All posts by the maven

HTML Editors

The HTML Editor list provided as a help to choose between the various programs out there. HTML is an ASCII markup language and can be completely coded in a text editor. Some feel most comfortable doing just that. The best editors combine a design view with a strong coding view so you can switch between either. The better editors also tend to create better code that looks good across multiple browsers and isn’t bloated with sloppy html. The list below are programs I have either personal experience with or are recognized leaders or both.

HTML Editors List

HTML Editor Features Price
Adobe Dreamweaver
  • The professional choice for building web sites and applications
  • A powerful combination of visual layout tools, application development features, and code editing support
  • Developers and designers can create appealing, standards-based sites and applications quickly
  • Developers can use it with the server technology of their choice to build powerful Internet applications
  • Includes leading support for CSS-based design to hand-coding features
$399.00
CoffeeCup HTML Editor
  • Free Support & Free Upgrades for Life
  • Rocking HTML & CSS Code Completion
  • Our Open from Web function lets you view and edit code right off the internet. A great resource for learning HTML.
  • The DHTML Menu Builder is the tool you’ve been waiting for! Now you can make sharp looking dropdown menus in minutes, no scripting experience necessary!
  • DHTML & JavaScripts Included
  • Fast & Simple Image and Link Inserting
  • Wizards for Frames, Tables, Forms, Fonts & more
  • Easy Drag & Drop WYSIWYG Visual Editor
  • Upload your webpages with a click of the mouse! Our Right-Click FTP and Built-in FTP Program keeps website updates simple.
  • Full-Featured HTML Code Editor with Quickstart
  • Unbelievable Project Management features
  • Want easy to use JavaScripts? We included the best JavaScripts you’ll find!
  • Built in SiteMapper Creator
  • A BIG bag of snazzy Graphics included
  • Spelling mistakes and typos are a thing of the past with our Active Spell Check feature. The HTML Editor will check for errors as you type, right-click the selection for the correct spelling.
  • Are you worried that your page uses an older version of HTML? Worry no longer, we have added an XHTML conversion tool to convert those old pages
  • New stand alone Free FTP client included with HTML Editor 2007!
  • Since more of you are using our program for other types of code, likeXHTML and PHP we added their tags to the program as well.
  • Cross Browser compatibility is important, and testing in different browsers can be annoying and time consuming. The HTML Editor allows quick and easy browsing with any installed web browser.
  • HTML Editor has CoffeeCup SiteMapper built right in, no charge.
  • Our Table Wizard guides you step by step to creating stable HTML tables. Beginners will appreciate the WYSIWYG interface.
  • Highlighting your HTML tags makes webpage building easier. Customize your Tag Highlighting Options to fit your style.
$49.00
NetObjects Fusion Essentials
  • Drag and drop layouts
  • Site Management Tools
  • Upload files with built-in FTP
  • Form builder
  • Photo Gallery
  • e-commerce tool
  • Custom shape tools
  • Rollover images
  • Insert custom HTML and scripts
  • Flash, Quicktime, and more
Free
PageBreeze
  • A full-featured but easy to use visual (WYSIWYG) HTML editor for creating web pages.
  • Our freeware visual editor is actually powered by Microsoft Internet Explorer. So you can always be sure you are seeing exactly what you will get.
  • Color-coded HTML source (tag) editor. You can switch between HTML source and visual modes at any
    time with a click of the mouse, and any changes you have made will instantly be reflected in both modes.
  • Preview mode lets you instantly see what your finished web page will look like in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
  • Included webpage templates and direct access to hundreds of free website templates to give you a fast start on creating a great looking site.
  • Drag-and-drop Form Builder makes it fast and easy to create powerful web forms.
  • Built-in integration with our form processing service, so you can make your web forms work almost instantly with no programming, scripts, or technical knowledge required.
  • Built-in in integration with our web knowledgebase, so you can easily add a 24×7 customer service system that will answer your customers’ questions instantly.
Free
NoteTab

NoteTab is a leading-edge text and HTML editor. Winner of software industry awards since 1998, this application does it all: it easily handles a stack of huge files; lets you format text to your heart’s content; does system-wide searches, and multi-line global replacements. It even corrects your spelling mistakes.

Build document templates, add bookmarks, convert text to HTML on-the-fly, and take charge of your code. Use a simple, power-packed scripting language to create anything from a text macro to a mini-application.

Free

Pro $29.95

  • Create a Web Site with Drag-and-Drop Simplicity
  • Choose from Over 135 Professionally-Designed Website Templates
  • No Programming Required with Automatically Generating HTML Code
  • Easy to Use Tools like Search Engine Optimization and Flash Creation
  • $35 Credit in Google Advertising
$49.95
Microsoft Expression

Professional Design Environment

Get more done with software that works the way you do. With task panes and menus just where you need them, you’re free to concentrate on design. Import Adobe Photoshop files to create your website graphics.

Standards Based Site Design

Reach for a tool that’s been built with today’s modern standards in mind, and see results in better browser rendering and more relevant search engine indexing. Expression Web builds sites to XHTML, CSS, XML, and XSLT, making sure your pages are compliant throughout the design process.

CSS Layout

Separate design from content with Cascading Style Sheets-the complex technology that’s behind today’s modern sites. Expression Web’s design-focused tools show you a visual hierarchy of styles, give you drag-and-drop control of margins, and offer many other ways to make working with CSS easy.

