Blog

Archive for August, 2007

Announcing CMS Made Simple 1.1.1

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

It’s been a while since 1.1 came out, and we have taken the time to fix as many of the issues that came up as we could. This release should solve many of the problems people encountered with the 1.1 release, namely:
– The News module permission
– News module pagination issues
– Various issues with TinyMCE
– Some over zealous input parameter cleaning
– Fixes to the umask test and global umask settings
– Fixes for postgres installs
– Rationalization to the order of the submit/apply/cancel buttons
– Lots of other little stuff.

The files are available from the download page, along with diff releases to allow you to upgrade your 1.1 site easily.

Announcing the new CMSMS organization

Saturday, August 25th, 2007

Lots of amazing things are going on with CMS Made Simple right now! There has been much great discussion about the future of CMS Made Simple in the blog comments, in the forums and on IRC. And in two weeks time the Development Team meets for the first time in person.

To be expected in the coming weeks and months are a new forge, a modules tracking and reviewing system, improvement of the themes site, improvement and integration of the website, better marketing, documentation and hopefully by the end of the year, the whole new and exciting CMS Made Simple v. 2.0.

First to be announced is the new work organization. Eight teams have been formed, each with responsibility for one important part of CMS Made Simple. We gladly accept more members in any of these teams, for those wishing to contribute to making this the best CMS out there! Please contact the team leader if you are interested in contributing!

Ted Kulp (Ted/wishy) and Robert Campbell (calguy1000) are the project administrators and have the last say. The main team is made up of the team leaders in each of the following eight teams:

Core and Module Development

Responsibilities:
  • Develop the core and modules
  • Writing technical documentation and developer guidelines (together with the Documentation Team)
Team leaders:

Usability and Appearance

Responsibilites:
  • Default pages, templates and stylesheets.
  • Feedback to the Core and Development Team about the appearance and structure of the backend administration.
  • Install script and the installation experience.
  • Usability and accessibility
Team leader:
  • Tatu Wikman (tsw)
Current members:
  • Gunnar Grímsson (ooooooooooo/virtual)
  • Paul Noone (iNSiPiD)

Website

Responsibilities:
  • Consistent look and feel across *.cmsmadesimple.org
  • Information infrastructure
  • Keeping the site up-to-date
  • Implement new features
  • Approve news and projects in the current forge (later for the Quality & Assurance Team)
  • Themes and module downloads
Team leaders:
  • Tatu Wikman (tsw)
Current members:
  • René Helminsen (reneh)
  • Gunnar Grimsson (oooooooooo)
  • Paul Noone (iNSiPiD)
  • Ted Kulp (Ted)
  • Daniel Westergren (westis)

Quality Assurance

Responsibilities:
  • Test the core and modules, both unit testing (code) and testing new features.
  • Review and approve module releases
Team leader:
Current members:
  • John Botte (sportman/Qualityinterfaces)
  • Kevin Grandon (SavageKabbage)
  • René Helminsen (reneh)
  • Darrin Roenfanz (the-golem)
  • Ville-Pekka Vainio (vpv)

Support

Responsibilities:
  • Give support to users
  • Moderate and administrate forums
  • Working with the Documentation Team for tips and troubleshooting
Team leader:
Current members:
  • Mark Reed (mark, maksbud)
  • Ronny Krijt (RonnyK)
  • Pierre M. (Pierre M., pierremirc)
  • Alberto Benati (alby)

Documentation

Responsibilities:
  • User documentation
  • Developer documentation, together with the Core and Module Development Team
Team leader:
Current members:
  • Daniel Westergren (westis)

Translation

Responsibilities:
  • Translations of the core, modules and documentation
  • Administration of the Translation Center for core and modules
  • Feedback to core and module developers about found errors in translation files
  • Approving new translators, languages and modules for translation
Team leader:
  • René Helminsen (reneh)
Current members:
  • The project leader for each language.

Marketing and Information

Responsibilities:
  • External marketing
  • Announcements in the forum and on the blog
  • Information on the website, together with the Website Team
  • Internal communication between the different teams
Team leaders:
Current members:
  • Ted Kulp (Ted)
  • Kevin Grandon (SavageKabbage)

Again, feel free to contact team leaders if you would like to contribute. We need more people for most of the teams!

