CMSMS | CMS Made Simple

I’m proud to announce the first published book on CMS Made Simple. Written by one of our upstanding users, Sofia Hauschildt, and published by Packt Publishing, the book covers some of the following topics:

• Develop powerful, engaging, effective, and easy-to-use CMS websites for businesses, clubs, or organizations
  Implement your own design or any HTML /CSS template into CMS Made Simple with step-by-step instructions
• Integrate an e-commerce shop with PayPal checkout
• Easily implement YouTube videos into templates or pages
• Create custom forms of any complexity with individual fields using a builder
• Integrate a photo gallery or newsletter feature with ready-to-use modules
• Build print-friendly PDF versions of your sites on the fly
• Develop protected pages available only for members and manage visitor logins with a sign-in form
• Build your own functionality with module maker
• Much more…

You can find more information on the Packt Publishing site.  Since this is a book for an open source project, Packt sends us a percentage of the total sales to further the project.

I’ve received a couple of copies of the book and started reading it over.  It covers a lot of great topics and answers questions that are asked repeatedly on our forums.  It should be a good resource to new users and veterans alike.

Congratulations to Sofia on the publishing of this book. Let’s hope it’s a big seller and the first of many.

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Just a quick word on the outage on Friday night.

Since the very beginning, CMSMS has been using Zoneedit as their DNS hosting provider. This was in the days before every domain registrar offering their own DNS hosting, so Zoneedit was the perfect solution for some quick, free DNS hosting. Since budget was such an issue in those days, we gladly accepted it.

Early Friday night, we started getting random reports of CMSMS sites not being able to resolve. Of course, since all of our DNS hosting was on Zoneedit, it was the only place to look for answers. It looked like ns19 (our first server) was totally out, and ns8 (the secondary) was intermittently answering.

We let it go for a few hours, but things weren’t getting resolved and more and more people started to question what was going on. So late Friday evening, I decided to move the DNS totally over to Godaddy, since that’s where the domain is registered anyway. I’ve been using the service for a few years and never had any issues, so I figured that it can’t hurt.

However, at some point in the near future, I will come up with a tertiary DNS server, so that if Godaddy does experience some kind of outage, we’ll at least have one more server to handle any new requests.

DNS name server changes can take anywhere between 1 and 72 hours to show up, depending on network conditions and your ISP’s caching. Most users should be fixed shortly, and if not, patience please… the DNS changes should be coming down your line soon.

Hopefully we won’t have any more issues like this in the future.

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It’s that time of year again. In order to fund some of the developers travel to Geek Moot 2009, we’re going to require a bit of supplemental income. We’re looking to fund 2 developers coming over from North America as well as the remainder of the deposit for the event space.

As with the last 2 years, we’re going to open up for help from the community. The goal this year is kind of big, but I’m hopeful that we can pull it off.

We’re looking to raise $2,000 by August 10th. This will be for 2 plane tickets, some travel expenses and the remainder (about $600) going to the event space. Donators will be added to this post on a daily basis and moved over to the donations list on the main site. We will, of course, keep a running tally of donations and give a big congrats if and when the goal is reached.

Furthermore, the largest donation will get a free banner ad on our sites for 2 months. This is, of course, if they have something to advertise. If not, then we’ll try and come up with something else to show our thanks.

I think we can pull this off. Prove me right, folks!

Thanks!
Ted

Update:
Thanks to everyone. We turned it into a month of donations and it was a huge success! I’ll contact Mirren soon and see everyone who’s coming to Geek Moot in a few weeks.

To make a donation, click the Paypal link:

To signup for Geek Moot 2009, visit geekmoot.com.

July 31
Tyler Boespflug – $50

Aug 1
Jordan Hlebarov – $5
Finn Lovenkrands – $200
Sandro Barbieri – $100

Aug 2
Sanjay Cherubala – $50
Maine Webworks – $50

Aug 3
Gareth Jones – $30

Aug 4
Marcus Hill – $20
Mirren – $350

Aug 5
Johnny Eshak – $100

Aug 6
Reinhard Mohr – $50

Aug 8
Shareworld – $30

Aug 9
Franck Lafay – $100

Aug 11
lonejacobsen.dk – $50

Aug 12
JeremyBass – $50
duketown.eu – $50
smilingcharleys.com – $15
AU Computers P/L – $200

Aug 13
Alessandro Grassi – $10
Pyramedia – $50
Andrew Rowbottom – $10
Webaholic – $50
Mana Ties – $50

Aug 14
Prism Open Source – $50
Das howtodo-it-Team – $10

Aug 16
Leeroy Lugg – $100

Aug 17
Viebig – $20
Karl Goldstraw – $10

Aug 18
Timothy Mahoney – $25
helminikon.no – $140

Aug 19
Renzo Ticineto – $40
tao.dk – $200

Aug 25
Piotras Cimmperman – $200

Aug 29
terapeutweb.com – $50
Katahdin Designs Limited – $30

Aug 30
Victor Ursu – $20

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The developers of CMS Made Simple have finalized plans for the yearly developer conference. However, there is one major change… we’re inviting you to join us.

