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Joomla! 1.5.12 Released (Codename: Wojmamni Ama Woi)

Jul 1, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) MyTestBox News

The Joomla Project, which recently celebrated 10 million downloads has announced the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.12, code named ‘Wojmamni Ama Woi’. This release contains a number of bug fixes and three moderate-level security fixes.

This release marks an important milestone for the Joomla Project due to the upgrade of the PEAR library to the new BSD licensed version, which brings the code base into full compliance with the GPL.

In addition, this release contains an important upgrade to TinyMCE v 3.2.4.1. The Production Working Group’s goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community.

Here are some of the fixes and improvements the community has made to this current release:

Components

• Category List Layout sorts correctly.
• Category List Layout HTML error resolved.
• Minimum User Level for Media Manager works correctly for Editors submitting Articles.
• Article Manager shows non-duplicated Page Titles with Page Breaks.
• Section Filter for Content Component correctly lists only Article Categories.
• Reverted escaping of miscellaneous information field in com_contact.

Plugins

• Update to TinyMCE 3.2.4.1.
• Updated installer SQL to correspond with TinyMCE upgrade.
• Added missing language strings for TinyMCE after initial upgrade.

Administrator

• CSS files save correctly when edited using Template Manager.

System

• Upgraded PEAR with a newer version that has BSD licensing.
• PHPMailer allows secure connections to SMTP Servers.
• File::upload() uses chmod 644 in FTP mode.
• Tooltips correctly encoded.
• Reverted detailed module caching fix.

If you haven’t tried Joomla! yet, you can check out the online demo.

Source: Joomla Announcements

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Tags: cms, content management system, joomla, mysql, open-source, php, release

TangoCMS 2.3.0 “Dolphin” launched – another open source PHP/MYSQL content management system competing with the sharks

Jun 29, 2009 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (73) MyTestBox News

That’s not an easy task going out there, in the wild, and challenge the big white shark (Drupal), the tiger shark (Joomla), the blue shark (Wordpress) and the plethora of other sharks (try some demos here).

But the team at TangoCMS is trying to beat the odds by launching a new version of their PHP/MySQL content management system dubbed “Dolphin” (version 2.3.0).

They added improvments to the WYSIWYG editor, page loading time, security and some more general features (see the roadmap here).

If you feel like tasting this kind of dolphin meat then head on the download page and get it from there (already prepared for you):  http://tangocms.org/download
Don’t be a savage and please use some ustensils for eating this: PHP 5.2.0 or greater, MySQL 4.1 or greater and Apache/Lighttpd are required.

Bon appetit!

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Tags: cms software, content management system, mysql, open-source, php, tangocms

Melody: Community Powered Publishing Platform

Jun 28, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) New Releases

Melody is a new open source content management system for bloggers and publishers. It is a project initiated and governed by many of the members of the Movable Type(which we reviewed here) community who have a shared desire to help in building a better blogging product that benefits Movable Type and Melody users alike.

The promise of Melody is to serve its community by working to build a product according to the principles and philosophies that have helped make WordPress, Apache, Linux, Firefox and other open source applications so successful. Those principles include creating and fostering open communication channels with its user base, by building transparency into its roadmap, and by permitting users to more freely contribute back to the core product.

Why Melody?

• Secure, scalable and rock solid platform.
• Community supported.
• 100% Open Source. Forever.
• Proven content management system.
• Highly extensible and customizable.

Melody is at its very beginning, you might want to go through the  goals, upcoming features and other information about the project here.

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Tags: cms, content management system, melody, open-source, publishing platform

CS-Cart released the version 2.0 of their e-commerce shopping cart solution

Jun 27, 2009 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (73) MyTestBox News

The team behind it just released the version 2.0 of this shopping cart software I never heard of until now. But that’s no wonder because there are way too many shopping cart solutions out there (free or paid).
CS-Cart is just one of those e-commerce solutions and it’s not free, will cost you $265 to get a license (they offer a free trial though so I might try it and see how it looks/works – they offer an online demo as well).

