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Open Source   (Content)

proprietary software that provides you with executable binary code only, not the human readable source code it is derived from.
Another variation of the definition by The Free Software Foundation (FSF) refers to "free software" rather than Open Source Software. The FSF's definition stresses "free software is a matter of liberty, not price.' In this context, "free" means "freedom" as in free speech, not free as in "free beer'. Some might be asking, "What's the catch"? And you remember what your mom told you, if it's too good to be true, it must not be true. But in this case, it's true, if you find a software product that meets your needs, there isn't a catch, it really is FREE. The only possibly issue is misunderstanding the term "free." The GPL includes this text: "When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price." which means the software is not necessarily cost-free and considering the alternatives of proprietary software, it's still a b

Generated on January 31, 2009.

CMS/PN article on UnixReview.com   (News)

enterprise-scale deployment. The field of CMS has seen particularly strong growth in OSS solutions, perhaps in direct response to the high prices that commercial CMS have historically demanded. There are also other benefits inherent in the use of most OSS CMS, such as ease

Generated on October 15, 2005.

Moving on: Better PostNuke ShortURLs   (News)

PostNuke sites well, while making the URLs hard to post to people in email or in forums. For instance, a news link looks like this:
/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=123&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

For some time now, PostNuke users have cried out for better Search-Engine Friendly URLs, and for the past few years, the only thing available has been a theme hack first detailed by Karateka (possibly E. Soysal before that, the links in the article are dead) way back in 2002, since worked on by ColdRolledSteel (Craig Saunders), and consequently me.
The advent of the ShortURL hack has seen sites hosted on Apache servers with the URL Rewriting module (mod_rewrite) enabled get URLs like
/Article123.html

for the above link, where certain assumptions have been made about the default settings for mode, thread and threshhold. A big improvement, but not very descriptive, and it comes at the cost of heavy post-processing of the site's content for links. Also, Search Engines use link keyword relevance in their rankings, and Article123 doesn't say much about the link, except that it's an article with the id 123.
As Karateka pointed out at the time in his article, a problem in implementing friendlier URLs with virtual directories is that all paths in PostNuke are relative, ie relative to the site root folder where index.php is located, and fixing it then would have required extensive changes in the core. That is, a URL like /Example/view.html would result in the browser looking for all links relative to its present location, ie in the nonexistant subfolder called Example, and subsequently it would fail to find the linked stylesheets, images etc, and all links from the page would similarly fail.

Unfortunately this situation has not changed in the intervening years, but as PostNuke modules are becoming API-compliant, they reference the same system function to build their URLs, so fixing this function and other associated functions to use root-relative links(1) will fix all compliant module URLs. But that leaves all other links, like images, Javascript, and stylesheets. The move to templating with Xanthia (for themes) and pnRender (for modules) is also making it easier, since Xanthia templates use a Xanthia variable to reference the theme's image directory path. So fixing Xanthia and pnRender will fix most paths in Xanthia themes. The exception are stylesheet and Javascript link paths and any links in the theme header, for which new path variables need to be introduced, so some updating of Xanthia themes is required. This makes the transition period to PN 0.8 an ideal time to introduced these changes, since few Xanthia themes have been released so far, and core modules are only just being converted to pnRender.
I stopped work on ShortURLs some time ago (before pn0.75) on the advice that a core module was being developed; however I have seen no evidence of this to date, and there is no indication in the upcoming PN 0.76 or CVS that there is anything coming. I got curious a month or so ago, and was somewhat dismayed at what I found.

Since then no progress seems to have been made on PostNuke ShortURLs. In fact, the current Xanthia filter hack has regressed, becoming bloated with complex and wholly unnecessary Regular Expression rules, many badly written with duplication and a number of bugs, especially in the accompanying htaccess file, going from the 15 rules proposed by Karateka to a massive 89. So, I set out to try and fix it, but ended up revisiting the idea of a core implementation using virtual directories to more logically structure the URLs in a way that is not only Search-Engine Friendly, but more User-Friendly.

Along the way, I've also been sidetracked and made a direly-needed new themable tab system for the Administration area based on AlistApart.com's Sliding Doors technique and consequently overhauled most of the Admin templates and a few User templates too, partly out of necessity due to the new Adminpanel, partly because they badly needed it. Those of you who have tried the pn0.76 Release Candidates would know that the templated output in them leaves something to be desired, drab and somewhat unprofessional-looking due to all the styling and CSS-classes having been ripped out, leaving a basic grey and white look with overly large headings and no theme tables for backgrounds. Hardly what you would call of Release Candidate quality. So pnRender and its plugins have been fixed to allow the use of Xanthia-like theme-colour tags as well as a tag for root-relative paths needed for ShortURLs, and the opentable functions have been fixed so that proper themed borders can be used. In fact most of the changes are in fixed templates, plugins, and module files.