CSS Site Templates

Jump right in with Expression Web’s professionally designed, standards-compliant site templates in a broad range of categories. Or make your own CSS designs from a host of DIV-based layouts.

CSS Style Application

Choose between automatically generated CSS styles or generate them manually for absolute control over the type of rule created and its precise location. The choice is yours.

CSS Management

Get a visual overview of where CSS rules are created, where they’re located, and their application order with Expression Web’s industry-leading CSS management tools. It’s never been easier to manage complex CSS in a site.

Property Task Pane

See at a glance the full range of CSS and tag attributes available to you from either of the property task panes. You can reorder the list to find just what you need, or get a summary of "in use” CSS properties for fast reference.

Rich Data Presentation

Show that XML data who’s master! Simply drag and drop an XML file and it’s immediately rendered by an XSL stylesheet that you can reformat to match your site’s style. Now you can include, filter and sort and style data from any XML source easily.

ASP.NET 3.5

Harness the power of ASP.NET with a wide variety of controls, including navigation, calendars, logins and database integration. No coding is needed, as they’re all rendered within the design surface.

Edit PHP pages

Broaden your scope by now editing PHP sites with Expression Web 2. Apply the full set of standards based design tools to a wider range of sites.

$199.99

Dedicated Servers

What is a dedicated server? A few definitions:

From Wikipedia:

A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. Dedicated servers are most often housed in data centers, similar to colocation facilities, providing redundant power sources and HVAC systems. In contrast to colocation, a dedicated hosting service provides system administration and owns the server itself.

From Webopedia:

A dedicated server is a single computer in a network reserved for serving the needs of the network. For example, some networks require that one computer be set aside to manage communications between all the other computers. A dedicated server could also be a computer that manages printer resources. Note, however, that not all servers are dedicated. In some networks, it is possible for a computer to act as a server and perform other functions as well. In the Web hosting business, a dedicated server is typically a rented service. The user rents the server, software and an Internet connection from the Web host.

If one was to treat web hosting as a spectrum of web hosting needs then the spectrum would begin with shared web hosting at the low end of the spectrum and dedicated server web hosting at the high end of the spectrum. When an individual or business pays for a dedicated server from a web hosting company, they are paying for exclusive use of that server for their web hosting needs. In other words, the server is dedicated to their use and none other.

Strictly speaking, if a server is not dedicated for a single organization’s use, it is a shared platform. Server platforms vary just like the computers you can buy in the store. Some servers come with more or less RAM, more or less hard drive space, and faster/slower CPU’s but the server is dedicated to the use by one organization and it is a dedicated server solution. Shared web hosting, reseller web hosting, and virtual private server web hosting plans are all offered by web hosting companies and provide more or less features on the spectrum of web hosting. What they have in common is that they are all sharing the resources of a single server. A web host incurs certain costs of buying the hardware and maintaining the hardware on a network. If they have 100 shared hosting accounts on that single server then they 100 sources of revenue for that single server. They might decide, alternatively, to put 80 reseller hosting accounts on the server or 40 Virtual Private Server accounts on that server. VPS is more expensive than Reseller hosting which is more expensive than Shared web hosting. You should get the idea.

With dedicated server web hosting, a server is “rented” to a single user. Since the cost of the hardware and the maintenance of the server (admin, environmentals, bandwidth, etc) is passed on to one customer (plus profit of course) the price of a dedicated server platform is much more expensive than the shared alternatives.

Dedicated server prices can vary widely depending upon the hosting provider and the services needed. At the most basic level a dedicated server consists of the server platform and a guaranteed connection to the internet. The price is based upon the capabilities of the platform, the amount of data transfer (bandwidth) per month, and the amount of management required. The server platform can vary from a single CPU with 512MB RAM, and a single hard drive to a power platform with multiple CPU’s, gigs of RAM, and a RAID array. Prices for different platforms can quadruple in price depending on the power of the platform. The more powerful the platform, the more that can be supported. Companies that specialize in dedicated server platforms can usually recommend the amount of power a customer will need.

While a dedicated server solution is typically not for a novice and is more complex, it is not necessary to have system administration knowledge to benefit from a dedicated server platform. Many companies offer managed dedicated server platforms. Some dedicated server solutions limit help to keeping your server on and performing limited touch labor to keep your server working – the rest of the detailed system administration must be managed by the customer. Other dedicated server platforms come with the operating system and hosting management software installed for the user. The fully managed plans allow the user to enter trouble tickets for any type of issue necessary with the exception of custom program installation. For example, as my bio indicates, I’m comfortable with IT but I’m no expert on Linux. I’ve learned a lot managing my own server but I have neither the time or interest to manage it all myself. I leave the more sophisticated sysadmin to techs when I have problems.

Virtual Private Servers

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are a virtualization of the server operating system that splits a single physical server into multiple virtual servers. This practice was common in old mainframes but new operating systems, especially Linux, have made the practice much more common in the Web Hosting industry.

VPS fills a void between shared web hosting and a full-blown dedicated server and many hosting companies actually run their shared hosting business from VPS accounts. It allows root-level access to clients without physically dedicating the server. This allows the user to “virtually” control his entire server environment but it is cheaper than a dedicated server because the server owner can “lease” the server into multiple virtual environments for many clients. Thus, if a server platform costs a few hundred dollars per month for the hosting company to operate, it can sell the resources to dozens of clients operating in Virtual Private Server environments and charge them $20-$90 per month per client.

