OpenCms News

OpenCms 7.0.5 available

Alkacon Software GmbH — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:08:35 GMT

Version 7.0.5 of OpenCms is now available for download.

OpenCms is one of the most popular Open Source Content Management Solutions. The new version was developed by Alkacon Software GmbH with the support of the international OpenCms developer community.

This version fixes a number of issues and security problems that persisted in the 7.0.4 release. Some new features have been added as well.

General Features of OpenCms 7

"Direct Edit" allows editing content directly from a web page.
Structured contents can be defined using simple XML schemas.
WYSIWYG editor available for unstructured pages.
Full internal link management for all resources.
Native support for WebDAV access to the OpenCms VFS.
Integrated image processing / scaling.
Integrated full text search on web pages, but also searches in PDF, MS Office etc.
Full featured internal user management that supports the concept of "Organizational Units" (OUs).
It is possible to delegate management of users / groups in OUs to Sub-Administrators.
Extensions can be added through a full featured module system.
A "switch user" (su) function for Administrators in the OpenCms Workplace is available.
The "Undelete" function is able to restore deleted resources, including deleted subtrees.
A "time warp" feature in the Workplace allows users to view resources with date expired / date released settings.
JSP integration allows standards based creation of dynamic functionality in templates, dynamic forms etc.
Support for Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server, DB2, AS400 and HSQL databases included.

New Features in OpenCms 7.0.5

Added editor with syntax highlighting functionality for all text based files (e.g. XML, HTML, JSP)
Added option for copying content from one locale to another in the XML content editor
Added Spanish Localization, contributed by OpenCmsHispano
Added administration tool for image cache flushing
Added JQuery module that contains a set of default jQuery libraries
Added <cms:jquery> tag to use packed/unpacked jQuery versions depending on the current project
Fixed security issue 28152 reported by Security Focus
Fixed security issue 490498 reported by Security Focus
... and many more

Please check out the release notes for further details.

OpenCms 7 is highly backward compatible with version 6. An easy to use update wizard for OpenCms Version 6 and prior 7.0.x installations for MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL is available.

About OpenCms

Independent research has shown OpenCms to be a market leading solution amongst Open Source CMS systems. The software has been in continuous development for the last 8 years and has an active community of Open Source developers.

More than 100 international IT companies have been registered as official OpenCms Solution Provider on the OpenCms website. A steadily growing list of reference sites also shows the increasing use of OpenCms.

From May 5 to May 6, 2008, the OpenCms Days conference and expo successfully brought together the OpenCms community to discuss the present and future of OpenCms. More information is available in the event section on opencms.org.

OpenCms is an enterprise - ready web content management solution build in Java and XML from open source components. OpenCms can easily be deployed on almost any existing IT infrastructure and provides powerful features especially suited for medium and large enterprise internet or intranet applications. OpenCms is open source software distributed under the LGPL licence.

Alkacon Software GmbH is the company responsible for the development of OpenCms. Today OpenCms is a leading open source CMS solution in widespread use all over the world. Many businesses and organizations use OpenCms as a cost effective, professional alternative to expensive license products.

Alkacon Software GmbH offers its customers training, support and add-on products for OpenCms. This gives our customers a layer of security and convenience often required for mission critical OpenCms installations. Please see the Alkacon product overview for more details.

The team at Alkacon Software - The OpenCms Experts wants to thank everyone who has contributed to this release of OpenCms.

OpenCms 7.0.5 release notes

Alkacon Software GmbH — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:09:03 GMT

This is the release of OpenCms 7.0.5. With OpenCms 7.0.5, a number of issues and security problems that persisted in the 7.0.4 release have been fixed. Some new features have been added as well.

New Features in OpenCms 7.0.5

Added editor with syntax highlighting functionality for all text based files (e.g. XML, HTML, JSP)
Added option for copying content from one locale to another in the XML content editor
Added Spanish Localization, contributed by OpenCmsHispano
Added administration tool for image cache flushing
Added new preference option for displaying all projects or only the ones in the current OU in the project selector
Added new site alias attribute to manipulate request time
Added several connection attempts the database during startup
Added JQuery module that contains a set of default jQuery libraries
Added <cms:jquery> tag to use packed/unpacked jQuery versions depending of the current project
Added function to display module dependencies in a sorted list in the workplace administration
Added option to plug in an extended decoration module to the <cms:decorate> tag
Added new flags in the configuration to enable/disable certain caches
Added configuration options for servlet container specific settings, fixing issue #1628