The technology behind it is a classic open source PHP/MySQL stack, like many other solutions and the target of this software seem to be geared towards small shops (which don’t have too much technology knowledge – that’s why this solution it’s called “out of the box”). If that is so then they have to compete with Zencart, Cubecart, osCommerce which are more established e-commerce shopping cart solutions and are free.

In this new version they seem to have improved their product by adding new designs and skins, layout block manager, design mode, web-based upgrade center, product filters and others (see the complete list here). Also, now it is possible to customize the software without any (or with minimum) modification in the source code which is always a good thing if you don’t want to spend money on the programmers.

One thing they should put on their website though is their contact details (and I don’t mean just the contact form but their location, maybe a phone number). This can boost the customers confidence.

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Tags: cs-cart, e-commerce, mysql, online store, open-source, php, shopping cart, solution

Pligg CMS, the PHP/MySQL Digg clone, finally at the version 1.0.0 (the official one)

Jun 17, 2009 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (73) MyTestBox News

After years in the making, Pligg, the PHP/MySQL open source social networking content management system, reached the official version 1.0.0.
It took small baby steps to reach this version and probably it will the same baby steps to reach the version 2.0.
But we can’t complain: the software is free and open source (still).

Pligg combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication and a democratic editorial system which enables users to collaboratively submit and vote articles.

Sounds like Digg? Well, it is a Digg clone.

Pligg was founded by Yankidank (this is a nickname) and is headed by the lead developer AshDigg (another nickname). It was originally an English translation of Menéame’s source code when it was released in early December 2005 (Menéame being a Spanish CMS created by Ricardo Galli and was inspired by Digg). In December 2005, the name Pligg was added to differentiate from the Spanish version. Since then Pligg has now expanded from just a translation of that Spanish CMS to a very popular CMS system.

This new version is more secure and stable than the previous (obviously) but also packs more features:

- groups feature
- re-vamped admin panel
- new languages: English, German and Thai (more languages to be added by volunteers)
- more database optimization making it more scalable
- pages feature
- upload module
- SEO updates
- many new modules included…

To see the full features list go to their forum and to download it please go to their download page.

Tu run this software you need to have at least PHP 4 (version 5 recommended) and MySQL database (both open source).
Pligg website also offers the possibility to customize more the software by buying templates and modules developed by Pligg developers themselves.

Interesting is that Pligg generated a fork named SocialWebCMS, pretty much like Mambo CMS generated a very succesful fork named Joomla! . Since then Joomla! surpassed Mambo in popularity shortly after launching. Will SocialWebCMS do the same to Pligg? Remains to be seen…

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Tags: blogging, cms, content management system, digg clone, joomla, mambo, mysql, open-source, php, pligg, social bookmarking, social networking, socialwebcms, software

WordPress 2.8 “Baker” is Now Available as a Full Release

Jun 11, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) MyTestBox News

WordPress 2.8 ‘Baker‘ is now available as a full release. It has a whole bunch of new features and improvements to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed. And over 790 bugs have been fixed. Now you can now browse the entire theme directory and install a theme with one click right from your WordPress dashboard.

It also features the new CodePress editor which gives syntax highlighting, allowing you to make minor edits to themes or plugins from your dashboard. With the redesigned widgets interface, you can edit widgets easily, have multiple copies of the same widget, drag and drop widgets between sidebars, and save inactive widgets so you don’t lose all their settings.

The highlights of WordPress 2.8 include,

• New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API.
• Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors.
• Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin with one click.
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns.
• Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options.
• Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment.
• Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation.

You might want to go through the full list of over 180 new features, changes, upgrades, and improvements on the WordPress Codex.

Our upgrade went well, without a hitch (using the automatic update). But DO backup your database and files before upgrading, just in case.