My proposed implementation still retain the Xanthia filter for backwards compatibility with older themes, modules and blocks, but has been wholly rewritten and pared down to 24 rules, including a rule to fix all links to be root-relative. As PostNuke is in transition to be fully pnAPI-compliant by PostNuke 0.8, the remaining ones can gradually be removed altogether as themes, modules and blocks are updated. There's also a version for AutoTheme.

This particular scheme is experimental and may be tweaked or improved upon. It seeks to reduce the reliance on the Regular Expression(2) post-processing for links and introduce more user-friendly URLs that have more relevance for people and search engines alike by using virtual directories to visually distinguish sections of the site by module and function, such as
/Example/View.html

and for the News articles introduce Category, Topic, and Title information in the link:
/Category/Topic/ArticleXXX-title-of-story.html

For instance for a news story in the category Computers and the topic Postnuke called "PostNuke Shorturls", you'd have the URL
/Computers/Postnuke/Article123-PostNuke-Shorturls.html

This is a clear, concise and informative link that tells the user and search engine alike something about the link before going there, while retaining backwards compatibility with links of the old ShortURL scheme. It more closely emulates the way we think and organise information, using the folder analogy where we have a clearly-labelled Computer category folder, under which we have the various sub-categories - Topics - with various articles. In this case, we're using a virtual file anchored by the word "Article", clearly identifying it as such, followed by the article number and title. There is backwards compatibility, so that older links for Article123.html will still work.

In this instance I've excluded the News keyword altogether for brevity in favour of the Category and Topic keywords which insinuate News anyway, though there is nothing against being consistent with all the other ShortURLs and having the Module appear first, as in
/News/Computers/Postnuke/Article123:-PostNuke-Shorturls.html

This is for the special case of the core News module though, a more generic method is needed overall for URLs with various unknown parameters passed in the query string. This implementation uses the scheme:
/Module/Function-Param1:Value1-Param2:Value2... -ParamN:ValueN.(p)htm(l)
where the Query string parameters are tagged onto the virtual filename grouped by colons and separated by hyphens, the idea being to use commonly-used characters we might normally use in a list to make it look as natural and readable as possible. It may be a less-commonly used character than the hyphen is needed, like the tilde ~ character, since some parameter values may use a hyphen, in particular usernames. This is not a problem if passed as the last parameter, where it may contain any character. So if the module developer kept this in mind, it might not be an issue. I'm not aware of it being one so far. The PostCalender ShortURL plugin deliberately places uname, if present, last.

The extension is not necessary, but used for convenience. The 3 types used are either one of html, htm, or phtml, the latter useful to distinguish when you want to link to real HTML files on the site. The extensions as well as the option to use ShortURLs or not is set in the Settings panel, though I've only offered the option of html and phtml, since frankly the MS DOS-holdover extension htm annoys me.
Older URLs are marked with a + before the Function name, as in
/PNphpBB2/+profile-mode:editprofile.html

so that the server can translate it correctly. If the directory doesn't actually exist, entering
/Example/

will redirect to the Example module main page (Apache only)
/Example/main.phtml

which in return gets rewritten invisibly to
/index.php?module=Example&func=main

Otherwise, if it does exist, the index file of the relevant directory will be opened.
Similarly, with
/HTML/filename.html

if the file exists, it will be opened, else PN will look for
/index.php?module=HTML&func=filename

It is still possible to tag on query strings like
/ModName/main.phtml?theme=seabreeze

or
/ModName/main-theme:seabreeze.phtml

will both be translated to
/index.php?module=ModName&func=main&theme=seabreeze

There are any number of possible ShortURL systems, the simplest being to simply chop the URL into virtual directories, like /News/123/ from the above News example as some do. Xaraya uses a variant of this for news, though it doesn't use mod_rewrite, so appears like
/index.php/news/123

Again, this is concise, but contains few meaningful keywords other than the module name News. You can combine the two methods for News and have
/News/Category/Topic/123/title-of-article

which works very well, but loses some of the elegance of the above philosophy, since the latter part breaks up the virtual file into 3 with no anchor words, which is not how we organise information.
For generic URLs, there are a number of methods; for instance Mambo, another CMS, use generic ShortURLs like
/component/option,com_newsfeeds/catid,5/Itemid,7/

for a News URL like
/index.php?option=com_newsfeeds&catid=5&Itemid=7

where the querystring values are grouped by commas and separated by forward slashes (virtual directories). It is a ShortURL, though in this case not shorter, and doesn't have any useful keywords, other than "newsfeed", and is not very human-readable. For a generic URL, this is somewhat unavoidable, but can be better than that.
This implementation also contain a way to customise ShortURLs on a per-module basis through a file called shorturls.php placed in the module folder (see the Example module), such as the News URLs, or 3rd party modules like PostCalendar, which instead of the full URL like
/index.php?module=PostCalendar&func=view&tplview=&viewtype=day&Date=20050405&pc_username=&pc_category=&pc_topic=&print=

with the above generic ShortURLs would be rendered as
/PostCalendar/view-viewtype:day-Date:20050405.html

but with customised URLs become
/Calendar/05-04-2005/day.html


The beauty is, though, once we've created the groundwork in the core of PostNuke, any implementation will be fairly easy.

