CMSMS | CMS Made Simple

Summer is coming… and so is that time when the geeks behind CMSMS get together and swap war stories. As with last year, we plan on getting together in some unsuspecting city and causing our own brand of havoc for a weekend. We also plan to discuss the project’s direction and do some coding too…

This year, the unsuspecting city is Philadelphia, PA USA, which also happens to be my hometown. We’ve selected it because we wanted it on this side of the ocean, it’s relatively “central” to the people coming and I have a few connections for getting accommodations and other necessities.

The dates are Friday, August 22 through Sunday, August 24, 2008. Actual locations in and around the city are still sketchy at the moment, as is the exact schedule.

We are looking to have a public night one evening (probably Saturday) in which we can hopefully get some people to come out and tear up the town with us. If you’re in the area or like traveling, then stay tuned for more details on that.

We’re also going to do a donation drive similar to last year. I’d love to defer the costs for people as much as possible. We’ll discuss a goal and post that in a couple of weeks, probably around the same time as a set schedule.

I’ll keep everyone up to date with the details as I get them.

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As you all know by now, CMSMS 2.0 development is now if full swing. Both calguy and myself have been hitting the code pretty hard over the last couple of weeks trying to finish it up and get a beta ready to go. While there is still a lot to do, I’m starting to see the end in sight.

A few random folks have asked about helping out with development of 2.0, which I love. However, being the control freak that I am, I’m a bit worried still about giving the world free reign on subversion commit access. A few months ago, I discussed using git for core development. Yes, I still use this model for my 2.0 work and can’t imagine switching back to pure subversion. I can be as A.D.D. as usual by having scattered branches of the various things I’m working on, and only commit them back when I feel stuff is ready.

Anyhoo, github has gone live. This is pretty much the ultimate geek social network. It allows you to setup your git respoistories to the world. Better yet, it allows anyone else to essentially “fork” that repository, make their changes at will, and easily alert the original person to take a look at your changes. It’s terribly brilliant and REALLY useful.

I push the CMSMS code up to git every day or so from my personal mirror of the current svn repository. It’ll usually be up to date. If I know people are working from it, I’ll make sure it’s always up to date within a few hours. The main repository is located here. Fork to your hearts content, people.

So, do yourself a favor. Learn git. Use git. Love git. And once you wrap your head around it, use github to make those wild and crazy changes to the CMSMS 2.0 code and tell me about them. The proof is in the code, my friends. Get coding!

Want to seriously be amazed at the power of git? Read this account. For some good links (even though there is a ruby spin), look here.

Enjoy!

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We’ve gathered up a security fix and a few bug fixes for a little maintenance release. I recommend you guys upgrade when you get the chance.

Enjoy!

Version 1.2.4 “Greenland” — March 29, 2008
—————–
- Fixed a potential security issue with the applet upload in File Mananger
- Fixed a bug where IE users would have content list issues if there were odd characters in a page name
- Fixed a bug where putting quotes in a “oneline” content block would cause issues while editing

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Just because the blog has been deserted doesn’t mean nothing is happening. About 3 weeks ago, I got myself into a position where I can resume the 2.0 development cycle. Not only that, I’m starting to get to enjoy all the work I did in the beginning of cleaning up and moving code around to make a more consistent API. New features are falling into place pretty quickly and I’m making some rapid progress.

Some highlights of the last few weeks include:

* Fixed the issues everyone was having with the installer. It’s ugly, but it works.

* Added the hierarchical permissions editing for content. It still needs to be added in a few more places, but it’s a good start.

* Start adding a test suite for things that I’m working on. It’s by no means complete or even covering a major portion of the code, but it’s the direction I’ll continue down as I develop.

* Removed xajax totally from the codebase and instead made my own version that’s entirely written using jQuery. It does just what I need and nothing more.

* Added active flags to stylesheets and removed them from templates.

* Removed the built-in print functionality. It was ugly. Use print stylesheets.

* Added methods to make sure all tables created by the api make proper utf-8 collations

* Redid a lot of the Events system. It’s now easier to create and use events, and also allows for attaching to events on the fly instead of having to register in the database.

* Redid a lot of the module api. Moved the tabs to their own class. Removed methods that weren’t really used. Moved the wysiwyg and styler methods to their own subclass. Added a backwards compatibility layer for older modules that still needs some work to be fully functional.

* Created an acts_as_list dropin for the ORM system. This basically means that modules (or core items) that want to be ordered can add 2 lines of code and one field to the database and get a ton of functionality for ordering and reordering items.

* Changed the parameter sanitization methods in the module api to use the new stuff built directly into php 5.2+.

* Rewrote the menu manager to use nested templates. This basically means that menu manager templates will be MUCH easier to understand. It also means you can use different templates (or options) for children if you’d like.

