Archive for the ‘opencms’ Category

Book Review: OpenCms 7 Development

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

I just got through reading Dan Liliedahl’s book OpenCms 7 Development (Packt Publishing). I met Dan when I was at the OpenCms Days developer conference and was impressed with his presentation. Dan knows his stuff (not just about OpenCms – he worked for FutureTense in the early days).

The book was first introduced at the conference. I was surprised that Dan was able to get it out so quickly after Version 7 was released. It seemed like Version 6 was out a long time before a book on it came out. Dan did mention that writing about the product as it was being developed was a challenge.

When I started reading the book, I was pleasantly surprised to not have to go through any content management theory. The book stays true to its title. Not that theory isn’t important but I think it is reasonable to assume that someone developing on a CMS knows the about the basic concepts. If you don’t, some background reading (and also some requirements analysis too) is in order.

One short-coming about diving right into the OpenCms architecture is that the beginning is a little choppy as the author tries to orient the reader to the platform (OpenCms is a very mature and elaborate application). Although it is choppy, there are some very good explanations of things like OpenCms’s request processing chain and how the code is organized. There are also excellent tips on configuration management and how to configure your IDE. Still a reader may want to supplement the book by reading some additional OpenCms doc to help introduce him to some of the bigger OpenCms concepts.

The book hits its stride as it gets into the examples, which revolve around building a blogging site. There is good coverage on everything from creating content types and display templates to building extensions. By over-engineering some of the design, Dan is able to go into depth in modularizing code and managing logic in Java classes. Dan’s experience in building big sites shows in how he designs for manageability and reuse. All the code is put into modules that can be exported and deployed to different OpenCms instances. The book also covers some of the new features like WebDAV, the new security model (with organizational units) and the relationship engine.

The one area that I think could use a little more coverage is on the TemplateOne and TemplateTwo frameworks. Dan builds everything from scratch to show how OpenCms works but these frameworks allow you to get up an running with less development. Unfortunately, neither of these are particularly well covered in the OpenCms documentation. Perhaps a whole book on TemplateOne and TemplateTwo is in order.

Overall, OpenCms 7 Development is a must read for anyone who wants to implement robust sites on the OpenCms platform.

OpenCms is covered in the Open Source Web Content Management in Java report. The standalone evaluation of OpenCms is also available.

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OpenCms Days 2008 Report

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

The OpenCms community just finished its first user/developer conference (OpenCms Days 2008) in Cologne Germany. Thank you to our hosts Alkacon Software and the sponsors for putting on such a valuable and fun event.

OpenCms is primarily used in Europe so Cologne (home of Alkacon) was a good choice of venue. If you ever have an opportunity to visit Cologne, you should. It is a beautiful city. Many of the 110 attendees were mostly from Germany but there was also representation from Italy, Spain, Denmark, Czech Republic and there was one attendee from Japan.
The only Americans there were speakers but maybe that was just the weak dollar talking.

Since OpenCms is essentially a commercial open source project (owned and developed by Alkacon) aimed at enterprise buyers, the feel was different than some of the other open source conferences I have been to. It was more corporate, less kumbaya. But there seemed to be a genuine interest in collaboration and community across corporate boundaries. The main question was where to begin. Having the conference was a great start. I saw many first face to face meetings turn into what looked like closer relationships over the two day event.

There were also promises of better inter-company communication – in particular between Alkacon, module developers, and systems integrators. Several attendees had expressed frustration that they had built modules that were quickly either broken or made obsolete by a new release of the the core. The community wanted Alkacon to be more transparent about their roadmap but Alkacon was concerned about making promises that they couldn’t keep (Nonetheless, Alkacon CEO, Alexander Kandzior’s keynote did a nice job of describing the next few releases of OpenCms at a high level). There were commitments to fix this through sprints (first is July 21-22 2008 in Cologne) and better general communication but, of course, the real proof will be when people return their jobs.

