Alkacon Software releases OpenCms 8.0.1

OpenCms 8.0.1 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 Version 8.0.1 the sitemap and ADE configuration has been greatly simplified and improved.

Main fixed issues and improvements in OpenCms 8.0.1

• The sitemap and ADE configuration has been greatly simplified and improved.
• The properties of a page can now be modified directly in the ADE editor.
• The full text search now also works on MS Office Open XML based documents (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx).
• German content was added to the Template III flower showcase to demonstrate a possible multi language setup.
• A "log out" option has been added to the menu in the ADE editor.
• In the sitemap editor there is a new option to go back to the last page viewed in the ADE editor.
• The sitemap editor now displays the lock status of pages and sub-pages and handles lock conflicts.

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 8.0.1 release. OpenCms 8 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.

Users of the Alkacon OCEE packages require a new version of Alkacon OCEE for use with this OpenCms release. OpenCms 8 requires Alkacon OCEE version 3.0 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 OCEE 3.0 for OpenCms 8 now available

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 is a compatibility update to work with the new OpenCms 8. OCEE 3 comes with some new functions and improvements.

New features and improvements in OCEE 3.0 for OpenCms 8

• Improved OCEE Accelerator now features memory usage information to cache statistics
• Improved OCEE LDAP Connector now supports group name translation when using Microsoft Active Directory.
• Improved OCEE LDAP Connector now features support for nested groups.
• Fixed an issue in the OCEE Replicator within the backward replication.
• Fixed an issue in the OCEE LDAP Connector so special characters ($, etc.) in LDAP queries get escaped correctly.

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

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.

 

Further information:

• Learn more about Alkacon OCEE
• Release notes for this OCEE version
• Order Alkacon OCEE or request an update
  

Major Release: New OpenCms 8 from Alkacon Software

HTML TEXT EN:

OpenCms 8 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.

Major 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 8.0.0 release. OpenCms 8 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.

Users of the Alkacon OCEE packages require a new version of Alkacon OCEE for use with this OpenCms release. OpenCms 8 requires Alkacon OCEE version 3 or newer.

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

Features of OpenCms in General

• "Direct Edit" allows creation and modification of content directly from a web page.
• Structured contents can be defined using a simple XML schema.
• Includes editors with WYSIWYG and syntax highlighting functionality.
• Easy to use "Online / Offline" workflow, changes must be approved before they become visible.
• Link management for all internal resources with broken link detection.
• Support for WebDAV access to all resources in the OpenCms repository.
• Integrated image scaling and cropping.
• Full featured internal user management that supports the concept of "Organizational Units" (OUs).
• Allows management of multiple websites within one installation.
• Contents can be served dynamically or exported to static HTML files.
• Extensions can be added through a flexible module system.
• Full text search for web pages, but also in PDF, MS Office documents etc.
• The "time warp" feature allows to view resources which are expired or not yet released.
• JSP integration for dynamic functionality in templates, dynamic forms etc.
• Distribution includes a complete demo website "Wonderful World of Flowers".
• ... and many more

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 Software releases OAMP ExcelImport Module for OpenCms

The Alkacon OAMP ExcelImport Module provides functionality to import an Excel file into OpenCms and create XML contents from the contained Excel records automatically.

The ExcelImport Module could be used for quick content creation from large offline data collections like news, events, address lists or list of employees or even stock of products. Excel sheet column names get matched to XML tags in a defined but freely configurable way. Existing XML content gets updated if a set of balanced quantifiers reaches a threshold value. Direct publishing can be switched on with a check box.

Now available for download from www.alkacon.com.

The Alkacon OAMP ExcelImport Module features:

• creates XML content item(s) from records of Excel sheets
• Excel column names get matched to XML tags
• complete configuration of Alkacon ExcelImport is done in one file.
• Import (and publishing - if selected) is done with one mouse click

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.

Go to the Alkacon OAMP download page

Alkacon OCEE for OpenCms updated to version 2.1.4

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 2.1.4 is an important update that comes with several new functions and improvements and fixes a few issues that persisted in the last release.

New features and improvements in OCEE 2.1.4 for OpenCms 7

• Significantly improved OCEE Accelerator with new caching strategy that can reduce database requests by millions per day.
• Improved OCEE LDAP Connector now features support for nested groups when using Microsoft Active Directory.
• Improved OCEE Cluster Manager now supports installation and updating of modules within the cluster with shell commands.
• Improved OCEE Replicator with better error handling in user replication scenarios.
• Added option to write additional info values in the LDAP repository to the OCEE LDAP Connector.
• Added deterministic id generation for LDAP groups/users to the OCEE LDAP Connector.
• Fixed an issue in the OCEE Cluster Manager with export points not correctly being generated on remote servers.
• Fixed an issue in the OCEE Accelerator with caching of non-existent resources in the offline project that caused errors in certain scenarios.
•   Fixed an issue in the OCEE Replicator where the resource id from the online project was used for replication.
• Fixed an issue in the OCEE LDAP Connector where updating group membership on LDAP users triggered a clear cache event.

