-
Welcome to Zikula
(Admin_Messages)
-
system (CMS). It is far more secure and stable than competing products, and is able to work in high-volume environments with ease.
Some of the key features of Zikula are:
customization of all aspects of the web site's appearance through themes, with support for CSS stylesheets
the ability to specify items as being suitable for either a single language or for all languages
the best guarantee of properly displaying your web pages in all browsers, thanks to full compliance with W3C HTML standards
a standard API (application programming interface) and extensive documentation to allow for easy extension of your web site's functionality through modules and blocks.
Zikula has a very active developer and support community at zikula.org.
We hope you will enjoy using Zikula.The Zikula development team
Note: you can edit or remove this message by going to the Administration page and clicking on the 'Administration messages' entry
Generated on December 20, 2008.
-
GSoC Interview: Carlos Mauro
(News)
-
2. What attracted you to the Google Summer of Code as a programme, and PostNuke as a project?
I looked at Google Summer Code as a great challenge. But I do not dare. Until this year, if I did. I applied to several projects related to the topic of usability. And because apply to PostNuke some years ago I work as freelance. Develop some portals for small businesses in my country using postnuke and other CMS. PostNuke is attractive because this was installed in a single attempt. I was surprised. So I think support.
3. Tell us about your project, and how you hope it can benefit PostNuke?
I'm copying what we present in my proposal:
The criteria for the evaluation usability are:
Comparison of controls on Good Practices or patterns Usability on the Web.
Include improvements within the Framework.
Create a guide to improve and documenting findings to the community PostNuke.
a. Usability
To improve the usability of Postnuke i will work graphical interfaces suggested some of the modules and the framwork which are used in the forms. Attempts to put in these modules some good practices and standards for Web usability.
I will Work with what is necessary XHTML, CSS, Ajax whether it is possible to implement and methodically.
b. Accessibility and conformance
For the accessibility i take the the Guidelines and techniques(6). After the programing process. I will make a list for test usability. I will Choose 6 to 7 cms users to test usability with the corrections. The proceeds will help create iterations for each test.
c. Maintainability
Maintenance may accelerate taking intoaccount that at the end of the draft the conclusions will be made in the form of best practices for Web usability postnuke. I will help in the incorporation and supporting of usability guide line in other modules PostNuke.
In the forums I will clarify the tasks of the project and also its scope.
4. What do you personally hope to gain from participating in the Summer of Code with PostNuke?
Many, many experience in knowing more about how a community of developers interested in do make a good product. Learning from good programming practices and especially knowing more about web usability. Of course Social Recognition.
I want postnuke as a milestone in the renewed Internet.
5. Can you see yourself contributing your talents to Open Source projects following the SoC? Will you continue to work with PostNuke in some capacity after the programme has ended?
The GSOC ends after a month of my graduation from college. I hope to finish that time almost all my tasks in the project. I would like to leave a module to test usability. I feel a duty to contribute to the community. I am confident that the project can achieve more significant improvements in its next release and then create or generate support the development of future lines. It should not be discouraged postnuke which has short market ... we see the top, be with them and then jump to heaven.
6. Is there anything else you’d like to say now, as the programme begins?
I would like to see other issues as the framework and its implementation in business or insert google app into the framework. I would like to make a strategic planning for IT postnuke. Devising strategies to make the best CMS, simply: Easy.
Not only is needed to schedule some things to achieve a well-accepted product.Need to know that is what the user wants in the next 5 years and venture into that vision. So I count on your support to work with postnuke .... And of course do my project as realistic as possible in these 3 months in the hope that is of benefit to all.
Lastly, thanks for your time – we in the PostNuke team are excited about the Summer of Code, so thank you for taking part and choosing PostNuke!
We are going ... postnuke to make the Best CMS, the easiest. GEN a social network that seems to make FaceBook a grain of sand in our seas.
I will continue reviewing more documentation and adjusting the project to postnuke with the help of my mentor Steffen Voß and I hope all of you ... I support in arms of
Generated on April 27, 2008.
-
GSoC Interview: Daniel Byrd
(News)
-
American and English whenever it’s convenient (It’s pretty much only more convenient to be American when trying to enter America).
