For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, September means the long summer days begin to shorten and everyone returns from vacation with expectations of actually getting work done.
Sigh.
But as usual, the open source CMS world didn’t take a break, and September already looks interesting. Here’s what you can look forward to:
WordPress
The WordPress development team has been working on Gutenberg, the new editor for WordPress core, for a few months now. While Gutenberg is still some time away from being ready, “a huge amount of progress has already been made,” according to Automattic Community Sentinel Hugh Lashbrooke.
In fact, version 1 of Gutenberg was released in late August, embracing “little content blocks” in a way that would make you think that maybe — just maybe — the WordPress team is taking some cues from Medium when it comes to content creation.
In other news, The Global WordPress Translation Day is returning on Sept. 30. This 24-hour global event is dedicated to the translation of the WordPress ecosystem (including the WordPress core, themes and plugins), and is a mix of physical, in-person translation work with online streaming of talks from WordPress translators all over the world.
Joomla
The Joomla development team is preparing for the stable release of Joomla 3.8, which is currently slated for release on Sept. 19.
Two main features are worth noting: first, a new URL router which should help Joomla users construct more SEO friendly URLs. Second, is the Joomla 4 compatibility layer, which will come in handy when Joomla 4 — the next major release which we won’t see until at least 2018 — hits the streets of the open source world.
Pimcore
Pimcore 5 is edging closer to release. In fact, according to the Pimcore team, “[Pimcore 5 is scheduled] to release Pimcore 5 at the end of September 2017 at this years’ Pimcore Partner Conference in Salzburg, Austria.”
The new version of Pimcore is powered by “today’s leading PHP framework, the Symfony Framework 3, instead of the now deprecated Zend Framework 1,” Pimcore said.
Furthermore, all e-commerce features will be built into the core of Pimcore, whereas previously, they had to be drafted in as modules.
Magnolia
Marketers and content publishers using Magnolia have new publishing tools to play with this month, as Magnolia unveiled its new Stories App just in time for the start of September.
The new app, which has replaced the ‘Articles’ app in the Magnolia backend, features the following:
- A full-page editing experience: It’s wider and far less cluttered than before
- Metadata sections for structured content: Fields can have validation and be required, and sections can be collapsed
- Block sections for freeform content: Authors can add as many blocks as they like, including text, images, videos and content from other websites. The story content is available via REST (in JSON format, for example) for use in any context
- Delivery as JSON via REST API: Users can go headless and deliver their content to any device or channel
- Link unfurling: The “external link” block will “unfurl” any link to display an image, a headline and an abstract to the reader — just like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Content linking and previews: Authors can link to other content within a Magnolia instance with previews.
Magnolia will also have a presence at the eCommerce Expo and the Festival of Marketing, both taking place in London.
DNN Corp. Acquired by ESW Capital
DNN Corp., provider of an open source CMS platform, announced on Aug. 28 that ESW Capital had acquired the company to “further invest in the CMS platform as well as the DNN open source ecosystem.”
“We are glad to see ESW’s commitment to build on the foundation we have laid,” said outgoing DNN CEO Navin Nagiah in a statement.
DNN joins the Austin-based venture capitalist firm’s growing portfolio, which also includes Jive Software, Lyris, FirstRain and more.
Other Open Source CMS Headlines
In other news, the TYPO3 Community has released TYPO3 CMS versions 7.6.22 LTS and 8.6.5 LTS which are now ready for users to download.
nopCommerce have also announced its annual event, nopCommerce Days 2017, taking place in New York City on Nov. 16 to 17.
Finally, dotCMS will be presenting on stage at the Digital Marketing for Financial Services Summit in London, Sept. 21–22.
A Cool Time Ahead for Open Source CMS
Summer may be on its way out for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, but the open source CMS world is still serving up refreshing releases and hosting must-attend events.
If you want to spend any of your September attending any, WordPress, Pimcore, dotCMS and Magnolia will have you covered.
The original post published here.