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OS History
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See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html for more explanation of the difference between the two movements.
The basic philosophy behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, and people fix the bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.
There are many active Open Source Software projects but some may be thinking you get what you pay for, so if it's free there must be something wrong with it. Sometimes this is true but there are open source software projects providing stable, scalable applications. The key is to know where to look and what to look for when evaluating the stability and scalability.
Here are a few interesting facts and examples of Open Source projects:
Apache is the number one web server at nearly 62% of all installations. Second place was help by Microsoft at just under 27%. (Source: Netcraft)
GNU/Linux is the number two operating system at nearly 30% of all servers behind Microsoft operating system at nearly 50%. (Source: Netcraft)
Sendmail (a mail transport agent) sendmail has become one of the standards of the Internet's infrastructure (TCP/IP, Apache, sendmail).
BIND the Berkley Internet Naming Daemon responsible for mapping domain names to IP addresses ran on 95% of all public reverse DNS servers. (Source: Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California).
MySQL founded in 1995 by two open source veterans, Michael "Monty" Widenius and David Axmark, with the help of Allan Larsson and claims 4 million installations worldwide and 30,000 downloads of the software per day making MySQL by far the planet's most widely distributed open-source database. (Source: mySQL)
PHP is a widely used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML and as of May 2003 it was being used on 12,487,030 domains and 1,321,203 IP addresses. (Source: PHP)
Linux Operating System is over three years old and has grabbed 13.7 percent of the $50.9 billion market for server computers, and that figure is expected to jump to 25.2 percent in 2006, putting Linux in the No. 2 position. (Source: IDC)
SourceForge a site providing support tools and resources for the OSS/Free Software movement recently announced a major two year milestone of having more than a half million registered users, as well as a site record of nearly 63,000 registered projects. This is amazing growth of 25,000 new users per month
Generated on February 27, 2009.
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Pricing
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redistribute your work, with the understanding credit must be given to the original authors and that you must also license the new modified code as GPL. At no time are you permitted to change the license terms.
The GPL license ensures you have full access to the source code. This gives peace of mind about security since nothing is hidden
Generated on February 1, 2009.
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The End
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hich was originally based on a PostNuke version but soon forked in a totally different direction under development for a few years.
The fruits of the Adam Baum prokect were released as a new product called Zikula. Efforts have been made to make a migration path to the new product although not all modules and extension are compatible and the migration process can be rather difficult. For details about the migration package, please see the migration release.
Zikula should not be confused with PostNuke since they are spearate products and the underlying code is vastly different. A decision was made to provide security updates for PostNuke until 1st July 2009 and there will be no more releases of PostNuke beyond version 0.764. If security issues are found it is suggested you discontinue use of PostNuke and migrate. If you require professional support doing this you may contact us.
The End.
Generated on February 1, 2009.
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0.7x End Of Life
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From 1st October 2008
PostNuke 0.7x will only be available as a download package from code.zikula.org. New modules and themes for the .7x series will no longer be accepted into the Extensions repository after this date, and devlopers are encouraged to convert their extensions to Zikula 1.0. Any security updates to 0.7x modules will still be accepted in the repository.
From 1st January 2009
Official support for 0.7x will no longer be available. The extensions database and support forum will be archived, and new submissions will no longer be accepted.
On 1st July 2009
Official support for the 0.7x series of PostNuke ends on this date. Security fixes will no longer be provided, though it will
Generated on June 6, 2008.
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GSoC Interview: Carlos Mauro
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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
Generated on April 27, 2008.
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Community News
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Calendars! Calendars! Calendars!
A long time we all lived with PostCalendar - a complex and powerful modules that included Smarty before it was included as templating engine into the core. But the complexity was also the reason why the original maintainers gave up their work and nobody really picked it up again. Robert Gasch attempted to dissolve the code jungle and turned to other projects. Other modules like Zerocal, cal-zone or the pgCalendar addon for Pagesetter never really took off in the shadow of the huge PostCalendar. For a long time nothing much happened until recently several new calendar modules started to grow:
1. Daniele Conca's crpCalendar started off as a simple list of events but it is slowly turning into a full fletched Calendar with day-, week- and month-views. Moreover it supports hCalendar microformats and Content via plugin so you can integrate calendar events into your Content articles.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/crpcalendar/
2. TimeIt is attempt to clone PostCalendar with .8 technology. In the meantime version 1.1 RC1 is released which not only offers all the features postCalendar has but also event registration and user events.
Download: http://www.assembla.com/spaces/files/cxTPX-9PKr3lxaabIlDkbG
3. Eventliner is a new Calendar which also imports PostCalendar data and offers day-, week- and month-views.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/eventliner/
Good News for Communities
Florian Schliessl released a new, cool community module called ContacList which handles lists of friends. Your user will be able to ask other others for friendship and see their friends birthdays. The module can also be used in other modules to make user profiles aso only visible for friends. TimeIt already supports ContactList so your users can add their events or register and make this information visible to their friends.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/contactlist/
Totally Web 2.0
Mark West released a little plugin that allows you to include these little buttons for all kinds of link services like del.icio.us, mr. wong aso. into your modules.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/pnwebservices/
Pagesetter Successor
Marco Kundert is still working on his Pagesetter clone. The module will have all the features that Pagesetter has but replace all the stuff that Jørn first implemented in Pagesetter which now has been included into the core by the core features. Guppy will be repleaced by pnForm, the workflows will be replaces by the core workflows aso. Moreover he aims at making Pagemaster easier to use for beginners. Gabriel Freinbichler is already running a test version on one of his sites and he seems to be quite satisfied with it.