VPS is a great way to “cut your teeth” on the way to a dedicated server platform. I provide pro bono web hosting to non-profits and ministries and hosted about 50 different “clients” on my VPS solution from JaguarPC until I took on a couple of very “busy” sites. The VPS was ideal as it cost only $80 per month for 45 GB of storage and about a few hundred GB/month of bandwidth. Better, with full root access, I was able to “sandbox” the environment of an actual server. I could start and stop the web server, mail server, ftp server, etc. I could add and delete accounts en masse. I could add custom applications and was even able to run two instances of Apache on the same VPS account. For all intents and purposes, it was “my server”.

There is only one problem with a VPS – it is still a “shared” service. The CPU and the memory are not completely your own. Web hosts will advertise a minimum RAM and CPU availability depending on the level of VPS that you purchase but it is still one server with several clients accessing resources. It is not usually the normal request of HTML pages that really slows a server down as these tax memory and the CPU very little. Rather, it is applications that use mySQL (like WordPress or Drupal) and it is anti-Spam solutions like SpamAssassin that end up bringing your virtual environment to its knees. The message here is that one ought to know the nature of the clients they will be hosting and how CPU and Memory intensive their use of resources will be. It’s not a matter of buying the “high end” VPS solution and you may need a dedicated server for the task.

The above is not to recommend against VPS – if your resource requirements do not rise to the level of needing a dedicated server then spending over $150 per month when you can spend $50 per month for the same “virtual” service is a waste of money. There are even some VPS providers that are recognizing a desire among clients to have an even more “muscular” VPS and are offering more powerful VPS solutions, which primarily entails guarateeing that there will be fewer clients on the same machine.

Thus, VPS is a great option for anyone needing the ability to host multiple sites that needs or desires complete control of the server environment. It gives you greater performance and greater control than a shared hosting solution but is less expensive than a dedicated server solution.

Drupal

About Drupal

This is a useful compilation of information taken from Drupal’s site at http://www.drupal.org. Drupal is software that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to set up scores of different kinds of web sites, including

  • community web portals and discussion sites
  • corporate web sites/intranet portals
  • personal web sites
  • aficionado sites
  • e-commerce applications
  • resource directories

Drupal includes features to enable

  • content management systems
  • blogs
  • collaborative authoring environments
  • forums
  • newsletters
  • picture galleries
  • file uploads and download

and much more.

Drupal is open source software licensed under the GPL, and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. Drupal is free to download and use. If you like what Drupal can do for you, please work with us to expand and refine Drupal to suit your needs.

History

In 2000, permanent Internet connections were at a premium for University of Antwerp students, so Dries Buytaert and Hans Snijder setup a wireless bridge between their student dorms to share Hans’s ADSL modem connection among eight students. While this was an extremely luxourous situation at that time, something was missing. There was no means to discuss or share simple things.

This inspired Dries to work on a small news site with a built-in webboard, allowing the group of friends to leave each other notes about the status of the network, to announce where they were having dinner, or to share some notewhorthy news items.

The software did not have a name until the day after Dries moved out after graduation. The group decided to put the internal website online so that they could stay in touch, continue to share interesting findings, and narrate snippets of their personal lives. While looking for an appropriate domain name, Dries settled for ‘drop.org’ after he made a typo to see if the the name ‘dorp.org’ was still available. Dorp is the Dutch word for ‘village’, which was considered an appropriate name for the small community.

Once established on the Web, drop.org’s audience changed as the members began talking about new web technologies such as moderation, syndication, rating, and distributed authentication. Drop.org slowly turned into a personal experimentation environment, driven by the discussions and flow of ideas. The discussions about these web technologies were tried out on drop.org itself as new additions to the software running the site.

It was only later, in January 2001, that Dries decided to release the software behind drop.org as “Drupal.” The motivating factor was to enable others to use and extend the experimentation platform so that more people could explore new paths for development. The name Drupal, pronounced “droo-puhl,” is derived from the English pronunciation of the Dutch word “druppel” which stands for “drop.”

Drupal is a highly configurable, modular content management system. Before you can answer if Drupal is right for you, consider a couple of questions: Which type of Drupal user are you, and what are your needs?

Below is a list of common user types followed by Drupal features. If the features meet your needs and you have the skill-set required to implement them, Drupal might be a perfect system for you. (See the list at the bottom of this page for more on required skills.)

I’m a Blogger and I need…

  • single- and/or multi-user blogs
  • to categorize content
  • commenting
  • trackbacks
  • custom style and layout using sample or custom themes
  • image and/or other media support using contributed modules (i.e., plug-ins)

Skills needed: end-user, administrator

I’m evaluating Drupal for my organization/company and we need…

  • customizable user roles and permissions
  • robust security model
  • scalability
  • to configure and extend functionality to meet specific business needs
  • a support infrastructure (documentation, community, etc.)
  • to categorize content
  • additional features/functionality

Skills needed: evaluator, end-user

I’m a community organizer and I need…

  • community members to easily share ideas (blogs, forum, files, etc.)
  • members to have tools to help them self-organize
  • a site that can evolve as the community evolves (keeping up with the state-of-the-art of interactive web sites)
  • a support infrastructure (documentation, community, etc.)
  • customizable user roles and permissions
  • a site that is safe on the web (security, spam, trolls, etc.)
  • a special distribution of Drupal and contributed modules that come preconfigured with community relationship management tools like CivicSpace.