Glowing reviews?

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

Needless to say, I’m a bit frustrated. Take a look at this review…

Very clean and simple CMS. Editing stylesheets and templates is a bit awkward, but after some time creating your own stuff, one can get used to it.
The quality of the user-submitted modules is abysmal. Many of them are fundamentally flawed and their PHP code is often plainly wrong.
If you avoid 3rd party modules, CMS does the job very well.

This comes from our page on opensourcecms.com, which is pretty much the largest pusher of traffic to our site from the outside world. A lot of our new users find our name on the list and check us out. And this is pretty much the first thing they see now.

The developer’s forge is a great idea, but it almost seems like it’s hindering as much as it’s helping. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this complaint, so we as a group need to try and figure out what we can do about it. Whether it requires a more strenuous testing/acceptance procedure (which we don’t really have the manpower to do), or if we just only approve projects that we now will be done right… well, we just don’t know.

Any suggestions? This needs to be corrected or it will become a downfall of this project. And I refuse to let that happen.

Developer’s Get-Together Donations

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

The time for the developer’s get-together is almost upon us. For those that didn’t read before, the developer team is putting together a face-to-face meeting of the minds in Copenhagen, Denmark over the weekend of Sept. 8, 2007. Most of the plans are set, but we have one issue: money.

Originally, we thought we would be able to cover expenses without looking to the community for funding. However, it’s down to the wire for buying plane tickets and several people need some help… in the very near future.

Given the trends of buying plane tickets, we have about 10 days or so before prices skyrocket. As it stands, we need roughly US$1000 before the 15th of August. That’s 10 days from today. The sooner we can get it together, the better. Any money left over after buying tickets will go into a pot to help the group pay for any additional expenses they might have.

Donating is easy. Click on the donation link on the left hand side of this page. All donations are handled through paypal. Remember, donations are not tax deductable.

Everyone who donates will get their name put up on this page and also the main donations page… and I’ll keep a running tally of how much was donated. If you’d rather be anonymous, just say so in the paypal donation comments. Also, advertising options or official get-together sponsorship is available if you’re interested.

For those of you interested in the event itself, we (at least me, I’m a photography nut) will be posting pictures on flickr each day and we will also post any details about discussions as we go. We’re going to try and plan a schedule before hand, and will post that as soon as we possible.

Help us make this a successful meeting and give the developer’s morale a nice shot in the arm! Thanks!


Sunday
Benjamin Verkley – $10
Hakki Dogusan – $20
Jeroen Vos – $20
David Streever – $15
Gareth Jones – $20
Jelmer Schreuder – $10

Monday
Millipedia – $100
Paul Richards – $30
Anonymous – $50
CJ Houghtaling – $25
Neil Southwood – $20
Edward Nowotny – $100
Mark Reed – $20
Sun Kim – $50
Mana Ties – $50

Tuesday
Steve Alink – $20
Peter Gasston – $30
Steven Epstein – $20
Jan-Felix Schmakeit – $40
Image Works Studio – $200
Mccord Computer Solutions – $10

Wednesday
Israel Cefrin – $15
John Scotcher – $40
Mark Reed – $65
Quality Interfaces – $50
Veli-Matti Saari – $30
René Helminsen – $50
Maine Webworks – $30
Michael Erb – $25

Thursday
Dieter van Baarle – $20
Anders Rehnvall – $25

Friday
Anonymous – $50

Sunday
Reinhard Mohr – $10
Andrew Moore – $20
Patrick Honorez – $50
Torben Hoerup Nielsen – $15
Prism Mail Solutions – $33

Monday
Andre Gellert – $5
Gunnar Grimsson – $50

Tuesday
Finn Lovenkrands – $100
Martin Johnson – $20

Wednesday
Martin Weber – $30
Sanjay Jain – $100

Grand Total: $1,693

Thanks to everyone who donated! The trip is definitely on (all tickets are bought) and the rest of the money will go towards making Copenhagen a little less expensive for everyone.

Thanks again!