1) Root-relative links: Links relative to the server site root (eg /nuke/filename.html), which stays static, as opposed to relative to the present file (eg filename.html).
2) Regular Expression (RegEx): A complex pattern-matching language that can look a bit like a mathematical formula, used in the Xanthia ShortURL filter at /modules/Xanthia/plugins/outputfilter.shorturls.php.


----------------------------------------------------------------
If this were Mambo, I'd charge you 80 Euros for all this (the price for SEF Advance), but because you're all such nice people (except that guy up the back, you know who you are :) ), I'll let you have it for free.

A PDF of the ReadMe included in the package, but with additional screenshots, is found here (570kb).

I've also written a more technical ReadMe on installing ShortURLs, included in the package under the docs folder, and also found here.

here's a test of the tab system using the Aqua theme. It also comes with an XP-styled theme and the default-CSS-based one. I hope you like it, because it took a lot of work to perfect.

OK, screenshots: Well, no point having screenshots of URLs, so here's some of the tab system and modified SeaBreeze and PostNukeBlue themes' Admin templates instead:

1. The main adminpanel in PostNukeBlue with the Aqua-themed tabs, hovering over the Settings panel.
2. Same as above, but with the Theme Override set under Modify Config and with a tabs.css stylesheets in the theme's style folder. The rounded corners are only visible in Mozilla/FireFox.
3. The Luna tab theme in SeaBreeze, hovering over the 3rd Party tab.
4. The Xanthia Admin tabs using Aqua tabs in PostNukeBlue, hovering on Theme Settings.


And finally, the downloads:
I started out fixing PN0.75, so there are 2 downloads: One for PN0.75, and one for PN0.76rc4. I'll update it once the PN0.76 final is released.
Please backup your site before installing these patches, since a lot of system files are replaced. The PostNuke 0.76rc4 ShortURL package is rather large, consisting of some 400 files in a 1Mb zip file. The PN0.75 package has some 170 files and is around 800kb. Most of the changes are drop-in changes that doesn't necessitate updating of modules, but there are some exceptions in the PN0.76 package, in particular the Settings and Polls modules, where you need to first go to the Module list, regenerate, and update. Specific patches for popular 3rd party templated modules like AutoTheme and PNphpBB2 are included, but only a limited number of 3rd party modules have been tested with this package. No changes are made to the database, but it is still a good idea to back that up as well. You have been warned.

PostNuke 0.75 ShortURL package (833kb)
PostNuke 0.76rc4 ShortURL package (1Mb)

Two of the updated core themes:
PostNukeBlue (249kb)
SeaBreeze (120kb)


Feel free to discuss this proposal in the forums.

Enjoy!


Martin Andersen 8/7/200

Generated on July 9, 2005.

PostNuke Meeting Denmark   (News)

If you want to attend this meeting, please write Genix an email at Genix@genix.dk with your name and adress.

Place:

Gate58 (internet café)
Vestergade 58
8000, Ã…rhus C
Denmark

Gate58 homepage

PostNuke Denmark


Price 65 Dkr - Including a Sandwich and snacks :)

If you need a place to crash, there will be room in my apartment.

Generated on July 23, 2004.

Summary of Posting Guidelines   (News)

Scripts/Themes category on each sub-site to accommodate your posts. However, it will not be posted to the main page. Please do not include prices or direct links to purchase.

We also suggest you consider posting articles of interest to the PostNuke community which in turn will provide you, your company or your products/services with an opportunity to highlight your expertise within the subject area. And when posting an article of interest please provide a short bio about yourself highlighting your accomplishments and services.

Please see FAQ for more information as it becomes available.

Thank you for your consideration.
PostNuke Managemen

Generated on May 3, 2004.

PostNuke, Licenses, Commercialism....   (News)

built with PostNuke - for many sites it's obvious, for others not so obvious because there are some great theme designs out there.

As it stands, such popularity has also attracted many third-party developers to PostNuke, contributing blocks, modules and themes. While the spirit of free (as in 'free beer') software reigns for many contributors of such add-ons, a small community of commercial developers has also sprung up around our favorite CMS - and that's where some of the points of contention seem to come from.

Notably, some of the commercial developers are interested in providing their products in the form of binary-only (protected, and without source) form, in order to protect their commercial interest. These modules are *not* GPL (by virtue of not making their source code available). A veritable outcry has happened, albeit only by a very few, decrying what they claim amounts to heresy.