* Started a brand new blog module which will be included in the default installation. It will basically have all the main blog features that people ask for and should allow CMSMS to be a viable replacement for those people use Wordpress as a CMS. This also allows me to test that all the changes to the module api are good.

* Moved all module templates to be administered in a central location. Not only that, but multiple templates for the same function are now supported by default. Modules no longer have to handle templates themselves, instead they just register the template on install and are good to go.

Needless to say, it’s moving right along. I still have no solid date for a beta, but I’m shooting for a couple of months from now. As long as I can continue at this pace, it shouldn’t be a problem.

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EDIT: The forum is back up. See below.

Hey folks.

The forum is down for awhile until I sort out some problems. Seems that all the posts from before December 11 were removed. I’m in the process to trying to recover what I can from backups, but it’s going to take some time for me to get it all sorted out. I figured it was best to take down the forums so we lose as little data as possible as I try to do a recovery.

I’ll post when it’s fixed.

EDIT: It’s back up. The last backup I have is from Dec 7th at 13.30 GMT. I restored it and tried to merge in the data afterwards with no success. Sorry, but this is best I can do. I have no idea what happened, but I’ll be looking at the logs to see if I can figure out something. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to play detective, so I’ll do what I can to lock down stuff so it can’t happen again.

As a side note, my new backup hardware came in this afternoon. So at least next time I’ll only lose a day instead of 2.

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Happy New Year! It’s time to patch a security flaw. Please upgrade as soon as possible to fix this injection problem.

Thanks!

Version 1.2.3 "Black Rock" -- January 2, 2008
-----------------
- Fixed a SQL injection

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This is just a maintenance release to fix a couple of problems that we’re annoying people at random. If you’re not having any problems, you might not even need to upgrade. Though, it never hurts, especially if you use the diff version.

Enjoy!

Version 1.2.2 "Holetown" -- November 30, 2007
-----------------
- Fix a bug in the cms_date_time plugin that was causing random
  issues with User Defined Tags
- Fix a minor issue with the handling of the site down message

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It’s that time again. This is a maintenance release with no security fixes, so use your judgement for upgrading (just backup, please!).

Thanks go out to RonnyK, hExDj, reneh, and fransman for testing this one!

Version 1.2.1 "Bridgetown"
-----------------

- New versions of News, Search, Tiny, and FileManager modules
  - see the documentation for each module to learn what has changed
  - some of these modules may have been released seperately at an earlier date
- Fixes the issue with pages being set inactive on edit if not edited by somebody
  with the 'Modify Site Structure' permission
- Adds the cms_move_uploaded_file function that all modules should use from now
  on to assist in handling file uploads.
- Adds the ability to set a 'home page' in the user prefences to determine
  a page to redirect to upon login.
- Adds a 'Home' menu item under 'Main'
- Adds a site preference for date format
- Adds the cms_date_format modifier that reads the site preference
  as well as the user preference for date format (when in the admin section)

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I’m pleased to report that CMS Made Simple won the 3rd place prize for the Overall Open Source CMS award. I must say that this is a huge honor. I was really excited that we were nominated, but never expected to place or win anything.

I just want to thank the other developers that work on this project. You guys really help keep this project going strong. And of course, thanks to the community for not only voting, but supporting us as well.

http://www.packtpub.com/article/drupal-wins-overall-2007-open-source-cms-award

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Time has come to finally announce the winner of the design competition! First we wish to thank all who submitted their designs and made it a tough call for us to decide.

Let’s hear some drum rolls… as we announce the winner… Steve Sicherman!

Steve - who is from Saskatoon, Canada - is currently working together with the Development Team with the markup for his design. It may take awhile before the site is dressed in its new clothes, as we also will do some restructuring in the process.

For the curious of you, have a preview of the homepage and an example of the sub pages.

We are very happy with Steve’s design and think this will give a fresh, new look to the website of CMS Made Simple.

For this, Steve will be sent some CMSMS swag as I learnt the Americans call it, that is some stuff with the CMSMS logo on it. For more info about Steve Sicherman and his work, please visit his website at stevesicherman.com. There are some great examples of other designs he has made there too.

Steve Sicherman writes this about himself:

I’ve been designing web sites since ‘95, and working for companies building enterprise-level Content Management Systems for about 6 years. My experience in the industry is what drew me to CMS Made Simple, I was very surprised to find an open source CMS application that was doing so many things right. While there are a number of powerful Open Source CMS’s out there, CMSMS is the only one I’m comfortable handing over to clients with very little experience updating web content.

Again, our thanks to Steve and to everyone who submitted their designs! Sorry to those who would have liked to take part to, but weren’t able to because of time constraints… There is a redesign of the themes site in the making, so we look forward to some great designs being posted there.

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