Skills needed: evaluator, end-user, administrator, site developer (to some extent)

I’m a small business owner and I need…

  • to set up the site myself
  • custom style and layout using sample/custom themes
  • customizable user roles and permissions
  • a system that is scalable and adaptable to the needs of my changing business
  • to categorize content
  • a support infrastructure (documentation, community, etc.)
  • e-commerce support for
    • shopping carts
    • premium paid content subscriptions
  • to configure and extend functionality to meet specific business needs

Skills needed: evaluator, end-user, administrator, site developer (to a limited extent)

I build or design websites for clients and I need…

  • to create a custom look and feel with my own themes
  • additional features/functionality
  • to easily provide support to my clients
  • access to a community of designers and developers

Skills needed: evaluator, administrator, site developer, developer (to some extent)

I’m a programmer and I need…

  • a robust, well-designed, modular system that I can customize and extend
  • well documented APIs
  • system and architecture documentation and coding standards
  • access to a community of other developers
  • a rich feature list

Skills needed: administrator, programmer

Do you know what type of Drupal user you want to be? If you do, review the skill sets below to see what you’ll need to get started:

  • Evaluator: Familiar with web terminology and concepts.
  • End-user: familiar with browsing, clicking, submitting web pages, selecting options.
  • Administrator: Manage roles, select themes, categorize web pages (content), configure module settings, install and upgrade software and databases, apply security fixes.
  • Site designer/developer: Install software, design style and layout (with css and minimal php), build and deploy websites, evaluate contributed modules, work with LAMP.
  • Programmer: program in php, administer databases, program through a well-defined API, design database objects, evaluating existing solutions and apply patches, collaborate with other developers

Now is a good time to learn more about Drupal. The Case studies section examines typical types of sites that use Drupal and gives links to real sites of each type. This section includes a listing of hundreds of Drupal sites.

In the Feature overview we survey some of the most important and commonly deployed features of Drupal.

A discussion of the merits of using Drupal over writing a custom Web-application framework to support your project is presented in Rolling your own system vs. using Drupal.

Case Studies

Drupal meets the needs of different types of web sites:

Community Portal Sites If you want a news web site where the stories are provided by the audience, Drupal suits your needs well. Incoming stories are automatically voted upon by the audience and the best stories bubble up to the home page. Bad stories and comments are automatically hidden after enough negative votes. Examples: Debian Planet | Kerneltrap

Personal Web Sites Drupal is great for the user who just wants a personal web site where she can keep a blog, publish some photos, and maybe keep an organized collection of links. Examples: urlgreyhot | Langemarks Cafe

Aficionado Sites Drupal flourishes when it powers a portal web site where one person shares their expertise and enthusiasm for a topic. Examples: ia/ | Dirtbike

Intranet/Corporate Web Sites Companies maintain their internal and external web sites in Drupal. Drupal works well for these uses because of its flexible permissions system, and its easy web based publishing. No longer do you have to wait for a webmaster to get the word out about your latest project. Examples: Sudden Thoughts | Tipic

Resource Directories If you want a central directory for a given topic, Drupal suits your needs well. Users can register and suggest new resources while editors can screen their submissions. Example: Entomology Index

International Sites When you begin using Drupal, you join a large international community of users and developers. Thanks to the localization features within Drupal, there are many Drupal sites implemented in a wide range of languages. Examples: PuntBarra | cialog

Education Drupal can be used for creating dynamic learning communities to supplement the face-to-face classroom or as a platform for distance education classes. Academic professional organizations benefit from its interactive features and the ability to provide public content, member-only resources, and member subscription management. Examples: ENGL 420S | WPA

Art, Music, Multimedia When it comes to community art sites, Drupal is a great match. No other platform provides the rock solid foundation that is needed to make multimedia rich websites that allow users to share, distribute, and discuss their work with others. As time goes on, Drupal will only develop stronger support for audio, video, images, and playlist content for use in multimedia applications. Examples: Terminus1525 | Project Opus

e107

About e107

A compilation of information from e107’s Site at http://www.e107.org

e107 is a content management system written in php and using the popular open source mySQL database system for content storage. It’s completely free and totally customisable, and in constant development.

Quick FAQ

Q. So why is it called e107?

A. It just is. Stupid name, maybe, but there it is.

Q. Is e107 based on/forked off any other content management system?

A. No. Right from version 0.1, e107 has been completely coded by the Development team from scratch. We do use some external code from other sources (xml parsers, archive scripts etc), these are all fully credited and linked to, under the terms of the GPL licence.

Q. Give me a good reason why I should use e107

A. That’s not a question but here goes anyway. We’re very proud of the large and committed community that’s grown up around us. Not only large and committed but polite and helpful too (this has been something we’ve encouraged since day one). It has massive plugin and theme resources which grow every day. It’s completely and totally free and always will be, you don’t even need to register anywhere to download it. But the main reason we’d give is that it’s coded by a team who care about the product. None of us make any money from e107, it’s something we do in our spare time, but it’s true to say we devote far too much time to it for our own (and our families) good. The result of this is a system we’re proud to put our names to. But there are hundreds of content management systems to choose from, if you’re not sure e107 suits your needs, head over to OpenSourceCMS and try a few out.