There are several issues at hand here, all of which we want to address, hopefully to the satisfaction of most, if not all:

- Commercial Products : It has always been our opinion that commercial ventures are encouraged, as they will invariably help strengthen the framework of PostNuke, and in turn help the community grow. Furthermore, commercial ventures will help PostNuke gain additional 'legitimate' recognition, as a serious tool in the field of business, or within the enterprise environment.

It is certainly the right of a developer to choose the way they want to distribute their software and it is your right to place a value on their time and effort, if you so choose. And unlike those few programmers that are independently wealthy, things like rent, food, and car payments don't get made by trading code (at least, not yet).

- 'All-Software-Must-Be-Free' Mentality - While it is certainly nice to be able to freely benefit from another's efforts, the basic reality is there is also (in our opinion) a lot of freeloading in that mindset. The purpose behind free software is to be able to freely trade with other programmers, who you then contribute code to - this worked in the old days within tightly knit programmer communities, but breaks apart as communities grow and more and more users join who have a variety of skills sets. Which means many aren't contributing code, but are looking for tools and resources. However, their contributions can be other valuable things like documentation and support, they can also contribute compensation in the forms of donations, postcards, or the ever popular universal currency, beer. As such, we believe free software is nice (and we will always appreciate anyone contributing generously), but likewise, shareware, donationware, and commercial software have a place that should be respected.

- Open Source Software - There's a big confusion over 'open source' and 'free', as there's a segment of the community that firmly believes if it's open source, it *must* be free. This certainly is not the case, as even the GPL specifies quite clearly products licensed under the GPL can be commercialized. In fact, it's encouraged. The key with the GPL license is only the source code has to be freely and easily accessible. This is both a benefit, but also a liablity for commercial products. On one hand, by making their code available, the community is able to contribute fixes and enhancements back to the commercial vendor - this has benefitted such diverse companies as linksys, TiVO, Apple and RedHat. Likewise, the availability of the source code also stands the danger of making proprietary
technology available to competitors - which is why many other commercial vendors sometimes pick different licenses allowing them to protect part of their technologies.

Still, if something is GPL, it stays GPL - that's why PostNuke will *ALWAYS* remain GPL licensed. There's many reasons why this is so, but the best is we know it is in the best interest of the project, as well as the community.

- Close-Source Contributions - this is the sticking point, wherein developers use the PostNuke framework, and contribute a module or add-on, that does not include the source code, and is distributed in a binary-only manner. Is this terrible? Is this evil? Is this the end of civilization as we know it? Of course, not.

Is it a violation of the GPL? The way we see it, it isn't (if done right - meaning no re-use of GPL code), but most of all, wether it is, or it isn't, IT IS NOT POSTNUKE'S RESPONSIBLITY! Why? Simple, because we cannot control third-party developers and a third-party product does not alter, or affect the copyright, trademark, or development process of the PostNuke Project. The few such products we have seen that fall into this category, target niche or vertical markets - thus, nothing PostNuke depends on.

The final decision regarding any such products or add-ons lies with YOU, the PostNuke community, as a commercial product will only be viable if it is being purchased. If you do not like how a vendor packages their products, if you do not like the way they sell them, if you do not like the prices, or the license - DO NOT BUY THEIR PRODUCTS! You may even take an additional step, and send them a polite letter as to why you will not be a customer, maybe if they get enough of these types of letters, it may convince them to alter their business model.

Finally, what kind of commercial products do we like, or rather, which contributors and developers are doing it 'right'? Two examples come to our minds right off the bat - AutoThemes, and Webvida.

With AutoTheme Shawn has created a nice theme utility with AutoTheme - not only making it easy to design themes, but also facilitating portability of themes among various compatible CMSs. While the 'pro' version of AutoTheme is a commercial product, Shawn makes a free version, AutoTheme Lite, available to anyone who needs it. As such, he gives his customer the option of what they want to use, and how they want to support him. The business model seems to be working quite well.

Webvida's Lobos provides themes for PostNuke, via AutoTheme. The themes seem well-designed, and affordably priced. In addition, many themes are provided at no charge, with new themes being added frequently. Also quite a bit of additional support and contributions in the form of tutorials are being provided by both Shawn and Lobos.

Lastly, both appear to be very active in the community, and provide support to the community, as well as to their users. Undoubtedly, there's value in what they provide, and this is commercialization, done right, in our opinion.

The final decision, as we stated above, on all of this, lies with the PostNuke community, as it is up to you to decide which vendors to support, and which not to - PostNukian Darwinism, so to speak - regardless of what any of us has to say, and certainly regardless of what any activists might feel about these issues.

Finally, to make sure we are clear on this issue, we encourage module developers and theme designers to contribute free and open source software to the community but we have no problem with them offering their products and services to the community as described in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Since it's not yet legally proven it might be even permissible to release addons under a non-compatible GNU/GPL license providing the addons are not derivatives of existing GPL work. While we prefer to take a 'wait and see' attitude regarding such non-free add-ons, should you feel strongly enough about it, we encourage you to take matters into your own hands, and file a precedent setting lawsuit to prove this matter once and for all. We'll check in with you in a couple of years, okay? (Seriously, the effort of filing such a suit, or even being concerned over such situations is not worth expending - vote with your wallet.)

