Alkacon Software - The OpenCms Experts

Photos and presentations from OpenCms Days 2009 now available

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:51:46 GMT

OpenCms Days 2009 did take place from Monday, June 15 to Tuesday, June 16, 2009 in Cologne, Germany.

This year's conference did focus on how OpenCms can be used to deliver top notch web projects and help to successfully overcome shrinking IT and marketing budgets.

About 100 OpenCms users and developers gathered for this 2 day OpenCms conference and expo. This was the best opportunity this year to meet and mingle with leading OpenCms experts such as core developers, experienced consultants, executive decision makers and other OpenCms users.

We hope everyone who attended had a great time at OpenCms Days 2009. See you again next year for OpenCms Days 2010!

For those who missed the event, the presentation slides from the conference sessions are now available for download from the opencms-days.org website. There is also an image gallery with photos from the conference.

OpenCms 7.5 available

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:12:04 GMT

Version 7.5.0 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.

With OpenCms 7.5.0, new features were added and a lot of issues and security problems that persisted in the 7.0.5 release have been fixed.

New Features in OpenCms 7.5.0

Support for image cropping in image gallery.
New galleries with advanced AJAX features available in structured content and free page editor.
Galleries dialog now also support grouping of elements by category.
Support for tabs in the XML content editor.
Offline search indexing without publishing in the Lucene based full text search.
New demo content "Wonderful World of Flowers".
Updated external editor components to latest stable versions.
New scheduled job to delete expired resources.
Added support for decentralized categories.
It is now possible to access the raw XML of a structured content in a JSP using the EL content wrapper.
Several other improvements and component updates.
Lots of reported issues have been fixed.

General Features of OpenCms 7.5

Support for Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server, DB2, AS400 and HSQLDB 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.
... and many more

Please check out the release notes for further details.

OpenCms 7.5.0 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 7.5.0 release. OpenCms 7.5 is largely 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 June 15 to June 16, 2009, the OpenCms Days conference and expo will bring together the OpenCms community to discuss the present and future of OpenCms. More information is available on the event website opencms-days.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 7.5.0 release notes

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:12:34 GMT

June 15, 2009: This is the first release of OpenCms 7.5 (7.5.0). OpenCms 7.5 is an incremental update for OpenCms 7.0 with a focus on backward compatibility. With OpenCms 7.5, several new features have been added and a lot of issues and security problems that persisted in the 7.0.5 release have been fixed.

Main new features of OpenCms 7.5

Support for image cropping in image gallery
New galleries with advanced AJAX features available in structured content and free page editor
Galleries dialog now also support grouping of elements by category
Support for tabs in the XML content editor
Offline search indexing without publishing in the Lucene based full text search
New demo content "Wonderful World of Flowers"
Updated external editor components to latest stable versions

Further improvements in OpenCms 7.5

Added support for decentralized categories
Added event which is fired after a user was modified
CmsTimeFrameCategoryCollector now allows line breaks and whitespaces in param attribute
Undo changes operation now shows an additional warning dialog with option to cancel in case siblings are found
Extended authorization configuration and handling in order to allow support of alternative mechanisms
Improved exception handling on login of disabled users
Added support for alternative lib folder structure of tomcat on windows for cmsshell
Extended dialog for cleaning historical versions with an option to clean all versions of deleted files
New feature in EL XML Content wrapper allows accessing the raw XML of a value using .xmlText(...)
Added definition of exclude links for internal link check - internal links defined this way are handled like external links
New scheduled job to delete expired resources
Removed 2GB size limit for average and maximum flex cache size
Added support for new Microsoft document types to upload applet
Improved handling of secure site configuration errors