Fixed issues and other changes in OpenCms 7.0.5

Fixed security issue 28152 reported by Security Focus
Fixed security issue 490498 reported by Security Focus
Fixed security issue manipulating JSP files
Fixed security issue related to message broadcasting
Fixed issue #900: Search fails when searching with umlauts and wildcards
Fixed issue #1409: NPE in case of redirect inside a included file with cacheable set to false
Fixed issue #1481: CmsXmlDateTimeValue prevented storing dates before 1/1/1970 in XML contents
Fixed issue #1491: Incorrect behavior of language selector in editor with 3-symbols locales
Fixed issue #1568: Broken calendar widget for locale ES
Fixed issue #1571: Publishing of strongly related resource ignores locking
Fixed issue #1580: Publishing and Static export run with too high priority and lock out other tasks
Fixed issue #1581: Logic error for temporary disabled user accounts
Fixed issue #1586: Broken calendar widgets for locale PT
Fixed issue #1591: OpenCms does not start if configured scheduled job class is missing
Fixed issue #1593: CmsFormHandler of Template One generates invalid HTML/XHTML code
Fixed issue #1594: Location bar in workplace malfunctioning without ending '/'
Fixed issue #1595: Module manifest file does not escape XML entities
Fixed issue #1596: Projects can be created being in the Online project
Fixed issue #1602: Editor for xmlpages has a dependency to the welcome module
Fixed issue #1610: Specific CSS selectors used for placing JQuery direct edit images
Fixed issue #1617: CmsImageScaler throws Exception when scaling images from/to certain dimensions
Fixed issue #1621: Pagination in the Explorer view fails if the number of items is equal to number of files per page
Fixed issue #1626: NPE while uploading with the upload applet on some application servers
Fixed issue #1627: Security Issue in Logviewer
Fixed issue #1628: Deploying on different servlet containers
Fixed issue #1630: Configuration of creating internal resources is lost
Fixed issue with highlighting context menu entries in Internet Explorer 7
Fixed issue while deleting a folder containing a file previously deleted in another project
Fixed issue with NPE in MacroResolver
Fixed issue with importing / exporting CSV user data
Fixed issue with broken workplace when startup folder does not exist or misses /
Fixed issue with NPE when trying to direct delete after restart without workplace login
Fixed issue with concurrent JSP page requests when writing to RFS is needed
Fixed issue with broken calendar widget in French or Italian localization
Fixed issue with the <cms:editable> tag, it now detects if it has to include the script files or not
Fixed issue with trailing "/" when reading resources in the VFSDriver
Fixed issue with the "'" character not being allowed in email addresses
Fixed issue with deleted resource restoration only working based on parent folder id, not on folder path
Fixed issue with initial site check during login
Fixed issue with using the category collector without resource type restrictions
Improved Template Two example and demo content
Improved internal link validation performance
Improved performance when having several organizational units
Improved TOMCAT_HOME detection in CmsShell to work in more Tomcat setup scenarios
Updated Lucene jars to version 2.3.1
Updated simapi.jar to version 0.9.7, fixing issue #1617

General Features of the OpenCms 7 release

An update Wizard for OpenCms 6 installations on MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL is available.
Support for Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server, DB2, AS400 and HSQL databases included.
The internal link management has been greatly improved.
If files (or folders) are moved / renamed, all links to these files are now kept intact.
Deleting a resource that is linked by other resources does now display a warning / confirmation dialog.
The new "Content Relationship Engine" (CRE) allows defining arbitrary relations between OpenCms resources.
Native support for WebDAV access to the OpenCms VFS has been added.
Publishing of resources is now done using a queue, so a user can continue to work after publishing has started.
The concept of "Organization Units" (OUs) has been added to the internal user management.
System permissions are now based on a complete new set of "Roles".
It is now possible to delegate management of users / groups in OUs to Sub-Administrators.
A "switch user" (su) function for Administrators in the OpenCms Workplace is now available.
Many usability improvements for the OpenCms Workplace have been made, especially concerning the handling of other users locks.
Many dialogs in the OpenCms Workplace are more responsive because of the use of Ajax technologies.
The context menus in the Workplace are now cascading and can be configured individually based on the users permissions.
A new "Undelete" function is available on the context menu to restore deleted resources, including complete deleted subtrees.
The full text search has been greatly improved so that individual resource properties or fields from XML content can be searched directly.
A "time warp" feature in the Workplace now allows users to view resources with date expired / date released settings.
Auto correction for structured XML contents now allows changes to the XML schema of existing resources.
A configurable search tool is now available for content managers in the Workplace.
A "permalink" handler for resources is available for external references in case a resource is moved or renamed.
Link management support has been added in editors for standard HTML tags 'area', 'object' & 'embed'.
The core database structure has been optimized.
JSP 2.0 and Servlet 2.4 are now used by default.

