EcontentMag, onlinep publication that reviews content management software, has just issued the result of the eighth annual EContent 100, a list of companies that matter most in a digital content industry that involves many domains : Classification & Taxonomy, Collaboration, Content Commerce, Content Creation-Production- and Digital Publishing, Content Delivery, Content Management, Content Security, Fee-Based Info Services, Intranets & Portals, Mobile Content, Search Engines & Technologies, Social Media. The 12 categories that structure this yearly competition illustrate the complexity of an industry that’s slowly  growing to the age of adulthood : opensource and proprietary solutions compete in a universe where even the low wage workers of India are quickly switching to western standards. The global economic crisis will certainly highlight the difficulty to maintain costly and complex solutions while simple, efficient and often free solutions will prove stronger as ever. By the way, Worpress 2.7 is out !!

We are actively testing Silverstripe 2.3 rc2, the lastest candidate for imminent new release of Silverstripe CMS / CMF. Among very efficient code upgrade and efficiency improvements, we love the following feature enhancements and definitely recommend professionnals to engage in learning this  Content Management framework that fits CMS and  website development, including the administration and layout of dynamic image galleries.

• Security new features : possibility to select multiple groups for viewing and administration privileges
  What would be nice now : integrate the user import function from the newsletter module (see our post on how to do this for version 2.2)
• Wysiwyg editor new features : possibility to insert predefined template was missing for webmasters wishing to go beyond the single layout  for each page type. Editors can now choose between predefined templates where content is structured in various configuration (read on for instructions on how to set that up).
  What would be nice now : display a small preview of the layout, like typo3 does. Or integrate on demand page component addition (example : on demand HTML editors, list types, gallery types in one page)
• Other promising features (not tested) : data CRUD scaffolding, Update to TinyMCE 3.2, HTML flash code is now full XHTML compliant!

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Developping new functions in Silverstripe CMS is not easy task  : documentation of the framework is good enough for most web site development tasks but when it comes to specific functions, we know the potentiality is there but lack specific API documentation. It took me a few hours and a lot of brain energy to find out how to … duplicate the newsletter recipient import function to have it work for users and groups. Objective was to let my own customer import hundreds of his own customers. Done, tested to a certain extent, click here for more on Silverstripe’s dedicated thread.

Files :

• code.zip : to place in cms/code
• templates.zip : to place in cms/templates

Screenshot

What is MCMS ?

MCMS is a new acronym used by the developers and marketers of osTube, a collaborative CMS that focuses on video publishing. videos, sounds, photos, documents types are supported in a portal layout that integrates user blogs and comments.

OSTube integrates encoder and flash player

Shipped with 4 or 5 available templates,  osTube featuires AJAX based portal layout manager and obviously a powerful uploader linked to command line encoders. CAn be a good application to resell but I wonder about the search engine : will that be as powerful as google ’s youtube ?

Javascript libraries

While EXTJS 3.0 is on the way with a roadmap setting deadlines for early 2009, Jquery continues its path on the way to serious lightweight alternative to the massive EXT : JX extension for Jquery includes the viewport paradigm on which relies every EXT JS application.

Web based interfaces

In spite of huge progress and impressive use of ease, Jquery is not there yet : for the development of applications many developers have chosen the exhaustivity of EXT JS. Have a look at google code hosted project in development : ecartcommerce, CMS jimw, both ext js and zend framework based. In the world of content management systems, mysource is making the news with a new video that demonstrates inline editing, and other exciting Rich Application features.

The world of content management was doing  fine with the concept of  the usual administration framework or form based edition : some tools integrate front end editing, meaning that connected users can browse their site with a special menu tool bar on top or inside the page. What’s even better is in situ editing, as demonstrated on NicEdit Wysiwyg editor demo page : NicEdit instances can also replace any element (divs,spans,paragraphs,ect.) with editor instances without effecting the layout of the page.

I have to admit that the race for the best opensource content management software is an exciting one. Years pass and technology goes ahead but some names have the capacity to stay  on track : in 2007 modx was, in my opinion, the best PHP CMS I could implement for customers. 2008 saw an impressive competitor come up as a reliable solution, including a powerful development framework : Silverstripe version 2.2 is a must, with a simple tree based navigation and drag&drop page structure management as most visible features. Automatic image resizing, online image editing, flexible database structure, are features now common in silverstripe, sometimes shared with modx or other competitors (check out JOJOCMS, Concrete5 or even the old Wordpress !!). Of course on the development side of the moon, 2008 also celebrated the ever increasing popularity of Zend framework on the server side, and EXTJS  on the client side : those 2 powerful libraries have little implementation examples, but that is changing quickly too : the latest pre release version of MODX CMS, code named revolution,  is demonstrating the use of EXT JS to an extent that’s going to make 2009 a new era for opensource content management solutions !

what is nice about Omeka CMS is not the backend : you will find in the admin sandbox that most sections of the restricted area, while perfectly efficient, lack today’s common AJAX reactivity.  But on the front end, the result is stunning :  websites built with Omeka have all gone throught a graphic design expertise that  push the enthousiast to look more into the technology behind (Zend Framework). As such the tool fits perfectly into its mission statement : “web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits.“

wmc is a professionnal web content management tool that does more than just let you write within your won website : it helps you with words via a specific semantic engine that will do its best to optimize your website for Search engines ! From the vendors website : “Semantic analysis is the process of linguistically parsing sentences and paragraphs into key concepts, verbs and Proper Nouns to determine the “aboutness” of content. Using statistics-backed technology, these words are then compared to your taxonomy* (categories) and grouped according to relevance“.

This article makes a quick comparison of 3 popular PHP  Content management Systems :  Concrete5, Silverstripe and Wordpress. While Concrete5 and Silverstripe are two real content management frameworks, Wordpress is hugely popular as a blogging platform and each new version brings new feature that make it perfectly usable as a CMS, provided you install specific plugins such as PageMash.

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