The Joomla Project has announced the availability of Joomla 1.6 beta.
Joomla! is one of the popular Content Management System’s around and it makes it easier for you to build websites and online applications. It is designed to offer enhanced site control and a more polished user experience. It’s extensibility has made it the most popular and downloaded open source website software in the industry today.
Key Features in Joomla 1.6:
New Access Control System – Allows site administrators control over who can view and manage content.
Unlimited Depth Organizational Model – Gives site administrators and content creators user-defined category levels that allow for the creation of a category tree with as many or as few levels for organizing articles and other content as needed.
One-Click Extension Updates – Allows users to keep sites secure and controlled by simplifying the process of updating extensions.
Semantic XHTML Layouts – Provides a better baseline for content presentation.
In addition, developers and implementers will enjoy the new ability Joomla 1.6 provides in allowing extensions to be built with granular control and permissions. This will make it easier to create more advanced, enterprise-focused applications and extensions for Joomla.
Magnolia is an open source content management system which is one of the leading Content Management System’s (CMS) known for its ease-of-use. It’s page editing interface enables authors to format content exactly as it would appear to the website visitors.
Magnolia has released its new version 4.3 recently, which focuses on a new and flexible framework to make the administration of multi-site, multi-lingual website infrastructure easier. This new version of magnolia also includes full support for the Groovy scripting language and the launch of Magnolia Store.
Following is an overview of the new features in this release,
Ultimate Multi-Site Flexibility: This version of magnolia provides you with better flexibility for users looking to support and administer complex multi-site/multi-domain environments. For enterprise installations, Magnolia provides website administrators with a wide range of options for developing new web sites, re-branding existing web sites and content, through to creating entirely new websites with the ability to use existing syndicated content.
For instance, creating new websites for mobile devices from existing content, creating new microsites etc., can be made much easier with this new release.
Multi-Lingual Support: Website administrators will now be able to mandate one single site structure across multiple languages. A fallback mechanism allows local administrators to define a default language that will be displayed where translated content is unavailable.
Magnolia Store: A first version of the Magnolia Store has been announced, which introduces some basic functions to allow administrators and developers to view installed modules, download their latest versions and browse for new modules from within the administration interface.
Magnolia 4.3 now offers full support for Groovy. This is a dynamic language for the Java platform with features similar to those of Python, Ruby, Perl, and Smalltalk. Groovy allows for a much more agile approach to implementing new functionality for your web site, while retaining the full power, scalability and security of the Java stack.
Magnolia, latest version, provides clean and simpler template tags. The refinement of the tags architecture provides focus on a cleaner, simpler set of components, as well as a clean separation of the tag library implementation from the UI component rendering.
Concrete5, an open source content management system has recently released its new version 5.4 with some major feature updates. You might want to go through more about Concrete5here. Following are some of the major features updates in this new release.
Feature Updates
Improved layouts and design: with a new layouts engine that lets areas be split into columns, allows for saving layouts into presets. This updated design engine lets areas and blocks take custom designs, and allows for saving of designs into presets.
This version of Concrete5 has a better marketplace integration. It provides you with better search/filtering from within concrete5 dashboard. You can connect your web site once, rather than continuously login with your concrete5 account. You can also get support from your add-ons from a project page.
Improved Editing Experience: It makes adding and editing of blocks, updating page properties easy through AJAX, without having to reload pages. Add Block Overlay can be filtered using the keyboard, ala OS X Spotlight/Google Live Search.
One click upgrade, including the ability to download updates, and upgrade to them when you wish.
Core updates, addon updates, news and guide updates are unified in system notifications, which are available from the dashboard home page and a new notifications area.
Improved Sitemap performance, including a new sitemap “explore” mode that offers paging.
Better Permissions: Added task-based permissions, including the ability to set who can log in as another user, edit page defaults, perform database backups, access the sitemap, un-install packages and search users.
Major Performance Improvements include,
As ‘Page list’ and ‘Autonav’ blocks were causing problems when previewing on large sites – preview no longer loads on init in this release
The loading performance of the dashboard has been improved by making feed load asynchronously.
The number of queries have been cut down in this release, by using cache. Cache should now cache files, packages, page types, block types.
You migh want to check out add-ons and themes available at Concrete5 marketplace.
JobberBase, which is an Open Source job board web software written in PHP/MySQL and which we have reviewed here is now out with a new version. If you haven’t tried out JobberBase yet, you can check out a live demo here. JobberBase version 1.9 is loaded with new features like admin panel redesign, support for more language files, performance updates and more!
Here are some of the new features in JobberBase 1.9:
Proper support for Windows/IIS hosting. Read the install guide if you’re interested.
Better multiple themes support, and a new theme in the default codebase — Hireme, from hireme.sg.
Admin panel redesign, using the Cadify theme.
Support for more language files — an important step towards full multi-language support.
