Alkacon Software - The OpenCms Experts

OpenCms 8 content manager user manual now available!

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:32:45 GMT

The OpenCms 8 content manager user manual - which is now available for download - provides a quick non-technical overview of OpenCms 8.

This complete and easy to understand reference will help the content manager to build websites with OpenCms 8 within minutes. Learn all about advanced direct edit and the sitemap editor.

Explaining every feature and functionality of the OpenCms 8 user interface this user manual provides essential know-how for the content manager.

Learn more about

Working with advanced direct edit
Features of the sitemap editor
Controls of the context menus
All features and functionalities of the OpenCms 8 user interface

With OpenCms 8 the work of a content manager has been made easy and intuitive. Everything you need to create beautiful web pages is within reach on the page itself.

Learn more about the great new features of OpenCms 8 and download the latest OpenCms 8 User Manual right now.

Alkacon Software as industrial partner in EU funded project about semantic web technologies

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:45:17 GMT

OpenCms from Alkacon Software is a professional content management system that helps content managers worldwide to create and maintain websites fast and efficiently.

Interactive Knowledge Stack (IKS) is an EU funded project bringing semantic technologies (capabilities) to content management systems. Alkacon Software is an industrial partner in the IKS project.

IKS now provides the Vienna IKS Editables (VIE), a JavaScript based software component to semantically enhance and edit web pages inline through annotations. IKS also provides Apache Stanbol, a reusable set of software components that are meant to be accessed over RESTful interfaces to provide semantic services for content management. Both the VIE and Stanbol components have been developed as part of the IKS project over the last 2 years and are now close a release version.

By adopting the IKS software stack, Alkacon plans to achieve the following goals for OpenCms:

Allow the generation of semantically annotated content for search engine optimization (SEO).
Enhance the advanced direct edit mode of OpenCms with inline-editing capabilities using VIE.
Support for semantic content enrichment, using VIE as frontend and Stanbol as backend.

A GWT wrapper around the VIE JavaScript library

For client side programming, the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is used in OpenCms to provide content managers with a modern and easy to use web 2.0 user interface. In order to minimize development time, code maintaining costs and also to increase code transparency, Alkacon will stay with GWT and Java technology. Therefore Alkacon wants to avoid writing native JavaScript code that is part of the OpenCms core system.

To integrate the VIE capabilities into OpenCms, Alkacon is developing a GWT wrapper around the VIE JavaScript library. This is a common approach to provide access to feature-rich native JavaScript widget libraries in GWT, for example used for projects like "Ext GWT", "Smart GWT" and others.

Implementation design for the VIE wrapper

Alkacon aims to develop a VIE-GWT wrapper that is independent from OpenCms and enables a Java / GWT developer to make full use of the VIE capabilities without knowledge about the JavaScript internals of VIE.

In general there are a number of possible approaches when creating a wrapper for an existing JavaScript API using the GWT: JavaScript Native Interface (JSNI), JavaScriptObject overlays, JavaScript InterOp library, GWT Linker extensions, GWT Generators and maybe more. A first prototype of the wrapper implementation is already available on GitHub – using the JavaScript Native Interface approach.

In the upcoming month Alkacon will even evaluate a number of alternative approaches.

New OCEE versions for OpenCms available

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:37:26 GMT

Alkacon OCEE for OpenCms is a commercial extension for OpenCms that offers Support for LDAP, Clustering, Replication and improved performance. Full information about OCEE is available on the Alkacon website.

The latest OCEE release version 3.0.3 is a compatibility update for the new OpenCms version 8.0.3.

Please note: OCEE 3.0.3 is not compatible with OpenCms 8.0.0 - 8.0.2.

Please see the OCEE release notes for a full description about the new features and changes in this version.

Notice for users of OpenCms 7: The current release of OCEE for OpenCms 7.x is version 2.1.5. OCEE 2.1.5 is compatible with all 7.x versions of OpenCms.

Main features in OCEE

Support for multi-staging scenarios with the OCEE Replicator: You can configure a "development" server that first pushes all generated content to a "staging" server e.g. for approval, and then afterwards to the "delivery" server. This is freely configurable, and there is no limit on the number of stages.
Centralized configuration of servers with the OCEE Cluster: You can now edit the scheduled jobs, search index configuration and module parameters for all individual servers in the cluster from a common GUI in the workplace server.
Support for OpenCms OUs in the LDAP Connector: It is now possible to connect each OpenCms OU with an individual path in the LDAP Server.
Improved performance with the OCEE Accelerator: A much improved cache policy in the Accelerator now selectively flushes only certain cached items after publishing instead of just flushing everything.

About Alkacon OCEE

The Alkacon OpenCms Enterprise Extensions (also called OCEE) are a commercial extension for OpenCms. Alkacon OCEE adds features to OpenCms that are often required for running OpenCms in a medium or large Enterprise, where data consistency, security and failover are highly important.