Another observation I had was that the community that I saw seemed much less wrapped up in social media and networking. Most of the conferences that I go to advertise keywords that everyone should use to tag their photos, blogs, and tweets with when they post them on the social networking sites. I got a sense that few within the community used these services. Granted, my expectations for social media use are probably set overly high by the types of projects and people that I follow and the conferences that I attend. I think it is safe to say that Web 2.0 will not be high on the list for OpenCms enhancements. I think that most OpenCms adopters are fine with that prioritization.

The sessions fell into 2 tracks: business and technical. The technical track covered techniques for integrating and customizing OpenCms. The business track showed OpenCms being used in large companies like Bayer, Qimonda, GARDENA, and OEV Online Dienste. Many of these clients have used OpenCms to replace commercial products and are expanding their use of the OpenCms after initial successes. The sites include Intranets, Extranets, Corporate marketing sites and other forms of traditional web content management. They had requirements that are typical of enterprise buyers: large volumes of content, many users with a wide range of technical abilities, and complex organizational structures that require content sharing and access control. Two very good examples were Qimonda’s intranet and OEV which hosts mult-tiered websites for 15 insurance companies.

Overall, it was a great conference and (hopefully) the first of many events like it. I will be keeping my eye on the mailing list for follow through on the promises of more community collaboration and communication.

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OpenCms Days Schedule Posted

Friday, March 28th, 2008

The OpenCms Days 2008 Website is filling up with information. The speakers list and program have been finalized. My presentation is scheduled for the first business session of the second day. I am looking forward to it!

(I guess that could have been a tweet but what the heck.)

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OpenCms Training

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

Alkacon Software just announced that they are holding open training for OpenCms. At the moment, the five day classes are only being delivered in Cologne but, with sufficient demand, they may be held in other venues.

The curriculum is designed for developers with sections on writing templates and using the OpenCms API. Presumably, end users get an abbreviated customized training on their own implementation.

OpenCms is one of the better documented open source CMS projects and I hear that a book on the new version 7 is in the works. I have not been to an onsite OpenCms training, but the establishment of public training indicates that Alkacon has a repeatable and formal training curriculum.

A partner network and user community exist in the U.S. but not to the same level as Germany and the rest of Europe. A big part of that is that OpenCms development and services primarily revolve around Alkacon Software and Alkacon has not pursued the U.S. market aggressively. Perhaps Alkacon will partner with a few of the U.S. systems integrators to deliver the training as Alfresco has done with Rivet Logic.

For more information on OpenCms, the OpenCms evaluation from the Open Source Web Content Management in Java report is available for individual purchase on the reports page.

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Some upcoming conferences

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

I have been planning some trips for upcoming conferences. Here is my schedule for the next couple of months.

There are also some conferences that I would love to attend but will sadly miss. In particular:

I might try to make it to the Web 2.0 Web Expo in NY September 16-18th.

Anything else I should be thinking about?

Posted in conference, opencms | 2 Comments »

Open Source WCM in Java

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

IT’S HERE!

I am very happy to announce the availability of Content Here’s first report: Open Source Web Content Management in Java. The report is written for technical decision makers and covers Alfresco, Apache Lenya, Daisy CMS, Hippo CMS, Jahia, Magnolia, and OpenCms with a level of detail that I have not yet seen in a professional analyst report on open source software. Each 15+ page evaluation describes:

  • the history of the project
  • the architecture and how it can be extended
  • how the contribution interfaces behave and how they can be customized
  • how the system can be administered, configured, and integrated
  • how the presentation tier works and what can be done with it
  • what the community and other support structures are like

There is enough technical meat for an architect to understand the product and consider it for prototyping. By focusing on the “content contribution” and “presentation” sections of each evaluation, semi-technical readers will see how they would use the system to meet their needs.

Systems integration firms, software companies, and investors will also find Open Source Web Content Management in Java useful for understanding the open source WCM marketplace.

The products are organized into two groups: products that are typically used to power basic informational sites, and products that are used more as frameworks for more complex web applications. For each category, I describe important features that the product should support and rate each of the products in those functional areas.