Source: WordPress Development Blog

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Tags: blog system, mysql, open-source, php, software, wordpress

OpenGoo, an easy to use Open Source Web Office Software (Review)

Jun 2, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) Miscellaneous

OpenGoo is an Open Source Web Office software that allows a group of people to collaborate by sharing information over the Internet. It is a complete solution for every organization to create, collaborate, share and publish all its internal and external documents (kind of Microsoft Office but on the web).

Members of an organization can create and collaborate on:

• Text documents
• Presentations
• Task Lists
• E-mails
• Calendars
• Web Links and
• Contacts

OpenGoo provides you with all the tools to manage the work of all the divisions of your company. You can plan and manage all your projects, easily following the status of every task, set milestones, pending tasks, personal notes etc.

OpenGoo can run on XAMPP installations. It can be installed, configured and used with Firefox 2+ and Internet Explorer 7+.  It currently requires:

• Apache 2.0+
• PHP 5.0+ (5.2+ recommended)
• MySQL 4.1+ with InnoDB support

You might want to check out a demo of Opengoo here.

Step by Step Installation Guide

Here, I’m test installing Opengoo on localhost using XAMPP (an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.).

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: collaboration, document sharing, information, management, mysql, open-source, opengoo, php, software, web office

JobberBase, Open Source Job Board Web Software, Version1.7 is Out

May 18, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) MyTestBox News

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.

Apart from the release of JobberBase version 1.7, it is also coming up with a Pro/Premium version of jobberBase. It includes new features like,

• Employer Administration
• Resume Management
• Paypal Payment Integration.

And, it’s being planned to be sold at an affordable price.

If you haven’t tried out JobberBase yet, you can check out a live demo here.

[ Source ]

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Tags: job board, Jobberbase, mysql, open-source, php, recruitment, review, version 1.7, web software

JobberBase: Open Source PHP/MySQL Job Board Web Software (review)

May 13, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) Miscellaneous

JobberBase is an Open Source job board software written in PHP/MySQL. It’s a great web software for adding a simple job board to your existing website. You can check out a demo instance of JobberBase here. A couple of noted websites using JobberBase are jobjob and ecommjobs but you can check also www.jobber.ro out of which jobberBase was born (a popular Romanian IT job board).

jobberBase is a great solution for single-industry recruitment, for job boards focusing on one niche.

Features

• Post jobs without creating an account.
• Search for jobs.
• Administration control panel.
• Supports RSS feeds.
• Site-widget to show jobs on other sites.

Step-by-Step Installation Guide

Note: Before starting, make sure you have PHP 5+ and MySQL 4.1+ installed on your server. Also, Apache module mod_rewrite has to be enabled and overriding default settings with .htaccess need to be allowed.

See the steps on the next page…

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: job board, Jobberbase, mysql, open-source, php, recruitment, review, web software

8 Photo/Image Gallery Plugins for WordPress

May 11, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) Tips and Tricks

WordPress, one of the top open source blogging platforms and which we have reviewed here, holds a vast directory of plugins and widgets to enhance your blog functionality and performance. Here we are presenting few handy WordPress plugins  for images and graphics.

Picasna

Picasna lets you create professional fullscreen flash galleries from your Picasaweb account. You can upload images directly to Picasa Web Albums and they will appear on your blog or web page in no time. You can even adjust the image and album cover sizes. This plugin is platform independent and requires a browser with Flash 7 or higher.

Features

• Fullscreen browsing.
• Show albums from your Picasaweb Account.
• Adjust thumbnail and album cover sizes.
• Next image preloading.
• UTF-8 Unicode. Now supports all languages
• Light and dark color schemes.
• Browser and platform independent. Requires a browser with Flash 7 (or higher) installed.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: blog, flickr, highslide, image gallery, images, nextgen, open-source, pageflip, photo gallery, photosmash, picasa, Picasna, plugins, rss images, superslider, web gallery, widgets, wordpress