I enjoy doing a bit of drawing here and there and pretty much any reasonable kind of sport, especially team sports. But as far as interesting hobbies go I don’t raise boa constrictors or compete for the world record for juggling with flaming knives or anything like that. I guess I need to take something up so I can better answer these kinds of questions.
I currently run www.lincolnjcr.com (technically not completely finished yet) where I’ve implemented a specific self-made content management system, which probably had something to do with what drew me to Postnuke.
2. What attracted you to the Google Summer of Code as a programme, and PostNuke as a project?
What tempted me about the GSOC program was the flexibility of the whole system, working where you want, when you want, as well the opportunity to get paid to code, which probably wouldn’t have been possible otherwise and is obviously going to offer some useful experience.
PostNuke seemed like a project I could actually make an impact on, as I already have a decent head start in all the required areas, I didn’t like the idea of taking a plunge into the unknown and having to spend half the time trying to figure out what was actually going on rather than actually contributing. Also a lot of people use websites, and a lot of people benefit from Postnuke, so the idea of contributing to something genuinely useful to many people was a factor for me.
3. Tell us about your project, and how you hope it can benefit PostNuke?
I’ve been on countless websites where the search functionality is just not up to scratch, it’s frustrating to say the least. Although Postnuke already has a fairly well implemented search module, theres room for improvement. My project is essentially to construct a fully functional search engine for PostNuke. Actually, two. One direct port of an existing search system, (along the lines of htdig or phpdig) and one more specific implementation that works more intimately with PostNuke.
The outcome for Postnuke should be the following the features:
Unsharp searches so that users get probably expected results in spite of typing or spelling errors.
Searching of non-html documents (such as open office documents and PDF)
Improvements in performance. Currently, each module is queried individually, multiple results for the same page are displayed more than once and there is no way of displaying searches by relevance.
(If time allows) Semantic searches (ie content added by person x)
5. What do you personally hope to gain from participating in the Summer of Code with PostNuke?
I’m looking forward to getting an insider’s perspective on an open source project as I don’t really know much about open source, and this seems like the best way to learn more. Of course in terms of further work prospects, this is a useful bit of experience to have for sure. It would also be nice to make some friends in the process.
6. Can you see yourself contributing your talents to Open Source projects following the SoC? Will you continue to work with PostNuke in some capacity after the programme has ended?
It’s a definite possibility, I’ll have to see how it goes and see how much I enjoy it. It also depends on how much spare time I have as well I guess. But I’d definitely consider it.
7. Is there anything else you’d like to say now, as the programme begins?
I’d like to thank the people here at PostNuke for applying to GSOC so that I could have this opportunity, and I’d like to say that I’m looking forward to the next few months and that I’ll do my best to make my effort a worthwhile addition to PostNuke.
Lastly, thanks for your time – we in the PostNuke team are excited about the Summer of Code, so thank you for taking part and choo
Generated on April 23, 2008.
-
MediaAttach RC 1 released
(News)
-
Functional features
With the display and delete hooks file uploads become possible in all hook-capable modules.
Many different file types are supported (images, music, videos, archives, documents, ...)
The most formats can be displayed embedded.
Enhanced file information like for example ID3 tags are read and cached with pnRender.
Also emedding external videos (e.g. YouTube, Google or Dailymotion) is possible.
Users can send files to themselves in mails.
Security
Files can be stored outside the web root, which is advisable absolutely.
If this is not possible, a .htaccess file can be created automatically for protecting direct access.
Therefore all access is handled by module functions and permissions.
A quota support cares for bounded storage limits.
Integration
Users can manage their own files in the profile.
With a Scribite plugin for Xinha media can be inserted in the editor easily.
A support for needles in the MultiHook also provides possibilities to include files in other content.
A Guppy plugin for Pagesetter is enclosed as well to be able to define MediaAttach fields.
Also the Content module is being supported by a flexible plugin.
More profound integration possibilities for special modules exist with create and update hooks.
Migration
An import from the file system is possible.
Moreover import options for Downloads 2, Mediashare, PhotoGallery and pnUpper are ready.
Comfort
Direct support for Categories.
Images can be scaled down.
Space-saving multi uploader if JavaScript is available.
Thumbnails can be cut out individually if desired.