Fixed issues and other changes in OpenCms 7.5

Fixed issue #1016: JSP send mail example out of order
Fixed issue #1122: JSTL Examples do not work in the Alkacon Documentation
Fixed issue #1173: Misuse of saveSiteRoot causes synchronizing to fail but is wider problem
Fixed issue #1125: Admin user in Guest Group causes issues
Fixed issue #1144: Prevent jsp files to be cached in setup
Fixed issue #1177: Language selector in editor shows too much entries for certain locales
Fixed issue #1181: Change Element Locale - Content Tool does not display country locale variants
Fixed issue #1182: Import of pure user data fails
Fixed issue #1209: Webusers should be able to delete themselves from the system
Fixed issue #1210: Changing ACL to a resource does not set the "last modified" date
Fixed issue #1220: CmsJspTagContentLoad cannot be constructed with PageIndex nor PageSize
Fixed issue #1231: Blocking scenario for simultaneous content editing using direct edit
Fixed issue #1232: Intermittent template JSP compile error
Fixed issue #1258: No logging if secure page is requested without a secure site configured
Fixed issue #1665: CmsExtractorPdf does not remove control characters
Fixed issue #1268: Trouble getting AdditionalInfo for user
Fixed issue #1269: FileChooser manipulation replaces servleturl AND path
Fixed issue #1270: Can not embed Flash animation for Firefox
Fixed issue #1277: Problem with MIME type settings
Fixed issue #1281: CmsUser.isSystemUser() fails to identify system user
Fixed issue #1282: Problem with duplicate "exportname" properties
Fixed issue #1283: Link button missing in FCK widget
Fixed issue #1284: Use short name by default in Admin view
Fixed issue #1285/1310: Scroll position lost in XML content editor (IE)
Fixed issue #1295: Gallery widgets should not allow specifying target in XML editor
Fixed issue #1297: Rendering of top bar in XML editor can fail
Fixed issue #1298: Tab key in FCK widget behaves badly in IE
Fixed issue #1311: editoptions in opencms-modules.xml inhibits the import
Fixed issue #1696: Categories collector throws unexpected nullpointer exception
Fixed issue #1697: Fixed incompatibility of templateone form with OpenJDK 1.6 (Fedora 10)
Fixed issue #1728: Fixed direct edit problems with Internet Explorer 8
Fixed issue #1738: CmsShellCommands.uploadFile(...) not working
Fixed issue with HTML-decorator when tagging the second level
Fixed issue with security in the history handler
Fixed issue with JSP hard includes when using site relative paths
Fixed issue with performance when serving JSP pages
Fixed issue with SQL query not running on MS SQL server
Fixed issue with cleaning up threads for publish progress dialog
Fixed issue with < and > in extended HTML import
Fixed issue with deleting historical versions when date is specified
Fixed issue with cmsshell commands that have arguments of type long not working
Fixed issue with historical versions of deleted files never being deleted
Fixed issue with VFS driver where a file like "xy.html" could be read like a folder "xy.html/"
Fixed issue with <cms:jquery> not working for authenticated web users
Fixed issue with wrong redirect for http - requests to https secured resources
Fixed issue with object other than String in user.additionalInfo causing the csv export to fail.
Fixed issue with publish queue hanging up if the connection to the database is lost
Fixed issue with moved files where the previous folder was deleted
Fixed issue with advanced properties
Fixed issue with CmsMultiselectWidget keeping previous values when trying to unselect every entry
Fixed issue with copy locale dialog of XML content editor being too small for Internet Explorer on Vista
Fixed issue with failing database export in case of deleted relation / category
Fixed issue with rendering of template two in webkit based browsers (Konqueror, Chrome, ...)
Fixed issue with duplicate openoffice document type in opencms-search.xml

Backward compatibility with version 7.0

We recommend everyone who uses OpenCms to update to the 7.5 release.

OpenCms 7.5 is fully backward compatible to all prior 7.0.x versions. Most templates and other OpenCms developed code from version 7 should work "out of the box" with version 7.5.

Compatibility with Java versions, Servlet containers and Databases

OpenCms 7.5 has been written and tested using Java 1.5 / 1.6. 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, Websphere and Resin Professional. 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 7.5 final releases are "build_7_5_x", so the 7.5.0 release is tagged "build_7_5_0". Development of maintenance releases 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 7.5 :-)

Initial version of Alkacon OAMP DocCenter module available

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:52:01 GMT

The first version of the OAMP DocCenter Module is now available.

