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dotCMS

22 December 2008 No Comment

dotCMS is a free software / open source web content management system (wCMS) for building/managing websites, content and content driven web applications. dotCMS includes enterprise CMS features such as support for virtual hosting, WebDav (beta) ,structured content, clustering and can run on multiple databases PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL and Oracle, and is available as software that can be installed on a web server or via a hosting provider (dotMarketing is now offering the onDemand virtual hosting service for clients, and has also registered an image available via the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud). It also includes standard wCMS features features like page caching, advanced templating techniques, and a robust API. There are a number of features and modules in dotCMS, including RSS feeds, AJAX driven calendar, a built in reporting engine, news listing, blogs, forums, user tracking and tagging, built in search engine and language internationalization to name a few.

History

dotCMS was initially developed as a Java alternative to the PHP CMSes on the market, as well as to provide a counterpoint to high cost, enterprise applications. It is the result of over 5 years of development by dotMarketing, Inc, which also developed and released the open source project management tool dotProject. In order to achieve compliance with JSR-168 portlet specification dotCMS was built upon the Liferay portal, though has since forked Liferay at version 3.2.2. dotCMS 1.0 was initially open sourced and made available in 2005 under the dotMarketing Public License. In 2006, dotCMS released version 1.2 which included the structured content engine. In 2007 dotCMS released version 1.5, which included a new user interface and permissions. In October, 2007 dotCMS 1.5 was the runner up for Packt Publishing’s “Best New Open Source CMS” award, followed in 2008 by a second place finish for Packt’s “Best Other Open Source CMS (best non PHP CMS)”. In February 2008, dotCMS users held the first annual “Open Minds” conference in Coconut Grove, Florida. Currently, dotMarketing continues to develop and improve features within dotCMS, such as the social calendar and WebDav integration.

Community

dotCMS has an active and engaged community. There is an annual users conference, a listserv, IRC channel, and Ning and Facebook groups. dotMarketing has also began work on an official community web site, which will be home to a new documentation system a la PHP.net, allowing users to comment and provide examples of code usage, as well as collaborate. The current user base includes deployments by thousands of companies, news organizations, universities, individuals, and more. More information regarding the dotCMS community can be found on the dotCMS website.

Open Minds Conference

The first annual Open Minds Conference was held February 7-10 in Miami, FL. This event was designed to bolster excitement in the community, and provide a venue for users to meet, collaborate, and network. Topics ranged from introductory installation sessions, to more advanced talks on setting up development environments, and was attended by more than 60 participants from 20 institutions. The second annual conference is scheduled for February 4-6, 2009, and will remain in Miami.

IRC Channel

For users familiar with IRC, you can visit the dotCMS channel on Freenode. If you do not have an IRC client, or are unfamiliar with their usage, dotMarketing has provided a web page based client. Either way will allow you to chat with other users and experts on the usage of dotCMS.

Technologies

dotCMS is a standards based CMS written in the JAVA programming language, and comes bundled with the Apache Tomcat Application Server. It is database agnostic and can run on PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL or Oracle. It is capable of integrating with user’s authentication scheme’s, such as Active Directory or LDAP, and will support operation in a clustered or load balanced environment. It leverages a number of standards based open source projects such as:

Apache Struts Web Framework
Apache Lucene Search Engine
Apache Velocity Templating Language
Liferay Portal
EXT Javascript Framework
Apache Tomcat Application Server
OSCache distributed caching system
Hibernate Object Relational Mapping

Structured Content

The driving concept behind content stored within dotCMS is that it is addressed through a system of structures. Structures are administrated through a back end portlet where fields are assigned to them. Fields are named and given a content type and then ordered. Each structure can then be permissioned and used when creating content, and allows different types of content with consistent components to be referenced for display on the front end. A “web page content” structure could be assigned a title and body, for instance, while “events” have titles, dates, times, locations, descriptions, links, etc. Structures therefore allow the CMS to tailor itself to the content demands of the institution using it, because they can create and define structures that are specific to their needs. Those structures can then be created through relationships, allowing content from one structure to be associated content items in another. There is no limit to the number of structures one can use within dotCMS.