ottawa, Canada, several Tiki Community members met to socialize and contribute their talents to the future of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware. For four days (August 15 - 18), the attendees (including several remote participants) discussed, planned, and coded many features and enhancements planned for Tiki 6.

The TikiFest ended with a wine-and-cheese social at the Code Factory in Ottawa, hosted by Citadel Rock, Blindside Networks, Pondstone Communications, and AvanTech.net, all of whom are active participants in the Tiki and BigBlueButton communities.

The cornerstone of the TikiFest was to improve the integration between Tiki and BigBlueButton that was first introduced in Tiki 5. Additionally, a full day of the event was reserved for various internationalization (i18n) topics, including:

• Establishing a collaborative multilingual glossary
• Creating a translation server
• Making it easier for the Tiki Community to contribute translations

See http://tiki.org/TikiFestBigBlueButton to review all items from this event (including pictures and video from the event).

Several TikiFests are planned for the upcoming months in Montréal, New York City, and Berlin. See the Tiki Community calendar at http://tiki.org for details.

For information on Tiki 6, the next generation of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware (planned for October 2010), see http://dev.tiki.org/tiki6.

I think the pictures speak for themselves on this one.

Select:

Configure:

Preview:

The combination of a weak economy - causing many to streamline operations to keep afloat - and increasing regulatory demands made business challenging for many in 2009. Those that emerged from the rubble of crumbling profits, hoping to resurrect their bottom line and succeed in this decade are working harder than ever, often with fewer resources. Although the economy will eventually improve, the regulatory scene is becoming more demanding, placing greater burdens on business. Only those that make wise use of limited resources will survive.

Despite recent unpredictability in government, business, and the economy, one thing is unchanged: compliance, security, and cost-efficient management remain the focus of many businesses. Named in multiple industries as the top three drivers for enterprise content management (ECM), they are more closely intertwined than ever:

• Cost efficiency is only possible in today’s litigious economy with an integrated, efficient compliance management program that mitigates risk and avoids costly penalties. In a paper or mixed media environment, it’s nearly impossible to achieve.
• Compliance is only achievable with stringent internal controls and an overseeing force to manage document security, governing access to information and how it is used. Entrusting oversight to fallible humans alone means there will always be mistakes. Zero tolerance is on the rise; penalties for non-compliance can be financially devastating.
• Security is only manageable in information-intensive businesses when you have the tools to pull all of your information together so it can be controlled, centrally and consistently. Even with a full complement of employees, it’s challenging. In a paper-based environment, it’s impossible.

The solution? ECM.

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At Sony we're looking for a distributed version control system to replace Subversion—primarily Git and Mercurial. I'm very familiar with Git but hadn't done much with Mercurial so it seemed like a good idea to use it for a couple of weeks and learn the quirks. Since I'm stuck using Subversion I decided to see if it would be feasible to use Mercurial as a "super client" working locally then pushing changes back to svn. A little Googling turned up two candidates hgsvn and
hgsubversion. hgsubversion extends the commands pushing and pulling changes, giving a more native experience, so it seemed like the best choice for learning the system.

The setup is actually pretty simple but I'm documenting it for my own future reference.

Use MacPorts to Install hgsubversion:
sudo port install py26-hgsubversion

Enable the rebase and hgsubversion extensions:
printf "[extensions]\nrebase=\nhgsubversion =\n" >> ~/.hgrc

Check that the extension was enabled:
hg help extensions
It should list something like:
    enabled extensions:

     hgsubversion
                 integration with Subversion repositories

Now you're good to checkout from SVN (note: using the svn+ prefix in the URL lets you use passwords stored in your keychain):
hg clone svn+http://example.com/svn/repo/trunk

I actually ran into an issue where the clone was exploding with a stack trace. The bug had been fixed in 1.1.2 but MacPorts hadn't yet been updated so I rolled a patch to update it.

August 18, 2010 – Vancouver, BC -- Intranet Connections (www.intranetconnections.com) is pleased to announce the intranet launch for BC Place, the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.  BC Place launched their Intranet Connections Intranet 2.0 CMS Software in July with goals of improving corporate communication, increasing employee involvement, and enhancing information sharing within the organization.

After the 2010 Winter Games, BC Place was scheduled major construction to revitalize and modernize the facilities, including the largest retractable roof of its kind in the world.  When the Administration team at BC Place learned that half of all full-time staff would be moving to temporary offices at the Vancouver Convention Centre and the other half would remain at BC Place, they immediately became aware that a corporate communication tool was needed to unify the two locations.  The IT team spearheaded the project, identifying an intranet site as the best means to facilitate internal communication and provide a central repository for staff information.