On 26-27 September, CMSMS will host the first public Geek Moot event at The Showroom in Sheffield, UK. There will be plenty of presentations by the devs and others, events, networking and just general geeking out. There are plans for evening events in the works and they will be announced soon.

Come spend the weekend with the CMSMS devs and other people just like you for a weekend of fun with the system you love.

For more details on the event, see http://geekmoot.com.

Presentations

We are looking for people to do talks and presentations on CMSMS related topics. If you’d like to do a presentation (and promote yourself as a CMSMS know-it-all or your company), please contact us here. Proposals are due by 1st July.

Sponsors

We are also looking for sponsors. There are details about what sponsorship could provide here. We would love to get several sponsors if possible.

Donation Drive

We will also do our yearly donation drive in a month or so. The money for this will go to paying for several devs to travel to the conference, as they normally wouldn’t be able to. We’ll announce that when we’re prepared to handle the influx of funds — and figure out who needs them.

Thanks!

We hope to see you in September!

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Well, I must say that the idea of having a real CMSMS conference has gone over better than I originally expected it to be. That’s really good news. We have a lot of dedicated users, which is a great thing to have in any community.

We discussed the idea yesterday and we’re going to move forward with trying to put this together. We’ve had a few ideas as to where to hold it, but nothing in concrete. As an experiment, I’ve decided to open this up the community to see if someone will help us plan an event.

What does this mean?

We’re looking to get several proposals together by the 22nd of April. We have a few ourselves, but we need more to really make a good decision. We’re hoping that people in the community might have better ties with this sort of thing than we do on the dev team. We can make a good attempt, but you might know better.

So what do you need?

We’re looking for a facility with the following specs:

• Able to hold roughly 100 people — would be great if we could go bigger if we have more turnout than expected, but this is a good start
• Western Europe — the more central the better, so that people can easily drive or train
• Nearby hotels and pubs — it can’t be out in the middle of nowhere. Would be great if we could get a group discount, but not necessary
• Nearby airport and/or train station — bigger the better
• We need it for 2 days, plus an afternoon to setup. Friday to Sunday in mid-to-late August is best, but other dates could be considered
• We need a PA and a projector. If the facility doesn’t have it, we’ll have to rent those things for the weekend
• Reliable, fast internet access. Many, many geeks with laptops will attend, plus we’d like to stream what we can. Spotty internet would be disastrous
• Scenic and/or lots to do is a big plus

A rough price and availability would be fantastic, plus any contact details. There will be a fee to attend, so we understand it won’t be free. However, price does factor in so we can charge something that isn’t astronomical.

What am I signing up for?

By doing this, you’re not necessarily signing up to run the whole thing. We can probably take care of it once a location is decided. We’re just looking for a good place to hold the thing. Of course, having a local contact will make some things easier — but we can probably handle the majority of it via the internet.

We’ll throw in free admission (and beer — if you like that sort of thing) for the person who helps us out. And, of course, tons of recognition for all your hard work.

If you can help out, please send an email over to ted at cmsmadesimple dot org before the 22nd with any and all details, and we’ll put it into the voting. We want to announce the full details on or before May 1st, so stay tuned.

Thanks!

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Found here: http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/topic,32453.0.html

I’m just trying to gauge the potential interest of a CMSMS focused conference in lieu of (or addition to) the traditional geek moot we normally do. There would most likely be a charge. Nothing crazy, but it would be necessary to cover the costs of the facility and any other resources we’d need to get to put on a conference. It would be in Western Europe… possibly the UK, and most likely in the late summer, early autumn.

If people are hungry for this kind of thing, we could consider it. But given it’s a LOT of work to put on, there would have to be considerable interest before proceeding.

Thanks for your help!

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During the discussions at this years’ GeekMoot, one recurring item that came up was the issue of resources — specifically the need for people. The good news is that while we were webcasting, we had a few people step up to the plate and offer to help out which was great but we’re still on the lookout.

I think a lot of us on the developer team take it for granted that we welcome volunteers. However,
we thought we’d make a formal announcement to that effect.

So … if there’s something that you want to improve, something that bugs you and that you can fix, please jump in and do it! To be effective, you should coordinate with us. Generally, the best way to do that is join us in the IRC Channel (also accessible via the Forum. For even more information, take a look at the IRC Support Page.