The Alkacon OpenCms Enterprise Extensions are available as a licensed software product from Alkacon Software GmbH, the company responsible for most of the development of the open source core OpenCms system. Please click here for the full license terms.

OCEE is installed on a standard OpenCms system. OCEE is a binary only distribution. This means that the source code for the OCEE modules is not available. To use any of the Alkacon OCEE packages, you need to enter a license key that will be provided by Alkacon software after your purchase of an Alkacon OCEE license.

Download OpenCms 8.0.3 now!

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:34:27 GMT

OpenCms 8.0.3 is now ready and available for download.

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

OpenCms 8 contains a greatly improved user interface for content managers and numerous other enhancements.

With OpenCms 8.0.3, many important and useful additional features and improvements have been added to the core system and a number of issues that persisted in the 8.0.2 release have been fixed.

Main improvements in OpenCms 8.0.3

With the introduction of "Function Pages", JSP based dynamic pages can be added with simple drag and drop in the sitemap editor.
The sitemap editor's improved "Create Page" dialog offers a wider choice of types distinguishing "Container Pages", "Type Pages" and "Function Pages".
It is now also possible to select the page model when using the sitemap editor's context menu option "Create sub-page".
The available container page models can be accessed for editing directly from the "Create page" dialog in the sitemap editor.
The sitemap editor executes the "Show page" action if the page icon in the sitemap is clicked.
JSP function elements can now have multiple formatters to be used in different containers.
The element option bar displays a "Resource is currently locked" icon if an element is currently edited by another user.
The content galleries have been improved with a text search field to directly search for "Galleries" and "Categories".

Please check out the release notes for further details of the changes in this release.

Other features of OpenCms 8.0

The "Advanced Direct Edit" mode allows to create page content by drag & drop.
The sitemap editor allows to create new pages and rearrange the navigation tree by drag & drop.
A multiple file enabled upload dialog all based on HTML replaced the old "Upload Applet".
The "Content Subscription Engine" allows to inform users when important documents have changed.
The XML content editor now support <xsd:choice> elements.
The publish dialog supports session based selection of content as well as add/remove of individual resources.
Extended support for creation of content for mobile devices with the <cms:mobile> tag.
A central "Shared Folder" has been added that is available from all sites for sharing content.
JPA support has been added to the database layer, so there's support for 10 additional databases.

We recommend everyone who uses OpenCms to update to the 8.0.3 release. OpenCms 8.0.3 is fully backward compatible to all prior 7.x versions. Templates and other OpenCms developed code from version 7.0 or 7.5 should work "out of the box" with version 8.0.3.

Users of the Alkacon OCEE packages require a new version of Alkacon OCEE for use with this OpenCms release. OpenCms 8.0.3 requires Alkacon OCEE version 3.0.3 or newer.

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 10 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.

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 license.

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.

Alkacon OAMP GeoMap Module 2.0 for OpenCms 8 available

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:42:50 GMT

With version 2.0 of the OAMP GeoMap Module, which is available now for download from alkacon.com, you can add a full-featured and highly customizable Google map widget to your OpenCms 8 installation without knowledge of HTML. Add a GeoMap to any page in OpenCms 8 just by Drag & Drop. With the ADE Editor all changes are made directly on your website.

Within just one GeoMap you can highlight as many locations as you want. You can select a location by address or coordinates. Resize the map or change the zoom level or map type. If you want to use existing KML-files, the OAMP GeoMap Module can handle that, too.

Upgrade your last holiday's blog, your next party's promotional page or the contact information of your company website with this intuitive interactive map widget with integrated route planner.

The Alkacon OAMP GeoMap Module 2.0 features:

Add an Alkacon GeoMap to your website by Drag & Drop.
Select one or multiple locations by address or coordinates.
Resize the map or change the zoom level or map type.
Complete configuration of an Alkacon GeoMap is directly done in the ADE Editor
Load an existing KML file from OpenCms’ virtual file system or to enter the URI of a KML file based on a remote server.

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 on https://github.com/alkacon/alkacon-oamp.

New OpenCms 8 Training Courses

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 07:25:00 GMT

The new OpenCms 8 Training Courses provide the best possible introduction to OpenCms 8 development, right from the creators of OpenCms.

OpenCms 8 training courses are available at different skill levels and offer an introduction to the new OpenCms 8 concepts including Advanced Direct Edit, usage and creation of Templates, formatters and containers.

Our OpenCms Training Courses

The five day training course "Alkacon OpenCms Complete Training" is a comprehensive "jump start" to OpenCms development. It provides insight in OpenCms template and module creation, and also covers advanced procedures in OpenCms API development.
The OpenCms Basic Template Training is a three day training course, intended for people with previous experience in building websites using HTML, PHP or other web technologies, but with basic Java knowledge only. This course provides an overview of JSP development basics in OpenCms and an introduction of the JSTL standard.
The Alkacon OpenCms Advanced API Training covers basic and advanced procedures in OpenCms API development. This three day training course is aimed at experienced Java web developers who have previous experience with Java, HTML and JSP and want to learn the OpenCms related special APIs.