In evaluating intranet solutions, BC Place knew they wanted to find a turnkey product that did not require any programming or custom development in order to get their site up and running. 

“We ultimately selected Intranet Connections as an intranet solution because it was out-of the box and it required minimal administration overhead.  Intranet Connections also came highly recommended, was proven in the market place and was developed by a Canadian company.  We really liked the fact that Intranet Connections was a local organization.”  says Winnie Mok, Information Services Manager at BC Place.

Since this was BC Place’s first intranet implementation, Intranet Connections’ suite of ready-to-use applications allowed the intranet development committee to focus efforts on the key success factors for a well received rollout.  Priorities for the launch included: educating users about the role of an intranet, developing dynamic and relevant content and establishing site usage guidelines.

The new intranet has become a central part of BC Place’s multi-location communications and information management strategy.  Construction news, press updates, updated policies and information about their upcoming road show are all posted on the intranet to keep employees at different facilities up to date and in the know.

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Content management system to celebrate at its annual “Geek Moot” conference in Amsterdam in September

PHILADELPHIA – The developers of CMS Made Simple© (“CMSMS”), an open source content management system, announced that it just hit one million downloads as of August 12, 2010. The content management system (CMS) will celebrate this milestone at its annual conference, “Geek Moot,” scheduled to take place September 15 through 17, 2010, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The CMS Made Simple website, which was recently redesigned with an enhanced user-interface, will soon launch an Alpha version of the much anticipated 2.0 version of the platform.

“We are pleased to see how fast new users have adapted to utilizing the updated platform,” said Ted Kulp, creator of CMS Made Simple. “One of the biggest challenges we previously had was that a portion of the audience associated the platform with having the ability to only create simple websites because of its name. However, the reason behind the name is that the platform is much simpler to use compared to almost all of the open source content management systems currently on the market.”

CMS Made Simple is also great for end-users. Having an extremely user-friendly admin panel, CMSMS distinguishes itself from most other platforms in the market by making it very easy to update, create and modify content without having any technical knowledge of how the backend of a website works.

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A ground-breaking web CMS, proven across multiple sectors and enterprises, has achieved a release that its developers believe will see take-up explode.

The latest version of the Contensis web CMS boasts a range of new features which put it at the cutting edge of the content management market and throws down the gauntlet to its competitors.

Contensis is already the choice of major companies, universities and local authorities and its new 'R6' release makes it the serious contender for any web CMS requirement. Crucially, the new release also signals a fresh clarity in features and pricing for Contensis which is still a rarity in the sector.

At the heart of the new version are improvements and additions which add simplicity to already easy-to-use software, including multimedia controls that make inserting streaming media, galleries and slideshows into pages a quick drag-n-drop experience.

The product has mature support for social networking, which will feel familiar to users of Facebook or LinkedIn, and integrates Google Apps accounts seamlessly, using a single sign-on for both the website and Google accounts.

Also new to the R6 release of Contensis is a module that provides the ability to deploy sites in multiple languages - and even with multiple dialects of those languages. This feature was soft-launched with client Domino Printing Sciences, which has already published a new site in six different languages using Contensis R6.

Simplicity has always been at the heart of the Contensis ethos, with R6 taking that to a fine point, not only with regard to end users but with the focus very much on quick, simple installation and deployment.

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Book Review for "Plone 3.3 Site Administration: Manage your site like a Plone professional" by Alex Clark.   This book is written for the person who has to set up and run a Plone site.  It's not a development book-- it doesn't show you how to write software, rather it shows you how to acquire, install, and configure software components that will greatly enhance your Plone site.  It covers a lot of ground, but much of it is covered in only the barest detail to instruct you in how to add a feature to your site.  It doesn't devote much text to explaining what the add-ons do, only how to get them and how to integrate them into your site.  There's also a lot of good general advice for a web-site administrator.   Here's a rough run-down on the contents of the book:   Chapter 1 What you'll need to run a Plone site (computer and basic tools, like a text editor) and installation procedures.   Chapter 2 Is titled "Site Basics" and covers the use of Buildout, which is a framework for installing add-ons in Plone.  Buildout is very important for a Plone administrator, so it's nice to have coverage of the tool.  Truth be told, I wish there was a little more material on Buildout in this book, but this is enough to get you introduced and the web can tell you the rest.  To the book's credit, it uses a hands-on approach and immediately instructs you on how to use Buildout to change the default portlet navigation feature of your site and how to add blogging capabilities.  

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