The History of e107 from It’s Chief Designer

I’ve never kept a journal or list of dates corrosponding to e107’s evolution, so all of the following is recounted from memery and is probably full of chronological errors

In late 1998, I coded and opened a website called Litestep2000 related to the Windows shell replacement Litestep. The site got fairly popular and a few months later became ls2k.org, when it moved to a php enabled server and I started my first tentative steps into scripting. After about 18 months of coding and maintaining this site, I was offered the chance by the then main admin c0mrade to take over the main Litestep theme site, litestep.net. I coded the site and I’m proud to say it continued to grow in popularity while I, DeViLbOi and jugg were at the helm.

Due to running such a busy site, I was always getting requests for site code, ot portions of the code we used on litestep.net from other members of the Litestep community, but due to time restraints and real life, I was very rarely able to help, so I set about taking some of the code from litestep.net and ls2k.org and turning it into a more modular and distributable codebase.

Over the space of a couple of months, websites (mainly Litestep and shell related) started popping up, and feature requests started coming in, so I decided to get a domain and give the code a name. I settled on e107 as it was turning out to be my seventh main project, and I purchased e107.org and set up a small e107 powered website there.

The site opened in July 2002, and e107 was a couple of months old at that stage, and at version 2.1. I continued to code and release revisions until 5.4 when I decided on a version numbering change, and the next version released was 0.6, which saw a major revamp of the code. At this time new versions and revisions were coming out on almost a daily basis (imagine that )

I was still maintaining the e107 codebase alone, but accepting contributions from users, notably McFly, Lolo_Irie, Cameron and a few others, but with version 0.612 I decided to ask a few of these contributors to join a newly formed developement taam, consisting of McFly, chavo, Cameron and Lolo_Irie, and myself. I was proud that these people accepting places as not only are they good coders, they were all good people as well (and still are )

A couple of versions later, I decided to take a step back from the development side of e107, as maintaining what had in a short period become a quite popular system had taken it’s toll on my real life, and I was not only tired but having to deal with the regular attacks on e107.org. The development team have continued to release new versions (at the time of writing e107 stands at v0.617) and make improvements and refine the e107 core.

I started tentative development of a new system in March 2004, codenamed nostromo. This isn’t intended to replace e107 and will probably never see the light of day due to real life issues (again pfft). This code, or at least the site it produces, can be seen at my personal site jalist.com.

So there we have it, e107, due mainly to the work of the dev team, plugin coders and the people who selflessly and mostly thanklessly man the forums with support for less experienced users, has come a very long way in it’s first two years of life, and hopefully will continue to grow for the next two years and beyond – my sincerest thanks to everyone that has contributed in even the smallest way.

Joomla!

About Joomla

A summary of information gleaned from http://www.joomla.org. Joomla turned 1 year old on 1 Sep 2006.

The story behind Joomla! is long and rich in detail. There are many different perspectives. The story below is the author’s on Joomla. Since it describes what Joomla is about as no other I thought I would post it:

The birth of a new project

On the 1st september 2005 Joomla! was born. Some called it a fork. Some called it a spoon . Some call it an entire table setting. Whatever your philisophical persuasion, the facts are that Joomla was a continuation of the work of the Development Team which unanimously resigned from the Mambo project in August 2005 . To my knowledge this was an unique event in the history of open source, never before did a complete project and community move house.

After the actual split we where put in both an exciting and difficult situation. Exciting because we managed, for the first time in history, to re-brand an open source project and move it to a new home. Difficult because this had never been done before. We were writing the blank pages in our own roadbook, one step at a time.

The whole effort also put alot of strain on the core team. Growing pains that normaly emerge over a period of months or years, needed to be dealt with in a period of weeks. Community pressure was high, resources needed to be created, a version released, a vibe established, … and above all we needed to keep cool. When looking back a year later I’m still amazed what people can accomplish when they set their minds to it and I’m proud to have been part of writing opensource history.

A new project, an old product

The re-branding of the project was a big succes and the Joomla! project swiftly made name in the opensource landscape. We managed to establish a clear brand and identity. Despite all our efforts, the re-branding of the product was less succesfull.

What’s the difference between Mambo and Joomla ?‘ This must have been the most asked question in the months and weeks after the split. A valid question indeed. What is Joomla! 1.0 actually, is it Mambo’s own ‘Lor ‘, suddenly appearing, or is it a new born product ?

After the split we were faced with a problem, while Joomla! 1.0 was indeed a rebrand of Mambo it hadn’t established it’s own persoanlity yet. Although it already had a huge user base from it’s birth, to a new user it was still a Mambo copy-cat. Looking and functioning in the same way, the only difference are the logo and name. How does that set Joomla! apart from Mambo? It doesn’t.

A new project, an old team

It became appearant that we needed to create a new version soon to show the project was still very much alive and to differentiate ourselves from Mambo. But how did we proceed? Follow the old roadmap or not? Choose for a longer release cycle or choose a safer solution by doing a short and quick release? Lot’s of questions, very few answers.