The new search functionality is being supported.
The creation of bit torrents for files is possible.
Comprehensive PDF manual.
MediaAttach can be used as easy as every other display hook module (for example EZComments). But if one engages in it, he quickly perceives that the strengths of this module are it's flexibility and it's adaptability. It not only unifies file management and media integration, but can also be used as a gallery for example. Different annexed template sets illustrate several possible applications.
Also interesting is that one can activate MediaAttach also for MediaAttach itself which leads amongst others to the possibility to attach media to other media items.
The module offers concluding dozens possibilities which can all be used, but may not. For this reason it is excellently suited for being employed in project-specific areas and is furthermore in line with our framework idea why it is going to constitute an enrichment certainly.
Links
Download
Bugtracker
Patches
Feature Requests
Have fun with testing and giving feedback :)
Generated on March 7, 2008.
-
Development Update, 2008-01
(News)
-
.8 Final: the next step after RC3
Since the release of RC3, already a lot of bugfixes have been committed to the repository. The developers have agreed to address all new features to the .9 tree, where the two major changes (UTF-8 and gettext, see below) are already in active development. This should result in much shorter release cycles (and earlier release dates) also, and give module developers much more clarification on what to change in order to make their module work under the new major release. If needed, an final bugfizing weekend may still be organised for .8 final.
The upgrade from .764 installations on certain systems has been improved, by increasing the memory_limit to 64M. However, this only works for php version 5.2.1 and above.
Upgrading to .8 together with some 3rd party modules may raise problems when the modules upgrade process is not failsafe for .8 or if the upgrade function uses core functions of modules that are not available yet. Therefore the upgrade of 3rd party modules in general is avoided by following a white list of core modules.
Most site-specific data can already be easily overridden using the /config and /themes directories. The Multisites module however still needs some futher thought on the best way of running multiple sites from a single install. One method having multiple unrelated (i.e. non table sharing) sites of a single install would be to have config/site1, config/site2 etc., this will be postponed to a next release.
The Tour module is now in a state where it can be translated to other languages as well. Just translate the templates and put them in a subdir with the appropriate language abbrevation, all within the pntemplates directory.
MultiCategorization introduction and issues since
As earlier announced, a last fix for supporting MultiCategorization has been added to the core just before the release of RC3. Since those changes, another small fix was then required to be fully backwards compatible. On the module-devs list, the devs have discussed a lot on how to solve these issues. Chances are great that if the new (already committed) patches do not solve the problems, MultiCategorization might be postponed to later versions in order to fully test the new features.
For more information on MultiCategorization, visit this thread in the forum.
DOM extension to use correct paths in JavaScript
Some javascripts, eg. the lightbox, need to know the path to the system and the entrypoint as well (which can be configured in the settings), otherwise they may fail in case of short urls being enabled. Since dynamic javascript creation might be a performance problem, some inline javascript is added to the pagevars to extend the DOM:
- document.location.entrypoint: will be set to what is configured to be the entrypoint
- document.location.pnbaseURL: will point to the result of pnGetBaseURL();
Any ideas on how to make his more unobtrusive are very welcome!
PostNuke Upgrade Distribution
In previous articles and posts, the term '.8 upgrade pack' was used to represent a full .8 package, including 3rd party modules, to upgrade to .8 from an existing .764 installation. However, the term 'upgrade pack' is not quite correct and misleading, because it implies to be an upgrade package with changed files only, while the main parts remain as-is. The transition between .764 and .8 requires a complete exchange of all files, so the so called upgrade package is a complete distribution.
Now it remains what modules should be in an upgrade distribution, to be able to fully upgrade an existing .764 installation, including new versions of 3rd party modules. These include Downloads 2.2, pnMessages, Polls 2.0, bbcode / bbsmile, Weblinks, EZComments and MultiHook at least. This might need some additional testing with certain versions also.
Core changes and additions in the .9 tree
Mark has already overhauled some core API methods and calls. All systems modules are now using the Renderer Class instead of pnRender. Also, a first pass has been committed in changing all pn* function calls to new object method calls. For example, pnModGetInfo is replaced with ModuleUtil::getInfo and pnSecGenAuthKey is replaced with SecurityUtil::generateAuthKey.
