CMS Weekly

Alfresco Launches Cloud Content Application Developer Program
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-21

Alfresco will provide an open source Amazon EC2-ready stack and developer kit for customers and partners to develop, deploy and monetize cloud service architecture content applications on the EC2 platform.

The Alfresco Cloud Developer Program, offering “early adopter” advantages to its partners to deliver cloud-ready content applications for collaboration, document and records management. Alfresco will also offer a subscription for those requiring expert Enterprise 24/7 support.

According to the study “Above the Clouds: a Berkeley View of Cloud Computing,” the cost of cloud computing is one-fifth to one-seventh of that offered to a medium sized data center. By promoting the CMIS standard and making it easy to get on board the cloud, Alfresco is providing a great service to promote the success of their ECM solution. Sounds like a winning combination.

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New #Joomla Book by Daniel Chapman: “Joomla Customization” for intermediate users
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-21

First book from Ninja Forge and Daniel Chapman has been released – “Joomla 1.5 Customization: Make Your Site Adapt to Your Needs”. Daniel admits that the book came about from his frustration with fixing the same simple mistakes on web page after web page. Filling in a gap, this book is aimed at the intermediate Joomla developer.

> Pick the right extensions for your site
> Plan and implement advanced configurations for extensions
> Identify and use the right tools to speed up site development
> Modify module, plugin and component functionality to suit your needs
> Modify extension and template appearances to suit your needs
> Diagnose and fix common problems on Joomla! sites.

The book is selling for $30, $15 for the on-line version. And you get 15 percent off with the Joomla15-DC coupon code. That’s a lot cheaper than hiring Daniel to fix your site. He says he’d rather add fantastic new features to his extensions.

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Drupal Code Freeze Update – 82 Weeks + a Slushy
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-21

After 82 weeks of development, Drupal 7 hit the goal: September 7 code freeze. The current phase is called code slush and will span 5 weeks.

During Code Slush, only patches with no new functionality will be accepted into the code stream, with a few exceptions. “Important and necessary” API changes are still allowed, as are improvements to usability, accessibility, performance, and documentation.

Drupal module developers, into overdrive testing custom code with the new base. The D7CX Movement (Drupal 7 Contributed Modules) is an initiative to have 40 modules upgraded and solid at release time. drupal.org has a list of the 40 popular modules in the D7CX Movement. See drupal.org/node/578446 for more code freeze details.

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LinearCube Debuts SaaS Document Management Based on Alfresco
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-21

If you are not quite as adventurous, you might consider a SaaS solution – and with a 30 day trial and pricing starting at $99 a month, it could be a very cost effective solution.

LinearCube, a new offering built for the SMB market, has a pretty high quality core — it’s built on the Alfresco open source document management solution.

Associate multiple files with a single document type (i.e. an RFP Package). No file size limit.

Tag documents with one or more keywords to group related documents and improve document searching.

Enable full document version control with “check-in” and “check-out” functionality.

Microsoft Office Integration — check-in, check-out documents directly within Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

Rollback to older revision or purge certain revisions

Associate documents with other records managed in LinearCube along with e document-specific comments and discussions via linked discussion threads containing text, images, links, tables, etc.

As a service – there is no long term contract – so that might be attractive as well. LinearCube’s capabilities fall in line with many other hosted document management systems such as Xythos, KnowledgeTree, SharePoint Online, SpringCM and others.

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Social Media Policies from 80+ Organizations
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-21

One of the key challenges for modern organizations is to define a social media policy.

Mashable has been a major resource here, with articles such as 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy and Social Media for Business: The Dos & Don’ts of Sharing. If you’re looking to define your own social media guidelines, however, one worthwhile task is to read the policies of other organizations.

Chris Boudreaux, author of the upcoming book “Social Media Governance” has assembled 82 such policies on the book’s website Socialmediagovernance.com. From companies to charities to military organizations, it’s a treasure trove for those struggling with social media guidelines.

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Alfresco Wants Enterprise Content Management in the Cloud
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-21

The open source enterprise content management company has unveiled a developer program for those looking to host both the community and enterprise versions of its software on the Amazon EC2 cloud computing platform. Alfresco is a leading open source alternative for document and Web content management, competing strongly with ECM giants like Open Text, Documentum, and SharePoint.

