CMSMS | CMS Made Simple

Today CMS Made Simple, our favorite award winning Open Source Content Management System reached an important milestone: we surpassed 750,000 downloads since the original release of CMS Made Simple 0.1 in July of 2004! Reflecting the growing favor for CMSMS in the web development community, these downloads demonstrate that people agree: CMS Made Simple is a great tool.

The latest release (version 1.6.6) has been downloaded over 9900 times since its release at the beginning of October, or approximately 520 times each day (not including direct check-outs from our SVN repository).

This groundswell of support is the result of thousands of developers recognizing how CMSMS can simplify their web site deployments. They are seeing how it helps them to build feature rich, dynamic websites that empower end users to maintain their own content. Handing control over to end users then allows the website developer to move on to the next project.

CMS Made Simple is used by thousands of professional web developers all over the world to develop web presence sites for small businesses, corporations, standards organizations, magazines, charities, and whatever you can imagine.

At this point, The CMSMS development team would like to thank our user community for their outstanding support of this product over the last few years. This incredible enthusiasm gives us the energy to continue developing the best content management system for professional web developers and their customers.

(CMS Made Simple is a free, PHP based, community developed, Open Source Content Management System released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.)

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This is primarily a bugfix release again… trimming off of the issues that our users have encountered, particularly those related to those using pretty urls which append a / to all the urls (I still don’t know why people do this…. why not use .php or .html for extensions, I dunno).

Additionally, we think we’ve solved once and for all an issue that caused the imagemanager to redirect back to the admin login form… and why some people had problems getting the wysiwyg editor to work. it was related to their hosts not having session.use_cookies enabled. This is not a recommended setting, and although we’ve added in some code to let this work in the short term, we will not be supporting it in future versions of CMSMS. So please everybody, make sure your hosts turn this on.

Below is the full list of changes. Enjoy

Version 1.6.6 – Bonde
—————————–
– #3777 Documentation Error: redirect_url plugin
– #3923 Adminlog download, tab separator single quoted
– #3926 Little typo in stylesheet.
– #3935 Validation error in stylesheet ‘Accessibility and cross-browser tools’
– #4002 menu parameter start_level=’2′ don’t show results.
– #4068 Admin Log, update “HTML Blob” to “Global Content Block”
– #4118 die() with blank page
– Fix problem with showinmenu for separators.
– Fix error pages being able to be set inactive in listcontent.
– Fix error in permissions checking for copying content.
– Fixes issues with the PDF output only working of the pdf flag was turned OFF
– Submit is not taken on forms, when .htaccess is used and page_extension = ”.
*** FIXES RELATED TO session.use_cookies == off ****
NOTE: This is not a recommended setting, and future versions of CMSMS will not in any way
support this setting. Please contact your hosts to ensure that this setting is enabled
properly.
– This issue has probably been the cause of many tinyMCE issues in the past.
– The install and upgrade routines will fail if this setting is off
– The install and upgrade routines now explicitly check for this setting.
– TinyMCE 2.2.5 now supports session.use_cookies == off (for now)
– ImageManager no longer displays the login screen with session.use_cookies == off

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This is primarily a bug fix release… with a number of ‘relatively important’ fixes. It is recommended you upgrade your site(s) at your earliest convenience.

Version 1.6.5 – Poya
—————————–
- Fixes a problem with bulk deletion of pages that have inactive children.
- Fixes many problems with ability to get content objects
- Fixes the CreateFormStart method to reliably get the page url.
- Fixes problem with pretty urls (internal or mod_rewrite) and GET parameters on the URL.
- Printing
– Fixes problem with stylesheet not being found if pretty urls were being used
– Fixes problem with parsing the URL to print.
- News
– Fixes trivial issue with editing an article that had expiry dates set.
- MenuManager
– Fixes problem with having a default database template
– Fixes problem with being able to delete the default database template.
- TinyMCE
– Fixed bug disabling the wysiwyg togglebox upon saving the basic toolbar profile
– Fixed bug with truncated menutexts with quotes in them not getting properly escaped, breaking config
– Updated to latest TinyMCE 3.2.6

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This is a bugfix only release… infact, only a small handful of bugs have been fixed since 1.6.1. Here are the details:

- Fix a problem with the unique module hash not always starting with a letter
which fixes form validation problems.
- TinyMCE
– #3762 – file extension ignored in internal links
- News
– #3782 Fix IE8 toggle in add/edit news (Use Expiration Date:)
– Fixed a minor template problem in News.

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The latest and greatest release of your favorite content management system… CMSMS version 1.6.1 “Canala” is ready to roll. This is a bugfix only release.

Again, the members of the development team have donated many hours to testing, fixing, and re-testing the package, to make sure that what we fix, is infact fixed, and everybody should give a big thanks to them.

We’ve fixed the known outstanding php4 issues (thank god we won’t have to worry about php4 when 1.7 comes out), and a few issues with permissions, and email addresses, etc.