For those who did not know: A class pnCompat.php still includes most oldstyle API calls for backwards compatibility.
GetText and Default DB Charset
Bernd is progressing rapidly on integrating gettext in de development tree, and has added po-files for all core modules. The required PHP version for .9 has already been set to a minimum of 5.1.6, and since version 5.0, MySql supports different character sets and corresponding collating orders. To run an application in UTF-8 (unicode) it is not sufficient to change the character set for PN; we needed to set the database encoding (actually server and client) to UTF-8 as well.
A user who wishes to run his site in multiple languages, needs to decide the database encoding at installation time. The default is UTF-8, because the current iso-8859-1 is restricted to too few language combinations. UTF-8 is a 'no-worry' setting because it will work with any language (as long as it is UTF-8 encoded.
This change is $PNConfig['DBInfo']['default']['dbcharset'] = 'utf-8';
To cache or not to cache, that's the question
Also discussed on the devs-list is the current (and future) state of output caching within PostNuke. Why should any application repeat the same processing tasks on a item that hasn't changed?
Not caching anything is fine if one has got infinite resources to throw at a site (and even then there are limits). But in reality there are finite resources and you need to take steps to ensure that those resources are effectively used. One method for that is not wasting precious resources repeating the same tasks time after time.
The key is effective cache management. Currently we put too much load onto the module to handle it's own caching. Once you then
Generated on March 2, 2008.
-
SEO for postnuke
(News)
-
Customize title
You can customize the general title of your postnuke, by filling in the correspondant fields in the module "settings". The problem is that, you will have only one title for the whole website ... and that's ugly (and bad for SEO).
A solution was offered by Markwest, in order to personnalize this title, on every pages.the title tag plugin
This plugin allow you to format titles like this
Classic titles
HTML for Module Developers - A Discussion :: pnCommunity :: Support at your fingertips
if you want to have shorter titles like this, you can use the other unofficial version in the comments.
Improved titles
HTML for Module Developers
If you're using pnForum, it will give you title like this
PnForum title
Customize meta "descriptions" and "keywords"
You can customize the meta "descriptions" and "Keywords" of you CMS, by filling in the correspondant field in the "settings" module, but with this customisation, you will have only one "description" and "keywords" fields for all the site.
In order to improve this, there are two plugin on the community repository, one for fixing the descriptions and the other one for the keywords tags.
Notes : As the Search engine were spammed by overloaded keywords tags, for most of them , they don't consider this tags anymore.
If you're using pnForum, it will give you this :
PnForum metas
Activate url rewriting
You can activate the url rewriting in Xanthia, go to the Xanthia module, then check the options "use short urls", and copy paste the .htaccess file from the "doc" folder to the root of you CMS.
/!\ Be careful, live search doesn't url with more than two dashes
Notes : an improved version of the current url rewriting is available in postnuke 0.8.
Duplicate content
Don't duplicate links in your portal, two differents links must not point to the same content. Indeed, some search engine don't like to see multiples versions of the same page on a website (that's called "duplicate content")
To avoid this, you can use a robots.txt at the root of the CMS
Robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: admin.php
Disallow: config/*
Disallow: header/*
Disallow: footer/*
Disallow: pntables/*
Disallow: /images/*
Disallow: /includes/*
Disallow: /adlogger/*
Disallow: /themes/*
Disallow: /pnTemp/*
Disallow: /docs/*
Disallow: /javascript/*
Disallow: *.php
Disallow:module-Forum-viewtopic-topic-*-start-0.html
An other tip, "/index.php", "/index.html" and "/" redirect to the same page so you can add this rule in you .htaccess
.htaccess
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://postnuke.com [NC,R=301]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://postnuke.com [NC,R=301]
Text formating
In your articles or templates, try to have a structured layout with H1, H2, H3 tags.
Autolink and intern link
The module "autolink" is interesting, because he allows you to create a large amount of intern links with the same source anchor, this will help to increase your rank on the given word
404 error
When you've got an important portal with a large number of pages , it may be possible some of you ranked pages doesn't exist anymore. When search engine bots come to look for this "ghost" pages, you can redirect them to the home of your website, with an "Error 404" header.