Backward compatibility

OpenCms 7.0.5 is fully backward compatible to all prior 7.0.x versions. We recommend everyone who uses an earlier version of OpenCms to update to the 7.0.5 release.

OpenCms 7 is largely backward compatible with version 6. Most templates and other OpenCms developed code from version 6 should work "out of the box" with version 7. A number of API methods from OpenCms 6 have been marked as "deprecated". In case you have made extensive use of OpenCms internal classes and APIs from version 6, there may be some changes required in your code. However, in most cases this should not take longer than a couple of hours.

Please note that since OpenCms 7 uses JSP 2.0 and Servlet 2.4 standards by default, you may have to change that back to JSP 1.2 / Servlet 2.3 so your existing OpenCms JSP templates from OpenCms 6 run without change. You must edit the "web-app" node in the OpenCms web.xml file to do that.

Compatibility with Java versions, Servlet containers and Databases

OpenCms 7 has been written and tested using Java 1.5 / 1.6. It works well with Java 1.4 using the optional "Java 1.4 compatibility package". We have tested only with SUNs version of the JDK. However, OpenCms has no dependencies to sun.* packages so it should in theory run with all compliant JVMs.

We have tested this release on the Tomcat servlet engine. OpenCms works "out of the box" with Tomcat 5.5, which we recommend. Others have reported deploying OpenCms successfully on other servlet containers like JBoss, BEA and Websphere. We appreciate any feedback regarding other servlet containers.

On the database side, we have tested with MySQL 4.0.x, MySQL 4.1, MySQL 5.x, Oracle 9.x and Oracle 10.x, as well as PostgreSQL 8.2.x and 7.4.x, MS SQL Server 2000 / 2003, DB2 9.1 and HSQLDB 1.8.0. The automatic update wizard for OpenCms 7 supports MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL.

Regarding version numbers and CVS build tags

In case you want to check out OpenCms from the CVS, please keep the following in mind: The CVS tag numbers for all OpenCms 7 releases are "build_7_0_x", so the 7.0.5 release is tagged "build_7_0_5". Development of maintenance releases (like 7.0.5) is currently done in CVS HEAD.

How you can help

Contributions to the OpenCms core development are most welcome. Please contact the core development team on the opencms-dev mailing list in case you are interested in supporting the development of OpenCms.

Please use our Bugzilla to report bugs in this release: http://bugzilla.opencms.org/

Thank you for using OpenCms and have fun with OpenCms 7.0.5 :-)

Alkacon OAMP Calendar module available

Alkacon Software GmbH — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:35:57 GMT

The next open source module in the Alkacon OpenCms Add-On Module Package (OAMP) series is now available.

The OAMP Calendar Module, which is available now for download from alkacon.com, extends an OpenCms installation with the capability to display a calendar widget with a monthly and weekly overview for events and other time based information. The items displayed in the calendar are based on VFS file properties, and therefore can be any type of XML content.

The Alkacon OAMP Calendar Module features:

Daily, weekly, monthly and yearly overviews can be shown.
Easy configuration of resource types that should be displayed in the calendar views.
Support for recurring serial dates / appointments appearing more than once in the calendar.
Local holidays like New Year's Day or Christmas can be configured.
Different JSP side elements to be included in an existing template showing a monthly overview or the most recent events.

The module is available with full source code and documentation.

All Alkacon OAMP modules are released as full Open Source under the GNU GPL version 3. The source code of the modules is freely available in the public CVS of cvs.opencms.org.

OpenCms Days 2008 presentations and photos available

Alkacon Software GmbH — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:25:22 GMT

OpenCms Days 2008 has taken place from Monday, May 5 to Tuesday, May 6 2008 in Cologne, Germany.

For the first time, about 100 OpenCms users and developers gathered for a 2 day conference and expo. This was the best opportunity ever to meet and mingle with OpenCms experts such as core developers, experienced consultants, independent CMS analysts, executive decision makers and other OpenCms users.

OpenCms Days 2008 has been a great success. For those who missed the event, the presentation slides from the conference sessions are now available for download from the opencms.org website. There is also an image gallery with photos from the conference.

Website now allows user comments

Alkacon Software GmbH — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:49:21 GMT

The opencms.org and alkacon.com websites now allow user comments to be added to several pages.

Visitors of the OpenCms and Alkacon websites are encouraged to leave their comments to news articles (such as this one) as well as for module downloads. The intention is to provide website visitors with up to date community information and feedback, especially for the module downloads.