Important: we have fixed a longstanding problem with having multiple module calls within the default. content area. The fix to this was essentially to dramatically change the ‘module id’ mechanism from a simple count, to a unique hash for each module call. Therefore any of you that are doing styling, or funky smarty tricks relying on specific module id’s like m6_ or m7_ will have upgrade problems. There was no way around it.

Hopefully this will be the last release in the 1.6 series, and we can move forward with development on CMSMS 1.7, which will be a php5 only release.

Note: Just to remind everybody out there… as of this release, we can only support CMSMS 1.6, and 1.6.1… therefore please refrain from asking questions or reporting bugs until you’ve successfully upgraded.

Here’s a more detailed list of what’s changed:

- Fixes of several bugs:
– #3138 A bug of counting modules in page
—
Note: This bugfix WILL break any sites that use incorrectly hacked templates with
hardcoded module id’s like m6 and m7, etc.
—
– #3582 (CMS 1.6) Fatal Error in contentoperations.inc.php
– #3589 Missing “Forgot Password?” on default template
– #3591 Default group “Editor” has no permission to edit a page
– #3601 Creating new user fails, doesn’t accept “-” in email address
– #3606 Cannot remove additional editors from page
– #3608 Edit icon of pages is shown even if no permissions to edit that page
– #3612 {content} passes params to Module -> results in errormessage
– #3626 Fixes issue with php 4.x in multicontent
– #3636 Global Settings -> Advanced Setup -> Basic Properties
– #3768 Email validation when add user
– #3680 Big problem with group permissions
– Fixes issue with php 5.0.5 in content operations
– More minor bug fixes.
– Fixes to default content on new installs

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So here it is… after building alot of anticipation, and only a week behind schedule, CMS Made Simple 1.6 is now ready for public consumption.

Changes/Features/Bug Fixes

There have been a great deal of changes,.. so I’ll just brush on them here… please read the changelog notes attached with the release at:
http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/project/changelog/1897
* Content Type Changes
Major effort has been undertaken to make the system faster, better and easier to extend. We’ve reworked the content types and various
classes so that the number of queries is better optimized, and so that there is more options for configuration of what is to be displayed to
your users on the edit content page.

* Permissions Changes
We’ve completely re-worked the content permissions to allow more flexibility, and allow greater control over what your users are allowed
to do with respect to content. Briefly, the permssions model has changed to:
– Additional Editors or Owners of a content page
can edit that content page
– The “Add Pages” permission states that the user can create pages as children of pages that he is already an owner/additional editor of.
– The “Remove Pages” permission states that the user can only remove pages that he is an additional editor/owner of
– The ‘Manage All Content’ permission allows you to do anything with all content.

* New Themes and Content
– Two new frontend themes have been developed, and the default content for new installations changed considerably.

* Forgot Password functionality in admin
– The admin console now has the ability to handle forgotten passwords, if an email address has been associated with the admin account.

* 404 error handling changes
– A new content type ‘Error Handler’ has been created to handle 404 errors. This page is just a regular content page with some extra
functionality. This will allow you to do things like embed module calls, etc. into the 404 page.

* Site Preferences rewrite
– The site preferences page has been completely re-written.

* Sitedown IP address exclusion
– When sitedown mode is enabled, it is now possible to exclude certain IP addresses from that restriction. In this way the site can be
down for everybody but the developer working on it.

* Page Preview fixes
– Page preview now works with page templates that have multiple content blocks.

* UTF-8 changes for new installs
– On new installs, the installer now tries to change the default encoding for newly created tables, etc. This allows better utf-8 flow
for most sites.
– A new ’set_names’ config entry has been created to allow doing a ’set names utf-8′ at the beginning of any request. This is on
by default for new installs, and off for upgrades.

* config.php cleanup
– We’ve removede a bunch of the redundant stuff out of the config.php, and optimized the pretty url stuff so it should be a bit easier to
understand.

* MenuManager improvements
– The admin panelo for menumanager has been completely re-worked to be more obvious, and easier to use… there is now the ability
to specify a ‘default’ menu template.

* ModuleManager improvements
– Module Manager now has the ability to check dependencies before installing a module.
– Module Manager can now check to see if there are newer released versions of any of the modules that you are currently using on
your site.

* TinyMCE improvements
* Search improvements
* Printing improvements
* Many, Many bug fixes.

Compatiblity

- For sites with multiple admin users who have different levels of permission for editing content, you will need to re-visit the permissions,
and to make sure that everything is setup the way it needs to be.
- Users using Cataloger, PageBlocks, and other modules that create content types will experience problems with compatibility. Please
contact the authors of these modules and ask them to release a version compatible with CMS 1.6 as soon as possible.

Diff Packages

Due to the extent of the changes, there will be no diff releases for 1.6. You will need to download the full package, and transfer the whole thing up to your new website… please download the appropriate checksum package and validate your upload with that.

Thanks
I would like to take this time to give my thanks to the development team, and the beta testers who contributed hundreds of hours in testing, fixing, enhancing, and debugging this release. If I forgot your name, please remind me and I’ll add it ASAP.

