Sounds too good to be true : the Carrington wordpress theme framework, developped by Colorado based CrowdFavorite, implements what we’ve all been waiting  for :  AJAX/ drag & drop  wysiywg page structure management. It builds on the existing core WordPress theme structure and functionality and uses core WordPress theme functions for easy adoption by experienced theme authors.

Announcement : http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/carrington/

Out of smart combination of powerful jquery plugins and functions comes the Minibar, contextual editing menu that pops up in windows Office 2007 fashion. The demo provided works with standard textarea editor but we’d like to see it implemented within tinymce or fckeditor, for instance : no doubt this is coming in the next few hours !!

SEO Toaster was introduced last week and it comes with a set of features that puts that solution right in place for competing with other famous systems. It’s also nice to note that the technology behind it is the Zend Framework.

Inline editing : all administration is performed within the actual site, the admin area does not exist. This is a particularly challenging choice of development but tends to please users when correctly designed. Visually the green & blue theme for the sidebar admin is not the best but is functionnal.

I particularly like the page creation form (image above) which allows the content manager to specify all page information, including SEO related, page title and header image, in one shot.

File Management uses the famous swfupload which is now a minimum requirement for CMS practise. Images are automatically resized and the upload process allows uploading and editing within the same screen which is a recipe for content efficiency. Jquery lightbox is provided in the distribution and resized images link to the original image automatically.

Form maker is integrated in the distribution too but only with the email sender feature, no database integration yet

http://www.seotoaster.com/

wpml is a wonderful plugin that has so many  it takes a while to get used to its power.

A new beta version of the multilingual plugin has been published for early adopters who have already switched to 3.0

What I’ve tested is interesting and allows quick setting of multilingual website

• Flag displaying is almost instant thanks to dedicated functions or specific coding as documented here. Urls paths are well preserved and extended with the 2 letter language prefix.
• Post translation is well implemented in the admin, each language displays a + button on the columns of the post / page
• Posts can share common custom values or images, technique described here
• all strings thath use the _e function in templates are translatable in the admin or in a mo file
• as of today the wordpress 3.0 menu and custom post types do not work well with wpml but work is ongoing

vosao CMS is a java based CMS for google apps engine : meaning free web host for this free opensource CMS. Not a lot top say on the interface side, the project is notable because it works for Google App Engine. Vosao CMS features include visual (WYSIWYG) editing, friendly URLs, internationalization, parent/child page structure, nested and programmable templates, commenting (with moderation), site import/export, content versioning, security and group management, resource management, captcha, Google Analytics, plugins, input forms, SEO URLs, and more, along with free hosting on the Google cloud.

Built from the Code Igniter template, Ionize CMS comes with a lot of features we love : drag & drop tree structure, multi tyope content (images gallery a just a tab away from the page / article editor), multilingual structure, and a flash based file uploader. Interactions are performed by the mochaUI library, a clean and original Mootools project .  Ionize Project is still young and not very active, and is  a live example of an opensource application  that can afford to survive  without a user forum, even though the Code Igniter forum follows it closely. But we believe with a form maker module Ionize CMS would quickly surpass other simple CMS alternatives such as our beloved silverstripe.

version 0.92 is opensource and version 1 has been released privately

Link : http://www.ionizecms.com/en/

One step further into the  drag & drop AJAX cms adminstration we’re all looking for : Automne CMS, developped by french based WS Interactive company, implements block management via ext js library features, that come near to a full  drag and drop interface. The content is added in pages through a template based row system that  gives large flexibility over the final layout of the bloks within the page. Learning curve would typically require a few days work before a developer really gets into the multi template system.

http://www.automne.ws/web/fr/244-essayer-la-demo.php

See also

• JSP Based Riot CMS

The expertise around Flash / Flex based CMS is building up a new area for content management. We haven’t had the pleasure to try out the software but the building of wysiwyg interfaces is a promising business, as long as the HTML and Search engine optimization features of pure text are guaranteed : this is where we’d like to know more about FlashMoto’s HTML publishing features, which uses the HTML version technique; meaning the flash based web site is also available as HTML for search engines and non flash browser. This technique is also used by Silex RIA, another Flash based CMS.

What distinguishes FlashMoto from a range of other flash content management systems is that it is the first Flash CMS based on ActionScript 3 and realized as RIA on Flex.   The websites powered by FlashMoto are controlled just like a standard CMS but with the extras that Flash offers.  FlashMoto provides a set of SEO tools what makes the Flash CMS website completely crawlable and seen by search engines.

Flash CMS from FlashMoto is characterized by a range of other features:
- ability to add unlimited number of pages;
- convenient WYSIWYG page and pop-up editor;
- rich media library;
- infomodule component;
- video and image gallery component;
- video and MP3 players component;
- deep linking and Google Analytics integration;
- comprehensive documentation and tutorials.

Fuzzle CMS is a promising Flash CMS delevoped by a group of Russian programmers. The system is claimed to be an extra easy way for creating Flash website thanks to visual content management. Note, Fuzzle’s website is also made with this CMS. Fuzzle brings you advantages of Flash and HTML in one system and affords you create and maintain your website’s content without knowing anything about programming. Flash web sites are differ from regular HTML sites mainly by their presentational abilities: Flash technology allows incorporating complex animations and reach multimedia content. However, Flash sites are considered to have such disadvantages as longer time of development (therefore more cost), harder updating, bad search engines ranking. Fuzzle is breaking these stereotypes!
Main Fuzzle features are: :
- multilinguality;
- simple management (convenient visual editing based on blocks placement and multiple selection of blocks );
- design integration from a draft within 5 minutes;;
- SEO support (HTML version auto generation, DeepLinking support);
- continuously replenished Widget Store availability;
- availability of an open simple API for external developers.

I like gpEasy cms’ quick and easy interface : powered by jquery interactivity, gpeasy is full text cms that works without a database. It is in fact a set of includes that can be administered via privilege based backend that implements FCKEditor. Below is a sample of the drag and drop interface for pages ordering, a must.