Every visitor is free to add a comment. No registration is required to write comments.

The new comment option is based on the upcoming Alkacon OAMP User Comment Module, which is already available in the public CVS. After some weeks of testing, the new OAMP User Comment module will be made available as a binary download from alkacon.com.

OpenCms Days 2008 a great success

Alkacon Software GmbH — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:21:42 GMT

OpenCms Days 2008 has taken place from Monday, May 5 to Tuesday, May 6 2008 in Cologne, Germany at the "German Sports and Olympia Museum".

For the first time, OpenCms users and developers gathered for a 2 day conference and expo. This was the best opportunity ever to meet and mingle with OpenCms experts such as core developers, experienced consultants, independent CMS analysts, executive decision makers and other OpenCms users.

OpenCms Days 2008 has been a great success. The presentation slides, as well as photos and video tapings from several conference sessions, will be available soon on the opencms.org website.

Most conference delegates had a very positive impression of the event. We will certainly have more events like this in the future.

OpenCms Days 2008 registration closes May 1

Alkacon Software GmbH — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:03:50 GMT

OpenCms Days 2008 is happening in 2 weeks.

We have 100 available seats and about 90 are already taken. So if you want to be part of the action, hurry up and register your ticket now.

Registration closes May 1!

You can register your ticket to OpenCms Days 2008 here:
http://www.opencms-days.org/registration/

The full conference program is now available as a PDF download:
http://www.opencms-days.org/program.pdf

OpenCms Days 2008 takes place from Monday, May 5 to Tuesday, May 6 2008 in Cologne, Germany at the "German Sports and Olympia Museum".

With 20 high-profile speakers from all over the world, OpenCms Days 2008 will be the largest event yet for the OpenCms community.

More information about OpenCms Days is available on the conference website:
http://www.opencms-days.org

Updated OAMP Newsletter Module released

Alkacon Software GmbH — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:45:15 GMT

A new version of the popular Alkacon OAMP Newsletter Module for OpenCms 7.0.4 is now available for download.

The Alkacon OpenCms Newsletter Module extends OpenCms with the capability to manage multiple mailing lists and send highly configurable newsletter emails to the mailing list subscribers. This new version of the module also works with the latest OpenCms 7.0.4 release.

The new module version is available with full source code and documentation, prodived by Alkacon Software. The module is available now for download from the alkacon.com website.

All Alkacon OAMP modules are released as full Open Source under the GNU GPL version 3. The source code of the modules is freely available in the public CVS of cvs.opencms.org.

Alkacon to support and maintain OpenCms Wiki

Alkacon Software GmbH — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:02:19 GMT

The OpenCms Wiki at http://opencms-wiki.org is now the official OpenCms Wiki, supported and maintained by Alkacon Software.

The OpenCms Wiki started end of 2006 and has become an important source of information for the worldwide OpenCms community since then. It also has been established as a place where users can help other users.

Alkacon will continue to run the Wiki in this tradition, ensuring that enough server capacity and bandwidth is available. Moreover, Alkacon will also use the Wiki to publish OpenCms howto's and help topics that don't fit into the official Alkacon OpenCms documentation.

Jan Meier, initial owner and creator of the OpenCms Wiki, will continue to support the Wiki in the future. Many thanks to Jan for his initiative to start the Wiki.

OpenCms Days 2008 - Full conference program now online

Alkacon Software GmbH — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:15:37 GMT

The full conference program for OpenCms Days 2008 is now online.

Please check out the updated conference website for the full program.

Initially, we had planned for 14 conference sessions, but because of the great interest and the may good session submissions we have received, we decided to enlarge the program to 18 full sessions.

UPDATE: The full conference program is now available as a PDF download.

With 20 high-profile speakers from all over the world, OpenCms Days 2008 will be the largest event yet for the OpenCms community.

Hurry up and register your ticket now - only a limited number of seats are still available!

OpenCms Days 2008 takes place from Monday, May 5 to Tuesday, May 6 2008 in Cologne, Germany at the "German Sports and Olympia Museum".

OpenCms Days 2008 conference features 2 parallel tracks with Business and Technical sessions:

Business sessions will focus on OpenCms showcases, best practices, industry discussions and management decision making insights to OpenCms.
Technical sessions will be targeted towards developers and provide in-depth, hands-on presentations and workshops about OpenCms technical features.

At the conference expo, OpenCms solution providers will exhibit their OpenCms business solutions and enhancements.

OpenCms Days 2008 is targeted towards an international audience. The language spoken at the event is English, and all presentations will be held in English language.