If you know you want to help, but don’t know what needs doing, we’re always looking for people to help on:

• Documentation
  • Tutorials
  • How-Tos
  • Screencasts / demos – show people how to solve common problems, or show the clever ways you accomplished something cool on your site
• Design
  • Themes (both user-facing and admin)
  • Logos and promotional items, for T-Shirts, mugs, etc.
  • UI / interface designs – got ideas for an easy way to improve usability in modules, the admin, or the default templates?
  • Powerpoint or other marketing materials to use to demonstrate or promote CMSMS (e.g., to conferences or users groups)
• Coding
  • Bug Fixes – send your patches to the forge!
  • Features – have you added functionality? Got ideas you’d like to implement?
  • Modules – writing modules is fun, useful, and oh-so-profitable! Here’s your chance to get in on the action.
  • Demos – are you willing to set up a Virtual Appliance demo? A bootable demo CD image? Some other cool way of showing off CMSMS?
  • Core/2.0 – are you a database optimization expert? A top notch coder? Here’s your chance to help us make this the best system ever.
• Other Stuff
  • Promotion – demo CMS MS to your local classroom, user’s group, or boss. Write articles or letters about it.
  • Nominate CMSMS for awards, or vote for it where it’s already been nominated.
  • Donate money.

So there you are: a lot of opportunities to make your mark, and to make CMS Made Simple even better!

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Hey all,

I apologize for the downtime of the forge server lately. We’re currently working with the hosting provider to track down the issue. I pulled the server down last night for a couple of hours to do some maintenance work on the file system… which I’m hoping will fix the random lockups and weird file corruption we’ve been seeing over the last couple of weeks.

Only time will tell whether this actually fixed it or not, but I’m feeling confident that linode knows what they’re doing. I’ll keep everyone posted and thanks for your patience!

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A number of associates and developers of CMS Made Simple will be meeting in Philadelphia over the weekend to discuss the future of the project.

We will meet up in downtown Philly on Friday night for dinner and discussion. The formal meeting will take place in the Fairless Hills neighbourhood on Saturday and Sunday and will be available *live* via Mogulus starting at 10.00 EDT/14.00 GMT on Saturday 23rd.

The formal discussion agenda over the weekend looks like this.

1. Manpower issues
2. Documentation
3. 1.5 vs. 2.0
4. Open bugs for 1.x
5. 2.0
6. The *New* Forge
7. Roadmap: 90 day, 180 day, year, long term
8. How to “sell” CMSMS — marketing and attendance at tradeshows such as SXSW, the MySQL conf, etc.
9. Bug squashing and doc writing session (if time allows)

The group will also host a live Q&A Session (also over Mogulus, see above) for an hour from 14.00 EDT/18:00 GMT on Saturday. Feel free to join in the discussion and ask anything that’s relevant.

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Hey all,

Well, between vacation and some life changes, I’m a little behind on everything CMS related. Luckily, things are getting back to normal (I’ll post as to why next week)… but I’m now playing catchup on a lot of things. In fact, here is one thing I should’ve done 2 weeks ago.

The CMS Developer Geek Moot 2008 is next weekend. I’ll be having 6 people come to my house for the weekend to talk all things CMSMS. With that, I want to show people a good time.

Furthermore, we’ve discussed the idea of putting the meeting up on a broadcasting site of some sorts for the community to watch and interact with. We also want to video conference in Calguy this year properly. However, to do that with some kind of decent quality, I need to get some equipment.

Here’s what I propose…

I’m looking to raise $700 in less that a week. $350 of it will be for a 10 channel USB mixer and 6 lavaliere microphones. The rest will be used for beer, steaks, and potentially a nice dinner for the group. I want to handle this like last year.

Donators will be added to this post on a daily basis and moved over to the donations list on the main site. I might be a bit slow on updating today and tomorrow, as I’ll be driving from South Carolina to Philly to conclude my vacation. But the rest of the time, I’ll update the previous day’s donations the next morning.

Assuming we raise the money in time, I’ll post the broadcasting details later this week along with pictures of the setup and probably run a few tests to make sure it’s all working correctly.

What do you guys think? I know it’s a little last minute, but I think we can pull this off and have a really great developer’s conference this year again.

Thanks!

To make a donation, click the Paypal link:

Sorry for the delay posting Friday and Saturday — Saturday was a VERY long day!

Friday
Gustavo Fanger – $10
Mathias Linden – $7
Rob Lee – $150
David Nägele – $10
Ronny Krijt – $50
Alex Hertz – $100
Noel McGran – $50

Saturday
Cybercom Software – $100
Jordan Hlebarov – $5
Einar Povl Abrahamsen – $5

Sunday
Tatu Wikman – $60
Turner Technology, Inc. – $50
Suspire Media – $50
Data Concepts Unlimited, Inc. – $50
Concept Factory Pty Ltd – $100

Monday
emotion – http://www.emotion.lt – $100
Marten Wilmink – $50
http://lonejacobsen.dk – $100
Tony Sandland – $150
Jan Oliver Waldeck – $20

Tuesday
Richard Wallace – $175
Maine Webworks – $25

Wednesday
Benjamin Sion – Studio Circa – $50
Stephan Krause – http://vipstephan.de – $30

Total: $1497

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