We hope this clears up some things, at least what our opinions are on these issues - and that's what they are, opinions. None of these are legally binding, or even legally proven, and should not be taken as such. We're not lawyers, and we don't want to be, either.

Generated on March 8, 2004.

Interview: Øivind Skau, PagEd   (News)

made enormous progress. And it has some ingenious features - every module programmer should take a look at it's administration.

Tell me something about yourself and your projects.
The nick I normally use is Little. I am currently working on two modules. The main one is PagEd, a content management module for Postnuke and eNvolution. Secondly, there is Nubel, a tool intending to facilitate translation of language files, also under the two mentioned systems.

And where do you live?
Originally from Oslo, I now live in Bergen, Norway`s second largest town, on the west coast. Approximately 200 000 citizens, encircled by 7 mountains, pretty picturesque with lots of preserved old wooden houses.

What is your real-life job?
Dividing time between web site design and web application development is what I try to do. An integration of the two means being able to custom-make sites answering to the needs of different customers.

Tell me about your postnuke career.
Actually, the path into Postnuke was quite accidental. A couple of years ago I was searching for a way to let a customer update his site in a more easy way than having to send content to me. I tried a lot of solutions and also experimented with Frontpage before I discovered that there was something called PHPNuke. Being really green on this kind of system and installation, I couldn`t get it to run, and it boiled down to a PHP magic_quotes setting which made the installation process fail. Then Postnuke turned up and required the opposite setting, which was what my hoster had.

As for Postnuke compared to other systems, I have to be honest and say that I use it because it is what I know best, not having much real experience with other systems.

When did you start working on your own module?
Work on PagEd started in January this year. It really evolved from doing some minor hacking in another Postnuke content module, EZCMS, caused by frustration for not being able to add single images to news items in the standard Postnuke News module. EZCMS supported image upload, so I created a way of showing this module`s content as news excerpts on the front page. Then image resizing with NetPBM was implemented (inspired by Menalto Gallery), still as an EZCMS add-on, before it was time to cut the connection and build a new module. Users of EZCMS will probably recognize some of EZCMS in PagEd, although the modules are very different today.

What is your development like? How big is the impact of the community on your development?
The Postnuke community has a tremendous impact on developing PagEd. The module would not look anything near what it is today without substantial community contribution since the early testing days. There has been extensive user testing, resulting in numerous bugfixes; code alterations have been submitted, fixing bugs or enhancing usability; and many features included in the latest version started as suggestions in forum. Then there is translation work which is quite a job, due to a growing list of constants. Being a module developer with this kind of user participation feels a bit like being a focal point of a big lens. Enhancements in the graphical looks of the module? One user took his time to create an icon set for the editor panels. Adding flexibility to the news display? Another user submitted a complete smarty pack for PagEd. Regarding participation, I would also like to mention a local friend who has taken large interest in the module. The user interface layout and navigational feel is mostly to his credit.

Apart from moderating and pulling suggestions and reports from forum, I also make extensive use of the msn messenger channel, discussing in detail development frequently with several capable coders and users. Sometimes this results in brainstorming interface changes, sometimes obstacles in code are overcome after an hour`s chat.

Lastly, the developer site hosts a support request form where users in need can supply log-on information. Troubleshooting bugs has been greatly facilitated by many users letting the developer log on to their servers to see the problem in action.

To sum this question up, I would say that although coding itself has - up until now at least - been a one person job, development of PagEd has been open-source work at it`s best.

What is the biggest difficulty in your development? And why? Is it a Postnuke inherent problem?
I think the main difficulties in PagEd development are two, and the first one is entirely a problem of my own...:

Firstly, entering the module development world has, as was entering the Postnuke world, been a process of learning as you go along. Regarding coding a module, learning how to write the code it self has always been two steps ahead of learning coding dicipline, and the creation of a tidy structure around the work.

Illustrating this is the problem of those module upgrades which require database changes. Database upgrades and table structure changes require the successful execution of one or several sql queries upon first run, while at the same time preserving database content. Tricky business, especially when there must be correct upgrade routines for all existing and published versions of the module out there. Developing upgrade code suffers greatly from untidy coding habits and development environment, and when a module grows, things tend to get out of hand, causing errors and bugs. You get lost. But getting lost often results in the improving of coding habits and dicipline.

Another field which has suffered from to much attention to coding itself is CVS, which hasn`t been implemented in PagEd development at all. This of course makes organizing updates and versions a mess for both devs and users. But again, one can always learn along the way.