Changes in OCEE 1.0.20 for OpenCms 6

• Fixed an issue in the OCEE Replicator where the resource id from the online project was used for replication.

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

Main features in OCEE 2

• 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 a publish 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.

 

Alkacon Software launches OpenCms 7.5.4

Version 7.5.4 of OpenCms 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 7.5.4 is a maintenance release that fixes a number of issues that persisted in the 7.5.3 version. Some new features have been added as well.

Main fixed issues and improvements in OpenCms 7.5.4

• Fixed issue #1717: DB deadlock if OpenCms hits db.pool.default.maxActive when db.pool.default.whenExhaustedAction=block
• Fixed issue #1900: Performance Patch for OpenCms
• Fixed issue #1901: Workplace login page security issue
• Fixed issue #1909: Internet Explorer crashes after saving structured XML content with image added from gallery into HTML field
• Fixed issue #1942: Publish scheduled jobs are missing after server restart
• Fixed issue #1945: Avoid reflected XSS on some authenticated resources (provided by Michele Orru)
• Fixed issue #1949: Database size does not decrease after (completely) deleting resources
• Fixed issue when creating a new user or editing an existing user using an Oracle database
• Fixed issue using delete and lock resource when called without path parameter
• Fixed issue in galleries: Broken layout with long item file names or titles
• Fixed premature publish thread interruption within CmsShell
• FCKEditor compatible with Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4
• Added new optional CmsShell start parameter to load additional commands

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

General Features of OpenCms 7.5

• "Direct Edit" allows editing of content directly from a web page.
• Structured contents can be defined using a simple XML schema.
• XML content Editor for structured content / pages generated automatically from an XML schema.
• Support for grouping of content in tabs in the XML content editor.
• Includes editor with syntax highlighting functionality for all text based files (e.g. XML, HTML, JSP)
• WYSIWYG editor available for unstructured pages.
• Easy to use "Online / Offline" workflow.
• All changes or new pages must be approved / published first before they become visible "Online".
• Our "Content Relationship Engine" (CRE) allows management of relations / links in the system.
• Full internal link management for all resources.
• If files (or folders) are moved, all links to these files are kept intact.
• Native support for WebDAV access to the OpenCms VFS.
• Integrated image processing / scaling and cropping.
• Images and other content are organized in galleries with advanced AJAX features.
• Gallery dialogs support grouping of content by category or based on folder.
• Integrated full text search for web pages, but also in PDF, MS Office documents etc.
• Offline search indexing for changes that are not published.
• 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.
• User permissions based on a complete set of system "Roles".
• Extensions can be added through a full featured module system.
• 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 HSQLDB databases included.
• Distribution includes a complete demo website "Wonderful World of Flowers".
• ... and many more

OpenCms 7.5.4 is fully backward compatible to all prior 7 versions. We recommend everyone who uses an earlier version of OpenCms to update to the 7.5.4 release. OpenCms 7.5 is largely backward compatible with version 6. An easy to use update wizard for OpenCms Version 6 and prior 7 installations for MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL is available.

Notice for users of Alkacon OCEE: OpenCms version 7.5.4 requires Alkacon OCEE version 2.1.4 or later. In case you want to update your OpenCms installation to 7.5.4, please make sure you update Alkacon OCEE to 2.1.4 or later first!

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 9 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.

OpenCms Days 2011 - Complete conference program available

OpenCms Days 2011 will take place from Monday, May 09 to Tuesday, May 10 in Cologne, Germany.

The complete conference program for OpenCms Days 2011 is now available at the conference website. The program features 16 sessions with numerous high-profile speakers from all over the world. OpenCms Days 2011 will be the largest event for the OpenCms community this year.

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

Regular conference registration price: 200,- Euro

The OpenCms 8 User Experience

OpenCms 8 will bring a major update of the content manager user interface. The new Advanced Direct Edit feature will allow content managers to create, modify and publish new pages directly with drag & drop on their web pages, making OpenCms much more user friendly.

The final version of OpenCms 8 will be made available for public download on the first day of the conference. A release candidate version of OpenCms 8 will be downloadable earlier.

The conference will provide a unique opportunity to learn about the new features of OpenCms 8 directly from the developers.

OpenCms Days 2011 conference will feature 2 parallel tracks with Showcase and Workshop sessions:

• Showcase track sessions will present a variety of OpenCms show cases and best practices from OpenCms projects all over the world.
• Workshop sessions for developers provide in-depth, hands-on presentations and workshops about the new technical features in OpenCms 8.

At the OpenCms Days 2011 conference expo, OpenCms solution providers will exhibit their OpenCms business solutions and enhancements.

OpenCms Days 2011 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 2011 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.

• Register your ticket for OpenCms Days 2011
• Check out the full conference program
• Become a sponsor for OpenCms Days 2011