All email templates are defined in a single XML file, under the translations folder.
MODx Revolution 2.0, content management system, is out of beta and its first release candidate has been launched recently. It’s now available with many enhancements and 240+ bug fixes. MODx Revolution RC-1 offers a much faster compact Manager, easier installation, better Rich Text Editing (RTE), Package Management which allows you to install Add-ons directly within the manager, and a new native file browser that provides you with direct access of files and other site resources.
Briefly, MODx, open source content management framework, helps you build dynamic and user interactive web sites quickly, without any restrictions. MODx Revolution provides users with a completely customizable web content management solution on a modern, object-oriented core with a fully documented API for developers. It is backed by a robust data abstraction layer powered by xPDO.
New features in MODx, Revolution 2.0. RC-1 include,
CSS/JS compression in the manager user interface
Improved flow and error checking in setup
Added toggleable auto-check for updates for downloaded packages
Users can now drag/drop any Element into a Category
Added Forgot Login to login screen for manager
Cleanups and enhancements to RTE handling, and in-house file browser implementation
Many fixes and improvements to Package Management, including a new View Package page, showing prior versions installed
Gravatars are popular among blogs and forums as a unique way to show your identity across the web. Whenever you wrote a comment on a blog, or sent an email – the administrator of that website could choose to use your details to display the picture that is associated with that specific email address.
Recently, Gravatar released its first step in bringing a whole lot more context and personality to your online presence. Every gravatar now supports the addition of full profile information against it. This new feature enables you to upload your favorite images to your profile. Read More…
WordPress for iPhone version 2.3.1 is now available in the App store. This new version of WordPress for iPhone supports geotagging for WordPress.com blogs. Briefly, WordPress for iPhone application enables you to write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iPhone or iPod touch. It has support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.7 or higher). Read More…
Briefly about DotNetNuke web content management platform: DotNetNuke open source project, is one of the widely adopted Web Content Management Platform for building web sites and web applications based on Microsoft .NET. DotNetNuke can be used to quickly develop dynamic and user interactive web sites and web applications. Read More…
Joomla! is an award winning Content Management System(CMS) with a wide range of features. It’s a prolific CMS which is suitable for designing and maintaining any type of websites. Joomla has a modular architecture, providing the users with lots of options for extensibility. Apart from the fabulous modules, it is also well known for strong security, template’s system, extensive community support and the authorization framework.
Extensions for Joomla! provide further customization and aid in enhancing the functionality as well as the ease of administration. Joomla is a prolific CMS designed to organize and deliver content within a website environment.
Multimedia plays a key role in web designing and helps in providing wonderful user experience, but it requires effort and knowledge to utilize it effectively. We wanted to share an interesting book with you, Joomla! 1.5 Multimedia, which helps take advantage of this powerful CMS architecture to portray media-rich content on your websites. Read More…
e-Spirit extends FirstSpirit 4.2 with a new release. It sports more functions for editors and developers.
With FirstSpirit version 4.2 release 2, e-Spirit announced a new version of its content management system (CMS). It offers many new functions and upgrades for editors, template developers, and administrators. One of the highlights of this release is the support for Internet Explorer in the integrated preview of the FirstSpirit JavaClient.
Overview of new features with FirstSpirit 4.2R2:
Microsoft Internet Explorer for the integrated preview:
Now Internet Explorer(IE) can also be run on Windows systems alongside Mozilla Firefox for the preview function in the FirstSpirit JavaClient. Editors can switch between the two browsers at their leisure to see how a web page is displayed in the two systems.
Language Support
Now FirstSpirit applications JavaClient, WebClient, server and project configuration, and server monitoring are also available in Dutch along with six other languages.
Full-text search in FirstSpirit online documentation and Access API
This new version offers a full-text search feature, which can also be used to search online documentation and the FirstSpirit Access API. Search results can be filtered by target groups (administrators, users, developers).
Using FirstSpirit on Mac OS X
With 4.2R2, e-Spirit implemented some important features and optimizations for the planned release of the FirstSpirit application on Mac OS X in future versions. The look and feel of the JavaClient and the application for the server and project configuration have been adapted to blend in with the familiar Mac menus.
Filtering, search, and limiting of displayed data records
To make it easier for editors, who manage large quantities of data records, release 2 introduced a limiting and filtering option for displaying results.
JobberBase: Open Source PHP/MySQL Job Board Web Software (review)
Great Drupal CMS Modules for Building a College Community Website
The Joomla Project has announced the availability of Joomla 1.6 beta.
Magnolia
Gravatars are popular among blogs and forums as a unique way to show your identity across the web. Whenever you wrote a comment on a blog, or sent an email – the administrator of that website could choose to use your details to display the picture that is associated with that specific email address.
WordPress
Joomla!
e-Spirit extends 
Get News by RSS feed