For more information:

Posted in annoucement, java, opencms, review | 1 Comment »

Retail Therapy for OpenCms

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

I just saw an announcement for a new integration between OpenCms and the Java based commerce system KonaKart. The integration is implemented as an installable OpenCms module that connects to KonaKart over a SOAP API. For those of you who are new to KonaKart, it is free to use but is not open source licensed. However, many of the underlying components (such as Struts and Torque) are open source and customers are free to tinker with those. Another interesting aspect of KonaKart is that there is a straight migration plan from the popular PHP commerce system osCommerce. The database structures are identical.

Commerce is not entirely new to OpenCms. I remember seeing shopping functionality on The North Face website (an OpenCms reference site) but it appears to be removed (probably because of a channel conflict with their retail partners). What caught my eye, however, is the amount of momentum OpenCms seems to be having. With two, high impact, big releases (v6 and v7), OpenCms has brought itself back into the limelight after losing mind-share to the new generation of Java based WCM platforms (Magnolia, Jahia, Alfresco). I think adding in-context editing has narrowed the usability gap between OpenCms and the newer products. Other new features like WebDAV have also played a big role. Plus, OpenCms is considerably less expensive (there is no “Enterprise” version to buy. All the revenue comes from support). Support packages from Alkacon are relatively inexpensive and provide enough of a safety net to molify the risk averse CIO.

If you looked at OpenCms a couple of years ago and found it less exciting than its newer peers, you may want to take another look.

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Alfresco/OpenCms Integration

Tuesday, July 24th, 2007

There was a recent announcement on the OpenCms mailing list about a new Alfresco add-on that allows you to publish content from Alfresco into an instance of OpenCms. The project is called Alfresco-OpenCms. You can get the documentation here. I haven’t tried it out yet but the documentation shows examples in a normal Alfresco “Space” rather than a “Web Project.” Web Projects are still relatively new and do not yet have all the capabilities that normal Spaces do so I am not sure that the module would work for a Web Project.

Perhaps the key value to this component is that it allows you manage content within Alfresco’s sophisticated repository and leverage OpenCms’s more mature web content delivery functionality. For example, maybe you use Alfresco for internal collaboration and document sharing and then you publish some assets to your OpenCms powered corporate web site.

Posted in annoucement, opencms | 3 Comments »

OpenCms V7 available and Apache Lenya and will probably skip 1.4 and go right to 2.0

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

The official stable version of OpenCms V7 is now available pretty much right when the project team said it would be. Key enhancements (in my opinion) are WebDAV support, a content relationship engine for dependency management, and point in time preview (where you can go select a date in time to see what the site looked (or will look) like. An undelete feature for deleted content is also very welcome. The OpenCms.org website has had a face lift too.

In other news, the Apache Lenya project, which has been working for three years to release version 1.4, is probably going to call this version “2.0.” There was some debate on the mailing list about the ethics of this re-designation (“is this being done just for marketing reasons?”). However, since much of the code has been re-written for this release and it has been three years in the making, I would say that it deserves a major release number. It is actually quite interesting to compare the angst in version number honesty in open source software to commercial software where it is pretty much all marketing.

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OpenCms Eclipse Plugin

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Dave Schoorl just announced on the OpenCms mailing list his new Eclipse plugin for OpenCms module development. This plugin provides direct synchronization with OpenCms’s virtual file system. Lack of WebDAV support for the VFS has made developing code for OpenCms a little awkward because you develop locally and then need to figure out some way to push it to the server. Dave’s plugin handles the synchronization behind the scenes so you don’t have to worry about it. OpenCms Version 7 (currently in Beta) includes WebDAV support but there is still great value of having an Eclipse plugin because it sets the foundation for lots of other developer conveniences. This is the strategy that many commercial CMS products are taking: rather than try to build your own stand alone IDE, sit on top of a solid foundation that is familiar to most developers.

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