The second difficulty I would like to mention in development is more Postnuke related. As many might know, the surfacing of Postnuke as a fork of PHPNuke meant a change in CMS development from keeping everything in a controlled core to allowing for third-party delevopers to enhance the "system experience" (Of course, since those days PHPNuke has also made this move). I guess the decision on whether add-on work should be welcomed or not is a matter of taste and a question of priority. Both ways have their pros and cons. As for Postnuke, following development of both core and third-party modules is fascinating and gives a very dynamic impression. The bad thing is that rather than Postnuke giving the impression of a system which can be perceived and analyzed for module development, the overall feel is that of chaos, a chaos which changes every day. Specifically, there are many ways in which this sense of a vast jungle makes programming for the system difficult.

One thing is the lack of a main place to find out what has been done already. The download section at Postnuke.com is incomplete at best, full of really old material at worst. Getting an overview of existing modules is hard work and requires visiting many sites and forums. This also results in forums being packed with question like "I am looking for a module to do such and such" when one or two excellent ones are available at www.myobscure.site.com ...

Another disadvantage of "letting it all hang loose" is that there are as many third-party "coding philosophies" as there are modules - and modules therefore often conflict with each other in strange ways, causing errors which can take hours and days to hunt down.

Thirdly, when it comes to the flora of add-ons, is the fact that they rarely, if at all, talk to one another. You can have one article module, one calendar and one photo album, and if you want to, let`s say, create news of an event and you want this displayed in all three modules, you will have to go through three different processes. Not to mention that the "dynamical" aspect of Postnuke really is lost if you cannot for instance let changes made regarding this specific news event be felt in the three modules automatically by just making the change in one. As for conflicts and errors, many of these can of course be avoided by studying the Module Developer`s Guide and the API system - but the modules will just the same function like islands with no bridges between them.

What features should the Postnuke .8 core have to simplify your work?
I really do not have any specific needs here apart from the issues already mentioned, which apply more to the structure and nature of Postnuke`s presence on the net. Apart from that, it might be relevant here to express a general opinion on a couple of facets of Postnuke. One is the permission system, and the other is the menu system. Not going into detail here, I can only say that they both rely too much on users being extremely picky on syntax. A small left out dot or a paranthesis is all it takes to mess up something which is meant to work in a certain way, and since these two features of Postnuke often have to work together, the chances of getting it right are even smaller.

This said, I can see that especially the permission system can be a great and very advanced tool, but the price seems a bit high every time you read a forum post from somebody who is suddenly locked out of their own site because of a small mistake in configuring access. - One would really think that there has been some kind of development since the DOS days towards something more point-and-clicky, but there are aspects of Postnuke that do lag behind a bit. However, it does keep web maintainers in their job, cause while updating content can be easy, maintaining and altering site structure certainly isn`t.

Which route will Postnuke/your module in your opinion go in the future?
Both being open source products, predictions can be hard to make. If they were commercial products, you could try to analyze financial liquidity and the sellability of the product compared to competitors, but with Postnuke and PagEd it would be more a question of knowing the people behind the programs - how much time they are prepared to invest in development, how they cooperate, and whether there are differences in opinion on which path the applications should take, differences that may or may not lead to the evolvement of forks or completely new products based on the current code. As for the Postnuke product itself, I think a look at the upcoming 0.8 version will give some answers as to what future position the CMS will have in the growing and
exciting world of open-source web site systems.

Turning to PagEd, development will focus on improving the existing code in terms of stability and speed - but perhaps more relevant to the question of the future would be that we certainly would like to see the module work under more CMS systems, in addition to the current compatibility with Postnuke and eNvolution.

What should users of your module regard? What is the weakest/strongest point in your module?
Well, we`re working on a couple of weak points at the moment. Mainly this has been some shortcomings when it comes to handling large amounts of content - breaking it up into smaller pieces, and this goes for both text and images. And the image handling routines certainly are giving us hard times, always, since they rely on server/webhoster settings which come in a great variety of configurations. Another weak point is the lack of a user`s manual, which has been requested several times, but there never really is time to focus on it... In the "early days" there wasn`t more functionality than could be learned in a short time, but as the module grows, users perceive the module differently from devs, something which isn`t always easy to anticipate. An aspect which seems obvious to a dev can actually be the exact opposite to a new user.

As for strong points, I would have to mention again the user community. I need look no longer than the current surroundings of 0.90 development: Despite being a "use at your own risk" pack, an impressive number of users have taken the risk of installing it and reports are coming in.

Apart from that, PagEd has a few main focus areas which are at least intended to be it`s strong points: 1. An intuitive interface, 2. Friendlyness towards a wide variety of server environments, and 3. Practical handling of large numbers of content items, relying on topics and layout templates which are meant to be used as instruments for making "batch" changes in numerous content items at once.

Anything else you always wanted to say about Postnuke/your module?
Try it!

Visit PagEd at: http://paged.anubix.net

Generated on October 16, 2003.

'Open Source' Database Poses Threat to Oracle   (News)

a low-cost commodity, just as the open-source Linux operating system is posing a threat to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows franchise.