The core of what Alfresco is offering is an AMI (Amazon Machine Image), a pre-built software package for creating a virtual machine on EC2. The first Alfresco AMI is only for the community edition, and doesn’t include their SharePoint module or the mobile browser UI for accessing Alfresco from smartphones. Alfresco is planning future releases that will support all editions.

See the last TechPodcasts roundtable for a simple introduction for getting started with Amazon cloud services – that used an older AMI from Bitnami – so put in the new image, and you should be ready to go.

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Joomla and Joomlashack in Packt Awards
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-28

More news this week about Packt Publishing awards.

Joomlashack’s Inspirion template is among the finalists for the Best Joomla! Theme award. The other finalists in this category are: Affinity by RocketTheme, IT Cinema by IceTheme, Creative Bliss by Pixel Point Creative, and Blue Fractal by Pixel Theme Studio.

For the category Best Joomla! Extension Finalists:

JCE, JoomlaPack, J!Research, Mosets Tree, and noixACL.

You can vote on line now at packtpub.com/joomla-award, and you can see the current standings in the voting.

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Realtime Web Search Vendor OneRiot Launches Developer Network
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-28

News from Colorado, the launch of OneRiot Developer Network. ORDN is a community designed to support, and no doubt expand, the OneRiot API partner community.

OneRiot.com is a real time internet search engine. From the ORDN, one can get access to the API, ask questions, connect with the development team and engage with other developers using the API. You can also see what other apps have been built with the OneRiot API.

OneRiot co-founder Robert Reich is credited with creating this community, and his previous claim to fame is that of founder and organizer of the wildly popular Colorado New Tech meetup, the country’s third largest meetup.

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Work At Play: How To Convince Your Boss Why Drupal is Better Than Proprietary CMS
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-28

In large organizations, convincing your boss or department or project to use Drupal can sometimes be met with resistance. But in fact, a lot of the arguments work for Joomla as well. This following table has been instrumental in convincing decision makers regarding why Drupal (and by extension open source) is leaps and bounds better than proprietary content management systems.

From think.workatplay.com, a table to help convince decision makers that Drupal and Open Source are leaps and bounds better than proprietary content management systems. The table compares Drupal to a commercial CMS on factors such as cost/licensing, development community, business continuity, add-on functionality, cost to make changes to the core, and awards. Of course the table is designed to show Drupal as the clear choice, so each category highlights limitations of the proprietary CMS in contrast with the strength of Drupal.

Proprietary CMSs have a department that can work on the website, assuming they are all proficient with it. There are many thousands of Drupal developers (and companies) around the world. If the CMS company ever goes out of business, bought, or the vendor relationship changes, there is a risk of being stuck with a website no one knows how to operate.

If a Drupal company or vendor ever goes out of business or the relationship changes, there are a well-qualified group of others who can take over instantly.

There are typically a handful of extensions to any proprietary CMS system such as Shopping Cart, Forums, etc. All involve additional licensing and customization costs. With more than 1,800 available modules, (over 4000 extensions to Joomla), the vast majority of your site’s requirements can be addressed with Drupal CMS and the available add-on modules (in a shorter period of time).

This Week’s Episode

Google Goes After SharePoint with New Sites API
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-28

Given the amount of data that sit in SharePoint worldwide, given how eager Google seems to be about enterprise apps these days, and given the size of Google’s appetite for data, we must say — it’s about time.

With the introduction of Google’s new Sites API — and some tools that explicitly pull stuff out of SharePoint and place it into Google Sites — the real heat between Redmond and Mountain View is finally starting to build. Finally, the missing link. Google is finally providing a way to share data between Google application, through their Data Liberation Front.

Google Sites, an application that allows users to create a website, is now supported by the Data Liberation Front. Previously data and content couldn’t leave or enter a Google Site. The new API supports creating, modifying, deleting and retrieving pages and content, up and downloading attachments, accessing revision history and displaying user activity.

Now Google has another avenue to challenge SharePoint. In fact, Google Enterprise partner LTech has already designed a data migration application called SharePoint Move for Google Apps. It migrates files, documents, lists, events and more, and generates a detailed report about the migration.

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