Dev Team Members

Ronny Krijt
Rene Helminsen
Alberto Benati
Nuno Costa
Mark Reed
Morten Poulsen
Ted Kulp
Tyler Boespflug

Beta Testers

SimonSchaufi
duclet
Sonya
bess
Nullg
JeremyBASS
ZiggyWigged
Maarten

That’s it… I’m sure you’ll find this release the best ever…. It can be downloaded from the usual locations… Enjoy.

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This is just a small maintenance release that fixes a couple of annoying bugs:

a) The logout/session issue should now be resolved permanently.
b) The problem with errors in preview on new installs because of some bad logic in the default templates has been fixed.

Diff packages are available (they are very small) to allow you to quickly upgrade your 1.5.3 site to 1.5.4.

This is an optional upgrade. If you’re not experiencing problems with the logout/session issue, then staying at 1.5.3 for a while should be fine.

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Here it is….. after a long wait… this version should clear up a large number of the minor issues people have been having of late.
there are not many new features, but alot of bug fixes. and you should notice that the package is getting closer and closer to that ‘rock solid’ state.

I would like to take this time once again to give many thanks to the dev team members and translators that have donated countless hours of their time to this project. They’ve been managing the bug tracker and feature request list, testing, reproducing bugs, fixing them and then testing the fixes. I couldn’t even guess the number of hours that have been put in by the team for this release alone.

Everybody owes these people a huge thank you:
Nuno Costa
Ronny Krijt
René Helminsen
Morten Poulsen

For those people that like details. Here’s a copy of what is in the doc/CHANGELOG.txt for this release.

Version 1.5.3 – Arecibo
—————————–
- Fixes of several bugs:
– #2516 Javascript script errors in admin listcontent.php panel.
– #2706 CreatePagination() does not include Session Key.
– #2915 Typo in multicontent.php throwing errors.
– #2925 User not exist in sample content.
– #2940 Field-length dateformat in UserPrefs shorter than in GlobaSettings.
– #2995 Group assignments bug.
– #2996 Language string missing.

– Notice error in modform.inc.php.
– Fixed a minor permission issue on editpref.php.
– Added an option to disable the wysiwyg for a content-page.
– Fixed (hopefully) problem with pseudo-random logouts when there is inactivity in the admin section.
– Put ‘canonical’ logic in the default templates.
– Made ‘NCleanGrey’ the default theme, in an install without default content installed as well.

- Search 1.5.3
– #3034 Searching for words in the footer expose all pagenames on my site.
– Now remove event handlers when uninstalling the module
– Dont return page results for non searchable pages, even if the result was found in the template.
– Make changes to convert search results to entities on output to help with validation.
– Now search for the ’stop phrase’ in the base addwords function, allowing optionally excluding specific module records from being indexed.

- Feature requests that are included:
– #1231 Make default templates use uploads/images/logo1.gif instead of images/cms/logo1.gif.
– #2897 Moved Image/Thumbnail in content-page to options-tab.
– #3025 News: new parameter, action=”detail”, which can be used to show a specific entry in detail-mode directly.
– #3035 link from admin backend to the forge.
– #3068 New plugin; page_attr that returns attributes of a page.

– TinyMCE
– Added support for configuring the third toolbar
– Added option to show actual thumbnail-files
– Fixed filetype icons in FilePicker
– Implemented | as seperator in toolbars
– Fixed working of force-cleanup-on-paste
– Fixed toolbars for frontend-usage

- News 2.9.3
– Minor improvements to the articles tab in the admin
– Now output a canonical URL in detail view
– Changes to default templates
– #3027 field definitions not deletable when entry is made using fesubmit.
– #2941 (News) Extra-field not showing in detail-view.
– Draft news articles are not indexed in the search module.

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CMS Made Simple is now available for download. This is just a bugfix release, with little in the way of enhancements…. but a large number of bugs have been fixed…. Some of them were in the forge… some of them we found on our own or were reported by valued members.

The only real new feature in 1.5.2 is the {page_image} plugin which makes it simple to use the image and thumbnail content attributes.

Many thanks to the development team for their hundreds of hours of testing and debugging, without them, this package would be nowhere near as stable and feature rich as it is.

Diff packages are available for convenience in upgrading from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2

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The results for the Packt Publishing Awards are out and CMS Made Simple has hit the number 2 spot in both the Best PHP Based Open Source CMS and Most Promising categories. Last year we came 3rd in the Overall category, which in itself was an achievement given how shy and retiring we are when it comes to self-promotion. This year we came joint 2nd with Joomla, a move which shows how the ever-improving code and an increase in community involvement have solidified our status as a rock-solid choice for professional web development.

So a huge thanks to all those who voted for us and an even bigger thanks to everybody who has contributed time, money code and resources and helped us to make CMS Made Simple the great piece of software it is. And let’s make sure we’re a smash hit at No.1 next year!

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