The OAMP DocCenter Module, which is available now for download from alkacon.com, extends an OpenCms installation with the capability to easily create highly configurable download areas (similar to apache directory listings) with the look and feel of your custom template where editors just have to upload documents to make them accessible.

Features:

A new resource type “Alkacon Document Center” allows to create a new document center on the fly.
Within a download center the files are served similar to an apache web server with directory browsing enabled but with the look & feel of the template used and more features.
Documents may be assigned in categories.
Full text search may be configured for each document center.
Document types are identified by icons. These icons may be customized and / or extended by further types. Also the link titles for these documents may be customized.
New and Modified documents are marked with a special overlay icon. This may be turned off. The time range for modified and for new documents (related to date last modified and date created attributes) may be configured globally.
The same content may be offered in different forms (.docx, .pdf,...) which will be offered via different links to types of the listed document.
... and many more.

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 7.5 Beta Available

Tue, 19 May 2009 09:34:24 GMT

The beta version of OpenCms 7.5 is now available in the public CVS (tag "build_75beta_1"). OpenCms 7.5 is a major update that adds several new features to the OpenCms core.

OpenCms 7.5 final will be released June 15 at OpenCms Days 2009 in Cologne, Germany. OpenCms lead architect Alexander Kandzior will present the new features of OpenCms 7.5 at his conference keynote session. He will also explain the further development roadmap towards OpenCms 8, which is scheduled for late 2010.

Several other sessions at OpenCms Days 2009 will be explaining the new features of OpenCms 7.5 in detail.

Main features of OpenCms 7.5:

Much improved image galleries now feature integrated cropping and zooming of image parts.
The XML content editor can now split large XML structures in several tabs.
The full text search is now able to index changed documents in the offline projects "on the fly".
Expired resources can now be automatically deleted after a configurable time.
Categories can now be defined per site in addition to the global categories.
It is now possible to access the raw XML of a structured content in a JSP using the EL content wrapper.
New demo content for Template 2 called "The Wonderful World of Flowers" is available.
All external editors (FCKeditor, EditArea) have been updated to their newest versions, fixing several display issues in later browsers.
Several other improvements and component updates.
Lots of reported issues have been fixed.

A wizard for updating an OpenCms 7.0 installation to OpenCms 7.5 will be provided with the final release.

The main development on OpenCms 7.5 is done by Alkacon Software with contributions from the OpenCms community. This beta version has been made available May 18, 2009.

New version of Alkacon OAMP webform module available

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:29:18 GMT

A new version of the popular OAMP Webform Module is now available, with new features and a lot of issues fixed.

The OAMP Webform Module, which is available now for download from alkacon.com, extends an OpenCms installation with the capability to easily create highly configurable online input forms without knowledge of HTML. The data entered may be sent to an email account and / or stored in the OpenCms database.

Important new features and fixed issues are:

New math captcha (maptcha) for verfication of human beings filling out the form.
Fixed issues with CmsEmptyField stored to database.
UUID and webform path are stored in DB now.
... and many more.

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 2009 - Complete conference program available

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:11:29 GMT

OpenCms Days 2009 will take place from Monday, June 15 to Tuesday, June 16 in Cologne, Germany.

The complete conference program for OpenCms Days 2009 is now available at the conference website. The program features 19 sessions with numerous high-profile speakers from all over the world. OpenCms Days 2009 will be the largest event for the OpenCms community this year.

Update: The complete conference program is now available for download as a PDF file.

Register your ticket now - only a limited number of seats are available!

Regular conference registration price: 200,- Euro

Using OpenCms to cut costs in times of recession

This year's OpenCms Days motto is "Using OpenCms to cut costs in times of recession". Analysts agree that a way to reduce IT costs is using Open Source Software. OpenCms certainly is a viable option to reduce IT and web marketing costs, and the 2009 conference will focus on this issue.