.htaccess
ErrorDocument 404 /index.html
Take off unused metas tags
For most of them, search engine bots don't read some meta like "revist-after", so you can take them of your head tags. It will not help you, but you will have a cleaner header.
xxx.html
This article is a translation from this "how to" released on Postnuke-France
Generated on January 31, 2008.
-
PostNuke - A Year in Review
(News)
-
Following on from that, we had the release of Milestone 3 in February, which we used to clear up many bugs in the .8 codebase.
Next, we saw the first release of Scribite, development of a high quality WYSIWYG solution for PostNuke sponsored by the German PostNuke Foundation (read about the latest, 2.0 release here). We also had the appearence of several 0.8 only modules - MultiHook, pnUpper (now renamed to MediaAttach) and Publish. More and more modules taking advantage of .8 technologies were developed throughout the year, and there is an ever increasing selection of modules ready to run with .8 when we release the final version next year.
PageLock, for managing concurrent edits of a page was introduced to PostNuke .8 in March. The PostNuke Recovery Console made an appearence in May, as a .8 replacement for the Swiss Army Knife. At the end of May, CoType (which our Docs team is using to author the new PostNuke .8 documentation) was released to the public.
Unfortunately, in June we hit the well publicised problems with the NOC, which continued for a couple of months and hit the development of .8, delaying RC1 until July. However, RC1 met with a good response and many bugs were fixed.
In August, a new Steering Committee was elected, and Jorn's new Content module (which just hit the 1.0 release) was announced. The 4th Annual pnMeeting convened in Osnabrück during September and there were many interesting talks and discussions held by the 30 or so attendees.
In October we had our first bug fixing weekend, followed by further problems with the NOC, forcing November to be a quiet month. However, on December the 12th we released RC2, which we wish to test over the Christmas holiday in preparation for RC3 or a final release early in the New Year.
So what's to come? I'll leave that for articles to be published in the New Year, but at the very least you can expect the release of .8 final, the unveiling of our new name and the rebranding which goes with it, further development of .9, and some results from our documentation project.
Finally, all that remains is to wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year. Thanks for your continued support!
Simon Birtwistle [HammerHead]
PostNuke Steering Committe
Generated on December 27, 2007.
-
Looking for Documenation Project Team Members
(News)
-
Potential candidates check list:
A well-rounded understand of PostNuke. You need not be an expert in
everything PostNuke, but you should be able to effectively administer, adapt
and modify a PostNuke site.
Able to reasonably read and write in English, as far as it pertains to
PostNuke documentation writing. The key is reasonable; You do not have to
master English writing, as content is more important over style.
Contributing author's English will be edited for clear and concise grammar
and usage.
Able to work with a team. This may mean adjusting personal styles and
viewpoints to the teams objectives. This also means to possess the ability
to collaborate and construct ideas as a group member.
Must have the time to work on such an extensive project. Yes, we offer
flexible hours.
Must be able to commit. Must be willing to commit. Also commitment is
essential. And before I forget, we need someone who is going to commit to
this project.
Benefits:
Long hours and no pay
Getting to contribute to the PostNuke project
Having your name associated with PostNuke (Hey, you can put it on your
resume)
Development of friendship and camaraderie
Are you still interested? Well, if you are please send me a Private Message
here
on this site.
Include:
Your name and PostNuke Handle (Nickname)
Experience with PostNuke and related
Your motivation for this project
The amount of time you can give per week. Average.
Any relevant information, you feel we should know about.
Any spacial skills (related to this project) i.e. Technical Writer
Even though, we would like to accept all candidates to this project, we
cannot. It is our intention to keep this project small enough to be
manageable, yet large enough to be effective. I will be selecting only a few
for final review and selection by the Steering Committee. Thank you in advance
for your consideration to this project.
David Pahl -- Documentation Project Lead
Generated on October 6, 2007.
-
News from "Behind the Scenes"
(News)
-
Rebranding
The new name and the logo have been chosen, now the lawyers have to do their work in claiming the necessary trademarks. This is more important for Europe as it is for the US. but we will get the trademark worldwide to avoid any future problems. But, as usual, the administrative mills are working slowly, so this needs some more time. As soon as this process has been finished we will decide about announcing the new name, either immediately or together with the final release of .8 (which will in this case be renamed to $newname 1.0).