At that time the latter seemed the best approach. The whole team was still there, we could easily pick up development again. International community pressure, especially from the French community, convinced us to go for a shorter release cycle and put forward internationalisation as the main feature. In october 2005 we picked up development as if nothing had changed.

It would soon become clear that this was a vital mistake. The spooning of the project had left it’s strains on the community and core team. New people were invited, others left, processes needed to put in place and roles shifted. We saw a time of heavy and sometimes heated discussions on the mailing lists and forums about a multitude of problems. Slowly the realisation grew that not only our project name had changed but this also had vast implications on our community structure and processes.

A new project, a new team

In the months that followed we had quite a struggle to norm ourselves as the Joomla! team. At that time we where moving into the storming phase and we dealt with a multitude of issues, mostly surrounding communication and processes. We could have called a time out, stopped all our work and get our issues sorted before moving forward again. Instead we kept going. This resulted in a longer (1.1 beta was originaly slated for april 2006), more natural,agile development process and eventually in what will be Joomla! 1.5.

In the mean time community pressure , especially on the forums, grew. People voiced their discontent with the way things where going. Politics always have a negative effect on a community process and Joomla! isn’t any differenent. It’s only in the last two months that the working groups are starting to settle in and we are slowly moving into the norming phase while motivation is increasing.

It’s good to see this happening, this means we are on the right path. Over the next weeks working groups will slowly move to the performing phase where we will be able to function as a unit as we find ways to get the tasks done in supporting Joomla! 1.5.

The birth of a new product

Joomla! 1.5 will be the first product we release as a community. It is the result of the process we went through since the split and personaly I think it will become an excellent product, one we should all be proud of.

Goals behind 1.5

The main drive behind the design of Joomla! 1.5 is to try and use the Joomla! 1.0 architecture at it’s full extend. We can’t deny that the API’s in 1.0.x are not in line with latest professional coding standards. Most of the API’s are not flexible and not always using proper Object-Oriented principles. These problems had been discussed time and time again and everyone agreed that something needed to be done about it.

In the past these changes have always been put off since they would be coming in a 5.0 version . A version that was started multiple times but never got out of cvs. In order to make the Joomla! codebase more attractive to professional developers we just couldn’t leave it as is.

The development cycle of 1.5 was the ideal time. We have used the time it took to properly research the UTF-8 issues and refactor the codebase. We based ourselves on the feedback gathered over the last year and the experiences from developing 4.5.3. As a result the system has been restructured and the API have been cleaned up resulting in a flexible and powerful core framework that sets new standards for all future Joomla! development.

Why 1.5 ?

Alot of the larger features (ACL, NBS, …) on our roadmap can’t be implemented in a backwards compatible way and need a major version increase. Joomla! 1.5 tries to address all of the issues that can be addressed without compromising backwards compatiblity. The main reason to call it 1.5 and not 2.0 is just that, because it is 90% backwards compatible and is using the same database schema as 1.0.

A lot has been told about the development of Joomla! The reality is that the story is bigger than just Joomla! 1.0. It goes back years, spans continents, and includes a cast of thousands. It’s a fantastic story, with all of your standard themes — greed, rage, turmoil, love lost. But mostly it’s a story of dedicated people laboring to create something they truly believe in. That’s something I think everyone should be able to relate to – no matter what their walk of life. That’s why Joomla! is so powerfull.

For me, the story included the realization that I had never believed in something this much before, and discovering how easily and arbitrarily your dreams could be snatched away. Ultimately though I realized that with some patience and good old-fashioned hard work, anything is possible.

In the coming years, I hope Joomla! will gain the ability to be a crossroads where people can come together and share their thoughts on society and where it is going. Different people have different ideas, and these are borne out in the many different extensions that exist today. These extensions create the ecosystem that is Joomla!. Whatever project scratches the itch of any particular person, having their contributions and ideas around is beneficial for everyone.

Joomla is so successful today that it is gaining attention from people across the globe. Many new contributors are finding the project and new ways to help out. This sort of thing is essential to keep the project vibrant and maintain the flow of innovation. It is important that those of us who’ve been round the block a few times share what came before, what did and did not work. The struggles that were fought, the price that was paid. This project has not been successful by accident. Its success represents the sum total of the energy expended by thousands of people around the world for more than half a decade.

A year ago the world had never heard about Joomla!, today Joomla! has earned it’s spot on the virtual highway, it will be exciting to see what tomorrow brings. Happy birthday !

Septemer, 01, 2006

Mambo

About Mambo

More information can be found at http://www.mamboserver.com. You can read the Joomla! article for more information. Both sites are diplomatic about the rift but there is some definite tension here. Choice of any 5 of the top CMS’s boils down to a “religious” decision in the end.

What is Mambo?

This article will give you a better explanation of how Mambo fits into the content management landscape.

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First and foremost, Mambo is a Content Management System (CMS). It is the engine behind your website that simplifies the creation, management, and sharing of content.

There is an excellent article on How to evaluate a Content Management System (written by James Robertson) that covers the features of a good content management system in great detail.

MamboSchema

The goal of the Mambo project is to meet most of the requirements highlighted in the above article. As each day in development goes by we are getting nearer and nearer, while at the same time building a solid core which can be extended by third party developers.