Shops
There are at least 3 forks of pnCommerce out there, maintained by Rüdiger Hahn, Jim Hatfield and others the problem now is that they all are very busy with their system and that they need to integrate all forks again to have a common code base again. There were several attempts to reunite the code but AFAIK the project lacks somebody who is really willing and able to put some time into it - who works self-motivated and needs the shop for his own sites.
Robert Gasch is working on a commercial shop. I had the priviliedge to take a look at it and it seems to offer a lot of very advanced features. If you need a shop and you are willing to invest some money into it, you should contact Robert.
Media
Axel Guckelsberger seems to have 50 hour days. His latest project is MediaAttach - finally a real solution for a central media repository. It still has some legacy from it's predecessor pnUpper but it already offers a lot of great features for the handling of media and it is included in Scribite and Content.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/mediaattach/
Certainly there is a lot more going on - so if you are working on a project, please leave a comment.
Generated on April 21, 2008.
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OpenID for PostNuke
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If you haven't read that yet and is interested in OpenID then please read it here - it will explain the whole OpenID background.
For those of you that haven't heard about OpenID yet, here is the very short explanation: OpenID is a relatively new web-technology for managing your online identity. It's primary purpose is to facilitate Single Sign On across independent websites. This means you can create yourself an OpenID identity and use that for login in to different websites without having to retype your password over and over again.
When I wrote the last article I promissed to deliver an OpenID implementation for PostNuke, and, well, here it is! You can now download OpenID from the NOC OpenID project page.
By installing this module you enable your users to:
Register an OpenID with their PostNuke account and login with this OpenID. The OpenID manager page can be found in the user account panel (Profile).
Create an account on your website using OpenID's registration process.
The OpenID module requires PostNuke version .8 from SVN (april 15th) - and probably also PHP 5.x since a required extension "domxml" is not delivered with PHP 4.x.
So don't hesitate - get your website OpenID enabled today and save yourself (and your customers) the hazzle of managing multiple user accounts.
Intra-web usage
You can use OpenID for Single Sign On between closed "intra-webs". For this
you must have a trusted OpenID Identity Provider (IP) - either your own or an
external one. Then you add a filter on the OpenID admin pages - this filter
should allow access from your trusted IP and deny access from any other
provider. In this way only users from your trusted IP will be allowed to access
your website.
Read more
You can find lots of information about OpenID around the web. The most obvious place to start is of course openid.net. But at openidbook.com you can get a free copy of the 200+ pages OpenID book from Rafeeq Ur Rehman. This should satisfy even the most curious people
Enjoy, Jørn Wildt
Generated on April 16, 2008.
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Meeting 2008 - Announcement and invitation
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discussions for users and developers to take place at the same time. A workshop is in consideration as well, to diversify the agenda.
At this time we are still at the beginning of planning, but will delve into it during the next weeks and give an account of it in regular intervals. We have several ideas, especially due to the large feedback from last year. For instance, we are up to start a shuttle service as designated by multiple people. There will certainly be a supporting programme again - how this will look like and if proportionate costs, in form of a fixed amount, which has to be carried by the participants themselves, will incur thereby is still open though. But we will make an effort to keep this amount as low as possible (less than 25 Euro). It is also not certain yet where and in which form the traditional prelude event on Friday will be.
Since there were already three companions last year, we want to organize a secondary agenda which is going to happen parallel with the primary conference and is being overseen by my girlfriend. However, during the complete supporting programme, for example the dinner on Saturday, both groups will be together.
Many other details like possibilities for arrival as well as accommodations and the program itinerary will be recorded in the Wiki [5] (German only). Also preliminary suggestions for lectures, workshops and discussions can be handled there. In coincidence of The Rhineland Palatinate's State Garden Show [6] happening simultaneously, a shortage at close hotels may arise. We will put several addresses and alternatives into the Wiki this very day. Please take care as soon as possible for corresponding reservations. If there should occur any problems, I am within reach and of help at axel@zikula.org.
We are looking forward to a large attendance [7].Registrations are without commitment, but exceedingly helpful for our organization, particularly as we must roughly estimate the total amount of persons. Also the information how many people are going to bring along their partners, is very important for the planning. The first meeting which is all about $newname is hopefully going to become an exciting and innovative performance with active participation.
Links:
http://www.bingen.de/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingen_am_Rhein
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1066
http://www.fh-bingen.de/
http://camp-zikula.info/wiki/
http://www.landesgartenschau-bingen-2008.de/
http://camp-zikula.info/contact/
Generated on April 1, 2008.
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MediaAttach RC 1 released
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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.
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Development Update, 2008-01
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.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.