EasyDist and the extension database
Axel and Simon have written a concept paper of how to connect the EasyDist module (see [url]http://modulestudio.de[/url]) to the extension database on this site. Necessary changes on both sides are identified and will be done in the next weeks. The plan is to have this working together with the release of $newname 1.0. Among other things EasyDist will be enabled to get the latest module or theme information from the database to create up-to-date packages whenever a new version of a module or theme has been released, an admin interaction will not be required.
Release Manager
Although the EasyDist module will become a very powerful tool we still have to supply the usual download packages. For this we need someone to create, validate, upload etc. those packages. In the future this task will be done by Patrick Cornelissen (patrick.c). He will also maintain the SVN module that is internally used on this site to create the daily snapshots for the core and selected modules. Thanks to Patrick for accepting this task.
New Subdomains on postnuke.com
Postnuke.com will get two new subdomains:
- devs.postnuke.com for devs and team members to post tips, news, information etc. This is the official replacement for the old pndevs.com site. Moving this site to a postnuke.com subdomain was planned from the very beginning.
- demo.postnuke.com will be a demo installation of .8 with working admin part, including some selected modules (not yet defined). This will be almost the same as http://pn8.pn-cms.de where the database is rebuilt from a backup every night via a cron job or manually throughout the day if needed.
Both sites will be installed and maintained by Philipp Niethammer (philipp.ni) and Gabriel Freinbichler (gf).
Documentation
We know that .8 is lacking a real documentation and we want to change this. Therefore a group of interested users will be built until beginning of November to take over this part. The Steering Committee will then decide about the project leader for this and ask him or her to work on a proposal for a manual, online help, and wiki structure which should all fit together (this also includes the tools needed to do the job) until mid of December latest (earlier if possible). When this has been accepted, we will talk about an exact time frame for finally writing the docs. Here everyones input is appreciated of course!
The project leader will have to submit a regular report about the proceedings to the SC.
Bug fixing weekend
As already announced in [url]http://community.postnuke.com/Article2862.htm[/url] the bug fixing weekend will start on Saturday, 6th. Mark and Robert also want to join us (virtually) to squish out some nasty bugs, Roberts main target will be the categories module.
Interested users can also join us using Skype. If you are interested, please send me your screen name via mail or private message so that we can invite you.
As you can see, the project is active although some might have thought the opposite. We delegated or will delegate some tasks to users who are able and ready to contribute to PostNuke. If you also want to participate, please contact us, there is always something YOU can do.
If you think you have something that is worth to be spoken about in the next chats, please tell us.
Generated on October 5, 2007.
-
ScoutSite Project Looking for Volunteers
(News)
-
flexibility of it's modules, and a variety of pre-made themes we could build a tool that could help Scouts all around the world.
What Troop couldn't use a calender that tells the Scouts and parents when the next camp out is. Forums where the Scouts can talk about their favorite merit badges. A photo gallery of the canoe trip down the river. Newsletters telling families about the most recent ranks the Scouts have earned. Meanwhile also providing a public webpage that can tell others about your Troop. By focusing on communication, organization, co-operation, and program integration we can address many of the problems that Troops face every day.
With Scouts being a global movement, this project too will be global. By localizing tools for Scouting organizations around the world many more scouts will benefit from our work. This can be an opportunity for current and past Scouts and Scouters to work together to help Troops around the world. Those that have never been involved in Scouting are always welcome to help as well.
Ease of use will be the key to this being successful. By making it easy to use we can help Troops that do not have very tech savvy leaders to administer the site. Meanwhile, by keeping the Postnuke core in tact, more advanced admins can add any Postnuke module they may need. Documentation will pay off for end users as well as any developers that build upon our work.
Privacy and security will be very important. For the safety of the Scouts, and everyone's piece of mind, a strict standard of what information is available to the public will be enforced.
Releasing this as Open Source software is also a way that the work that we do can be helpful even beyond the Scouting community. Many of the same tools may be used by other groups, such as sports teams, clubs, or even keeping an extended family in contact.
If you would be interested in helping with this project please contact me at oik2 -at- hideyhole.org. Please include your name,
Generated on September 23, 2007.