In the hands of a custom developer, this makes Mambo a powerful platform for a wide variety of Internet applications that go far above and beyond the simple creation of content.

What Mambo isn’t!

Mambo is not a typical “portal” solution.

While Mambo can be modified or extended to provide this style of site this is not the goal of the project. Mambo is aimed at the more squarely at corporate websites or sites for small to medium businesses, families or personal sites.

The Mambo Team focuses on building a solid application framework rather than on add-ons that are typically found in many portal solutions. This keeps the Mambo core extremely lightweight and efficient, thus making it easier for anybody to extend Mambo through custom third party component and modules that directly serve their needs.

Features

Mambo is a full-featured content management system that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Some features include:

  • A large and healthy user and developer community.
  • Provides a basic level of content approval for registered users.
  • Online help.
  • Page caching mechanism to improve performance on busy sites.
  • Trash manager
  • Advertising management (banners, etc).
  • Media (images, documents) upload and management.
  • Content display scheduling.
  • Content syndication (RSS).
  • Search engine friendly (SEF) URL’s.
  • Internationalisation (interface translation).
  • Content macro language (aka mambots).
  • Advanced and separate system administation system.
  • Advanced package/addon/template deployment system.
  • Simple but powerful template system (written mostly in HTML, no complex templating syntax to learn, just a couple of PHP functions to include).
  • Heirarchial user access groups.
  • Basic visitor statistics.
  • Multiple WYSIWYG content editor support
  • Simple polls
  • Content voting/rating system.null

Many more free addons are available at mamboforge.net. Some of these addons include:

  • LDAP authentication
  • Extended user profiles
  • Forums
  • Media galleries
  • Document managers
  • Templates
  • Events calendar
  • and many, many more…

Some Frequently Asked Questions (see here)

1. Did Mambo change its name?

No. Mambo is still Mambo. There was a fork of the Mambo codeset in August which caused a lot of confusion. That fork was subsequently named “Joomla!” Please note that Joomla! is NOT a re-branding of Mambo. It is merely a fork; a totally separate project based on the same original codeset. Think Nuke / PostNuke / PHPNuke. All different, but with common roots.

2. Why did some of the original Mambo team decide to go elsewhere and create a fork?

Simple question without a simple (non-controversial) answer. As far as we are concerned, it’s ancient history and not relevant to where Mambo is today. The most important point is that the original Mambo is still very much alive and well. Under the Mambo open-source licensing agreement (GPL), anyone has the right to use the Mambo code to create a fork, that is, to create a special version of the software and distribute it freely. That’s the beauty of open source. There’s already a third fork running around at present and will probably be more in the future. Joomla may have been the first, but it won’t be the last time somebody bases a product on our award-winning code. In a way, it’s a compliment that people want to build on the code and customize it to meet the needs they see in the market. Open Source = Forks Happen.

3. What are the differences between the organization maintaining Mambo and the one maintaining the fork called Joomla?

The Mambo Foundation is a registered non-profit corporation dedicated to preserving and protecting Mambo as free Open Source software. Think Mozilla / GNOME / Eclipse. The Joomla organizational structure is, at the time of this writing, unclear.

4. Why create a foundation?

The Mambo Foundation gives its members a place to discuss and debate the roadmap for Mambo, a way to create authorized and unified communications to interested parties, and a point of reference for those who wish to interface with Mambo. Also, sad but true, Open Source is becoming a more complex landscape and things like legal threats, IP challenges, and other expensive issues can threaten the very existence of a project. The Foundation provides protection for the code and for the developers. You can learn all about how the Foundation works here: www.mambo-foundation.org

5. What are the technical differences between Mambo and the various forks?

No short answer here; it is a moving target. The original Mambo and each of the subsequent forks have distinct core development teams, each pursuing the development goals they have independently set.

6. Will my modules written for Mambo and Joomla! work interchangeably?

As the minor and major revision numbers progress for both Mambo and the Joomla fork, the codebases will begin to diverge. In fact, reports state that some third-party modules written for Mambo 4.5.3h are not compatible with Joomla 1.0.7. The problem is not widespread at the moment, but it may worsen…or may not.

7. Are the databases going to stay compatible?

Over time, most likely no. Since there are distinct development teams, as Mambo continues to grow and the various forks mature, they will move along separate paths.

8. Help! I’m a third-party developer for Mambo! Does that mean I have to support both Mambo and the forks?

That’s completely up to you. We know that Mambo’s roadmap includes a plan to make third-party development more transparent and simpler to maintain. Our goal is to continue to embrace third-party development and further enhance the original Mambo to make it easier for third-party developers. Also let’s not forget: there were more than 230,000 downloads of version 4.5.3. Do you really want to ignore that many potential users & clients?

Plone

About Plone

Learn more about Plone by visiting http://www.plone.org which is where the information below is collated from. Why is it all of these Content Management Systems have weird names?

What is Plone?

Plone is a ready-to-run content management system that is built on the powerful and free Zope application server. Plone is easy to set up, extremely flexible, and provides you with a system for managing web content that is ideal for project groups, communities, web sites, extranets and intranets.

Plone is easy to install. You can install Plone with a a click and run installer, and have a content management system running on your computer in just a few minutes.