Be there to meet and mingle with leading OpenCms experts such as core developers, experienced consultants, executive decision makers and other OpenCms users.

OpenCms Days 2009 conference will feature 2 parallel tracks with Business and Technical sessions:

Business track sessions will emphasize on cost saving opportunities using OpenCms, as well as best practices, industry discussions and management decision making insights to OpenCms projects.
Technical sessions will be targeted towards developers and show cutting edge OpenCms developments that can be included as "ready made" components in your next project.

At the OpenCms Days 2009 conference expo, OpenCms solution providers will exhibit their OpenCms business solutions and enhancements.

OpenCms Days 2009 is targeted towards an international audience. The language spoken at the event is English, and all presentations will be held in English language.

OpenCms Days 2009 conference and expo is an event organized by Alkacon Software GmbH. The goal of the event is to promote OpenCms and strengthen the OpenCms community.

Alkacon OAMP WebOpt module available

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:23:18 GMT

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

With the OAMP WebOpt module, which is available now for download from alkacon.com, it is possible to minify, obsfuscate and merge css and js files using YUI Compressor, as well as create on-the-fly image sprites.

WebOpt stands for "Web Optimization", since using these techniques allow the creation of faster loading web pages.

The Alkacon OAMP Web Optimization module features:

css and js files compression, resulting in less download times.
css and js files merging, to reduce the number of HTTP requests.
css image sprites, to reduce the image weight as well as the number of HTTP requests.

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 2009 - Conference and Expo

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:58:20 GMT

OpenCms Days 2009 will take place from Monday, June 15 to Tuesday, June 16, 2009 in Cologne, Germany.

Using OpenCms to cut costs in times of recession

Be there to meet and mingle with leading OpenCms experts such as core developers, experienced consultants, independent CMS analysts, executive decision makers and other OpenCms users.

OpenCms Days 2009 conference will feature 2 parallel tracks with Business and Technical sessions:

Business track sessions will emphasize on cost saving opportunities using OpenCms, as well as best practices, industry discussions and management decision making insights to OpenCms projects.
Technical sessions will be targeted towards developers and show cutting edge OpenCms developments that can be included as "ready made" components in your next project.

At the OpenCms Days 2009 conference expo, OpenCms solution providers will exhibit their OpenCms business solutions and enhancements.

OpenCms Days 2009 is targeted towards an international audience. The language spoken at the event is English, and all presentations will be held in English language.

OpenCms Days 2009 will feature a lineup of prestigious international speakers from the OpenCms community.

Registration price:

Early bird registration (by March 31): 180,- Euro
Normal registration (after March 31): 200,- Euro

The full program and list of speakers will be available April 1, 2009 from the conference website.

OpenCms Days 2009 conference and expo is an event organized by Alkacon Software GmbH. The goal of the event is to promote OpenCms and strengthen the OpenCms community.

OpenCms Days 2009 - Call for Participation

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:45:52 GMT

OpenCms Days 2009 will take place from Monday, June 15 to Tuesday, June 16, 2009 in Cologne, Germany.

Using OpenCms to cut costs in times of recession

Call for Papers now open - Ends March 20, 2009

Do you have something to contribute to this unique gathering of OpenCms professionals? If you do we'd like to hear from you.

We are looking for proposals for business and technical sessions. Each session will be about 60 minutes long. A typical presentation session should be 45 minutes, followed by a 15 minutes discussion. Other session formats, such as workshops, roundtable discussions and BOF meetings, are also possible.

A first group of speakers will be confirmed by March 4, 2009. The deadline for sending session proposals is March 20. The final list of speakers and the full program will be available on the event website starting April 1, 2009.

OpenCms Days 2009 is targeted towards an international audience. The language spoken at the event will be English, and all presentations will be held in English language, too.

Speaker expenses will be covered

All confirmed speakers will have free access to OpenCms Days 2009. We will also try to reimburse all speakers for their travel and hotel costs expenses for attending the event.