Learn more about the great new features of the new OpenCms 8 and order your training today.

OpenCms 8 tutorials at opencms-wiki.org

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:20:12 GMT

We updated the HowTos section at http://opencms-wiki.org with the most valuable tutorials on essential OpenCms 8 concepts.

Learn how to build container templates, mobile templates and Plug & Play modules for OpenCms 8 and how to upgrade from OpenCms 7.

The tutorials are getting continuously revised to keep you up to date with elementary changes in OpenCms 8.

New additions

Check opencms-wiki frequently for new additions.

You can contribute to the opencms-wiki with Project Reports, Tutorials and Best Practices.

Any suggestions on missing Basic Information should be made to the mailing-list.

Order OCEE 3.0.2 for OpenCms 8 now!

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:32:16 GMT

The latest OCEE release version 3.0.2 is a compatibility update for the new OpenCms version 8.0.2.

Please note: OCEE 3.0.2 is not compatible with OpenCms 8.0.0 - 8.0.1.

Please see the OCEE release notes for a full description about the new features and changes in this version.

Notice for users of OpenCms 7: The current release of OCEE for OpenCms 7.x is version 2.1.4. OCEE 2.1.4 is compatible with all 7.x versions of OpenCms.

Main features in OCEE

Support for multi-staging scenarios with the OCEE Replicator: You can configure a "development" server that first pushes all generated content to a "staging" server e.g. for approval, and then afterwards to the "delivery" server. This is freely configurable, and there is no limit on the number of stages.
Centralized configuration of servers with the OCEE Cluster: You can now edit the scheduled jobs, search index configuration and module parameters for all individual servers in the cluster from a common GUI in the workplace server.
Support for OpenCms OUs in the LDAP Connector: It is now possible to connect each OpenCms OU with an individual path in the LDAP Server.
Improved performance with the OCEE Accelerator: A much improved cache policy in the Accelerator now selectively flushes only certain cached items after publishing instead of just flushing everything.

About Alkacon OCEE

Alkacon Software releases OpenCms 8.0.2

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:00:21 GMT

OpenCms 8.0.2 is now ready and available for download.

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

OpenCms 8 contains a greatly improved user interface for content managers and numerous other enhancements.

With OpenCms 8.0.2, many important and useful additional features and improvements have been added to the core system and a number of issues that persisted in the 8.0.1 release have been fixed.

Main improvements in OpenCms 8.0.2

It's now possible to easily enable drag & drop for any existing JSP. Just create a reference to the JSP with the new ADE resource type "Dynamic Function".
Refined element permissions for ADE now support Elements dragable by everyone, but editable only with special permissions.
The sitemap editor now displays status information such as title and VFS location above the currently edited sitemap and features a "go to the parent sitemap" option in the toolbar.
Group containers now have a "Break Up" option which removes the group and places all elements individually on the currently edited page, making it easier to create pages with slightly different configurations.
If a content is previewed in the ADE content gallery, it can now directly be dragged & dropped from the content preview to the current page.
The legacy direct edit provider for pages using "old" templates now allows to open the "Property" dialog to edit the page properties in direct edit mode.
Significantly improved sitemap configuration options make it much easier to create sophisticated special configurations.
Improved SEO refined naming schema for automatically created resources.

Please check out the release notes for further details of the changes in this release.

Main new features in OpenCms 8

The "Advanced Direct Edit" mode allows to create page content by drag & drop.
The new Sitemap Editor allows to create new pages and rearrange the navigation tree by drag & drop.
A multiple file enabled upload dialog all based on HTML replaced the old "Upload Applet".
The new "Content Subscription Engine" allows to inform users when important documents have changed.
The XML content editor now support <xsd:choice> elements.
The new publish dialog supports session based selection of content as well as add/remove of individual resources.
Extended support for creation of content for mobile devices with the <cms:mobile> tag.
A central "Shared Folder" has been added that is available from all sites for sharing content.
JPA support has been added to the database layer, so there's support for 10 additional databases.

We recommend everyone who uses OpenCms to update to the 8.0.2 release. OpenCms 8.0.2 is fully backward compatible to all prior 7.x versions. Templates and other OpenCms developed code from version 7.0 or 7.5 should work "out of the box" with version 8.0.2.

Users of the Alkacon OCEE packages require a new version of Alkacon OCEE for use with this OpenCms release. OpenCms 8.0.2 requires Alkacon OCEE version 3.0.2 or newer.

About OpenCms

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

OpenCms in the Cloud

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:51:47 GMT

Until today it is incredibly complex and often costly to put Java applications to the Internet. Either you have to run your own hosted server, set up and manage virtual machines (IaaS) or use a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution which often requires rewriting Java applications.

An alternative to this might be Jelastic - a new European start-up - that now offers a next-generation Platform as a Service for Java apps.

Check out this step-by-step instructional video on how easy it is to get OpenCms running in the Cloud.