One user of an open-source database is Cox Communications Inc. The Atlanta-based cable-TV operator is using the software to monitor the performance of more than 1.5 million cable modems providing customers with high-speed Internet access. Mark Cotner, manager of network application development, originally got the system up and running on spare hardware and free software he downloaded from the Web site of MySQL AB, based in Sweden. The database now has 2.4 billion rows of information, totaling about 600 gigabytes of data.

FURTHER READING

• Software Fight:1 Additional coverage, including related articles, videoclips, key documents and more.

• Meet the Players2: a look at the key players in the Oracle-PeopleSoft battle.

Once Cox management was sold on the idea, some executives suggested transferring the operation to an Oracle system, Mr. Cotner says. For Cox's system, the price for licensing Oracle's system would have totaled about $300,000, not including a service contract. But even after Cox upgraded to the commercial version of the MySQL database, the company's licensing costs were under $1,000. Mr. Cotner also pays $12,000 a year for support services.

"Spending the extra money wasn't really justified," Mr. Cotner says. "You have to have complaints before you decide to spend more money on Oracle, and we've been very happy."

Oracle remains the leader in the $13 billion-a-year market for relational databases, the underlying software needed to run more specialized business applications, such as those sold by SAP AG, PeopleSoft and Oracle itself. But the total database market is stagnant, Oracle has been losing market share to Microsoft and International Business Machines Corp., and prices are falling.

Of course, the spread of open-source software threatens all of the commercial database providers. And some analysts expect that Microsoft's SQL Server, which is generally targeted at smaller businesses, may be most immediately affected. But the premium prices Oracle traditionally has been able to command as the market leader have the farthest to fall.

"It's very hard to compete with free," says John Chen, chief executive of Sybase Inc., Dublin, Calif., the No. 4 database provider. "It lowers the price point."

Oracle executives will discuss industry trends Wednesday at an annual meeting with financial analysts at the company's headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. Ken Jacobs, Oracle's vice president for product strategy, says MySQL's offering "is certainly interesting, but I don't see it as competition for Oracle. Not now and not for some time to come."

He says the open-source offerings are years behind Oracle's products in terms of features and functionality. And he says Oracle doesn't specifically target the types of customers that are using MySQL to run simple Web sites, focusing instead on "mission-critical, transaction-processing applications" that crunch large amounts of data and require complex statistical analysis.

"For years I've heard people say the database is being commoditized and I don't believe that," Mr. Jacobs says, though he acknowledges that over time MySQL and other open-source offerings will compete with Oracle in some areas.


Several years ago, Microsoft dismissed the threat from Linux, but more recently it has focused on it as a primary competitor. Kevin Harvey, a venture capitalist with Benchmark Capital in Menlo Park, Calif., says open-source databases are at about the same stage of development as Linux was several years ago. Benchmark last month put up the majority of MySQL's $19.5 million round of venture financing.

"The software business is being commoditized in a lot of ways," Mr. Harvey says. Areas that are ripe for change, he argues, have three characteristics, all of which apply to database systems: They are in widespread use, the industry has settled on common standards, and new features are less important than price and performance. Like Linux, he says, MySQL will first be used in new, Web-based applications and then be pulled by customers into more traditional corporate-computing functions. "It erodes from the bottom up," Mr. Harvey says.

MySQL's chief executive, Marten Mickos, makes a virtue of his product's stripped-down simplicity. "Software shouldn't be glorified," he says. "We say, 'Let's do this as compactly as possible and then sell it at a price that blows the competition away.' "

Unlike some other open-source software companies, MySQL offers both a free open-source license and a traditional commercial license, for which the company charges a flat licensing fee of $440 for each server computer running the software.

MySQL has only about 4,000 paying customers out of approximately four million active installations, but the Finnish entrepreneur doesn't mind. "With four million users it can't be bad," Mr. Mickos says. "Big customers know that hundreds of thousands of clever Indians and Russians and Americans are using the product. The value of that [in finding bugs and adding features] is astounding. That's the true power of open source."

Oracle's pricing is based on either the number of users with access to the software or the number of microprocessors in the computer running the program. Oracle's "enterprise edition," for example, is priced at $800 a user or $40,000 a processor, plus a 22% annual fee for software updates. A less powerful "standard edition" is priced at $300 a user or $15,000 a processor, with the same 22% annual maintenance fee.

Pricing made the difference to Westone Laboratories Inc., a closely held maker of ear inserts for hearing aids and other devices in Colorado Springs, Colo. When Cal Pearson, Westone's information technology director, needed to replace the 120-employee company's overloaded customer tracking and financial database systems, he was quoted a price of more than $160,000 for Oracle's system.

Instead, Mr. Pearson's team downloaded MySQL onto a personal computer and spent less than $5,000. Even without paying for support, his developers were able to get answers to questions within minutes by posting messages on a mailing list of other MySQL users.