  • Plone is easy to use. The Plone Team includes usability experts who have made Plone easy and attractive for content managers to add, update, and mantain content.
  • Plone is international. The Plone interface has more than 35 translations, and tools exist for managing multilingual content.
  • Plone is standard. Plone carefully follows standards for usability and accessibility. Plone pages are compliant with US Section 508, and the W3C’s AAA rating for accessibility.
  • Plone is Open Source. Plone is licensed under the GNU General Public License, the same license used by Linux. This gives you the right to use Plone without a license fee, and to improve upon the product.
  • Plone is supported. There are close to a hundred developers in the Plone Development Team around the world, and a multitude of companies that specialize in Plone development and support.
  • Plone is extensible. There is a multitude of add-on products for Plone to add new features and content types. In addition, Plone can be scripted using web standard solutions and Open Source languages.
  • Plone is technology neutral. Plone can interoperate with most relational database systems, open source and commercial, and runs on a vast array of platforms, including Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris and BSD.

Technical overview

Plone is a content management framework that works hand-in-hand and sits on top of Zope, a widely-used Open Source web application server and development system. To use Plone, you don’t need to learn anything about Zope; to develop new Plone content types, a small amount of Zope knowledge is helpful, and it is covered in their documentation.

Zope itself is written in Python, an easy-to-learn, widely-used and supported Open Source programming language. Python can be used to add new features to Plone, and used to understand or make changes to the way that Zope and Plone work.

By default, Plone stores its contents in Zope’s built in transactional object database, the ZODB. There are products and techniques, however, to share information with other sources, such as relational databases, LDAP, filesystem files, etc.

Plone runs on Windows, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, and many other platforms; double-click installers are available for Windows and Mac OS X, and RPM packages are available for Linux.

Xoops

About Xoops

Visit http://www.xoops.com for more information. I collated information from that site.

XOOPS is a program that allows administrators to easily create dynamic websites with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic community websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, weblogs and much more. It can be installed on an Internet host with a PHP-capable web server (e.g., Apache) and a database (e.g., MySQL).

XOOPS is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is free to use and modify. It is free to redistribute as long as you abide by the distribution terms of the GPL.

What XOOPS stands for

XOOPS is an acronym of eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. Though started as a portal system, XOOPS is in fact striving steadily on the track of Content Management System. It can serve as a web framework for use by small, medium and large sites.

A lite XOOPS can be used as a personal weblog or journal. For this purpose, you can do a standard install, and use its News module only. For a medium site, you can use modules like News, Forum, Download, Web Links etc to form a community to interact with your members and visitors. For a large site as an enterprise one, you can develop your own modules such as eShop, and use XOOP’s uniform user management system to seamlessly integrate your modules with the whole system.

Pronunciation guide

The standard pronunciation of XOOPS should follow English rules, and you should pronounce it as [zoo’ps].

Key features of XOOPS

  • Database-driven – XOOPS uses a relational database (currently MySQL) to store data required for running a web-based content management system.
  • Fully Modularized – Modules can be installed/uninstalled/ativated/deactivated with a click using the XOOPS module administration system.
  • Personalization – Registered users can edit their profiles, select site themes, upload custom avatars, and much more.
  • User Management – The ability to search for users by various criteria, send email and private messages to users through a template-based messaging system.
  • Supported World-wide – XOOPS was created and is maintained by a team of several hard-working volunteers working from all over the world. The XOOPS community has more than dozen official support sites around the world for support of non-English speaking users.
  • Multi-byte Language Support – Fully supports multi-byte languages, including Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean, etc.
  • Versatile Group Permissions System – Powerful and user-friendly permissions system which enables administrators to set permissions by group.
  • Theme-based skinnable interface – XOOPS is driven by a powerful theme system. Both admins and users can change the look of the entire web site with just a click of a mouse.

What is an FTP Client?

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is part of the suite of applications provided by the TCP/IP standard. A protocol is a rule, and, as its name indicates, FTP is a set of rules that govern how files are transferred across the Internet using the protocol. Just as HTTP is used to give browsers and servers a common language on the display of web pages, FTP gives servers and clients a common language for transferring files of any kind.

Many companies host FTP servers as a way to share files with customers. For example, a video card manufacturer may make BIOS or driver updates available via FTP so that customers can download the latest updates. For Web Hosting and creating websites, FTP is an indispensable tool. It is via FTP that webmasters transfer their websites from their local hard drive to the web server where the rest of the Internet can now browse to it.

So What is an FTP client? FTP is governed by a set of ASCII commands. While the command set is limited and not difficult to master, most users do not have the time to become familiar with the command set. While I am still very comfortable using the DOS and UNIX command prompts, I much prefer a graphical interface for time and convenience. FTP clients have been written, with very advanced features, to graphically represent FTP commands that happen “behind the scenes”.

Perhaps the most widely used FTP client is Internet Explorer. Most are unaware that Internet Explorer can act as a very basic FTP client by typing the FTP address of the site into the address bar. It provides limited functionality but it is free.

Companies like Globalscape (CuteFTP), CoffeCup, and IPSwitch have been making FTP clients for years that fill the niche. A good FTP client, with advanced features, is well worth the extra investment for a webmaster. The time saved and convenience offered by these programs makes them well worth the small investment.

So, in the end, the basic answer to What is an FTP client is that it is a software program that simplifies the uploading and downloading of files (with some other functionality) to and from a web server.