Now, Westone is expanding the system to three remote locations and linking its order entry system with its customer database. Mr. Pearson says he now is happily paying MySQL's modest licensing fee and several hundred dollars a year for support. "Even with my employee costs, I've yet to spend what would have been my initial expenditure on Oracle."

Write to David Bank at david.bank@wsj.com3

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105769678653610900,00.html

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Generated on July 11, 2003.

Open source solution saves e-commerce website   (News)

Website to help computer value added resellers (VARs) improve their technical know-how, consulting, marketing and management skills.

“An Internet portal, DoctorVAR.com (http://www.doctorvar.com) would aggregate up-to-date information technology news and some of the best articles and resources for VARs,” said Linda Christie, company president. “After talking to several Web developers, we chose a custom designed php solution with SQL databases to store thousands of stories and favorite links.”

However, two months into the project, it became evident that the developer didn’t have adequate programming staff to launch the site within the promised three-month schedule. Unfortunately, Christie felt she had few alternatives. “I’d already spent hundreds of hours working on the site design and adding thousands of favorite links and articles to the database—work that could be lost if I changed vendors.”

After returning from a two month assignment in Europe, during which no progress was made, Christie spent a couple of days with the programmer to iron out the final details. “At last we were making progress. I updated some of the content and began writing press releases for the big day.”

One night the site went offline. The next day it was still down, even the backend admin area. Then the dreaded call came: hackers had broken into the server hosting facility. “What about the backup? I asked.”

“The last backup file was corrupted,” was the answer. A two-month old zip file didn’t match the current software version, making site restoration almost impossible—but they said they would try. “They’d lost dozens of other sites and had no backups for them either,” Christie said. “So at this point, I lost all confidence in the developer—not to mention over ten-thousand records I’d uploaded.”

Christie wasn’t sure what to do. “Our e-commerce project—a major commitment in time and resources--was already four months past due. And I couldn’t afford the time or money to start coding the site from scratch.”

Christie began searching online for a new developer. Soon, one of the people she contacted emailed her a slew of probing questions. “I felt like I was taking a test,” Christie said. “But the quality of his inquiries gave me confidence this person wanted to clearly understand the scope of the project, as well as my level of expertise to manage the site.”

Soon Christie scheduled a meeting with Scott Kroeger, owner of Hudson Avenue Technologies in Omaha NE, to discuss the challenges of launching such a complex site on a limited budget. Scott recommended utilizing a proven and supported open source content manager: PostNuke. “Not only is this software free, but the friendly user interface would allow me to perform all of the daily administration, even make page layout changes,” Christie said. “Scott said his goal was to make me as independent of him as possible by the end of the project.”

One of the primary reasons Christie contracted with Kroeger was that he wanted to work himself out of a job instead of creating a customized program that would require his ongoing support. “I’d been burned once already,” Christie said. “So I was excited about integrating supported public domain software that could be maintained by a multitude of providers, should Scott and I part for whatever reason. Plus there would be no software debugging needed.”

After resolving some technical difficulties with the PostNuke implementation, Kroeger proceeded to deliver the site on schedule and within the company’s limited budget. “Within two weeks, I was able to start laying out pages and uploading data. And by the end of two months the site was up. Scott integrated free PostNuke modules to provide an ezine, forum, job bank, and banner/ad management, as well as an html-oriented content manager, Content Express, that simplifies adding html pages, uploading content, and searching the entire site.

These two companies have shown that partnering with a developer that understands your business needs and integrates off-the-shelf solutions can help you quickly ramp up the right solution for the right price—without having to invest in custom software development and personnel.

For additional information about DoctorVAR.com visit their Web site at http://www.doctorvar.com.

Linda Freeman is a freelance writer based in Omaha NE.

Copyright 2003, Write Solutions, Inc., Tulsa OK. Reprinted by permission.

Generated on February 22, 2003.

Fund for Greg Allan to Retrieve Lost Domain Name   (News)

I was able to negotiate a very reasonable and acceptable price of $162.50, which includes reimbursment of all fees and expenses of the new registrant. If you wish to contribute, I will keep all monies in my attorney escrow account (as most of you know I really am a lawyer!) and will provide for a public accounting here to ensure that all is accounted for and that the names of those donating will be placed within a public list within an honorarium.

Checks may be made out to Michael M. Wechsler, Esq. and put "Greg Allan ndezign fund" in the comments area of your checks. All correspondence may be sent to me, Michael M. Wechsler (Slinky) at PO Box 237137 New York, NY 10023. Email is slinky@newsguy.com, telephone number is 212-580-6630 should you have any questions.

Ironically... Greg was our treasurer...

Thank you all in advance, especially all of you who lit a cybercandle... we miss Greg and hope to be reminded by the shining example he set for us both as a developer and, most especially, as a truly wonderful person and friend.

Sincerely, Michael aka Slinky

Generated on August 1, 2002.

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