“Russell Burstow took an 18 hour flight to represent Jentla at CMS Expo. The company’s Chief Technology Officer spoke about his company’s enterprise layer software for Joomla. Could this be the next great evolution of the open source content management system? Those of us who admin multiple Joomla sites are keenly aware of the enterprise layer functionality missing in Joomla. Jentla Multi-Site CMS, says Burstow, solves critical issues which have discouraged large scale enterprise from adapting Joomla.  Most importantly, Jentla offers one click updates (both Joomla and extensions) on multiple sites, automated backups, one seat management and ‘near infinite’ scalability.”

What defines Multi-site CMS?

“Jentla smashes preconceived notions and revolutionizes Multisite Content Management Solutions, by delivering incredible performance at unbelievable price points.”

“It radically reduces the amount of time require to build, scale and maintain sophisticated multisite websites, thereby increasing your profitability and ability to gain and manage new clientele.”

“With Jentla, you and their clients are able to manage multisite CMS implementations on a much larger scale and with much greater control than any other website management tool created to date. If you’re looking to efficiently build, manage, and maintain up to 1000 individual websites from one central manager system, you must take a look at the Jentla solution.”

The blog also reports that ZacWare, the development company behind Jentla, is dedicating two full time coders to the Joomla project as well as donating code to the source base. They quote ZacWare CEO Damian Hickey as saying “he feels that it’s vital that companies such as ZacWare fund ‘large scale development of the complex parts of an ECM version for Joomla,’ since ‘it requires a huge amount of focus beyond the scope of the core team’s resources. It makes Joomla! a really valid case as an ECM system for web delivery of content,’ Hickey continues, ‘broadening to more enterprise document management processes is inevitable for [ZacWare's] Jentla and we’ll roll stuff back into the project to help foster this direction.’”

Visit the ZacWare website: http://www.zac-ware.com/

Damian Hickey, LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/5/a82/b54

Could you explain Jentla in layman’s terms?

“Jentla makes it really easy to develop and manage 1,000’s of Joomla websites. Many businesses have multiple websites but they can’t gain any advantages with Joomla until they are linked together under a centralized site manager. That’s what Jentla does. Adding, approving and publishing web content works just like offline where it flows through several responsible staff.  It’s possible to place the same piece of content on multiple sites saving huge amounts of time. Managing the administration of the sites is really easy too and operations like site upgrades and extension upgrades can all be done instantly across a very large group of sites. The Joomla CMS has a short learning curve but when you add Jentla to it, it becomes easier and significantly more robust. Jenlta is also the most ambitious extension to Joomla we’re aware of, providing the Joomla development community the opportunity to compete at the enterprise level.”

Damian Hickey, Jentla CEO, Interview at CMS Expo 2009:

http://www.alledia.com/blog/interviews/interview-with-damian-hickey-founder-of-jentla/

“Gartner estimates that the ECM market is worth approximately $2.9 billion in 2007; this is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.9% through 2011. After a plethora of industry consolidation, only three or four major companies are left in this space, and the industry as a whole is undergoing a significant transformation as Microsoft commoditizes content management components.”

Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management” October 2007

This is a post from Web Dev News, a site brought to you by Xavisys Web Development.

ZacWare Releases Enterprise Joomla CMS for Multi-site Publishing: Jentla

Many multi-user sites will have bloggers more familiar with WordPress than Joomla due to its ease of use for web publishing, so this plugin will allow webmasters to give their clients & community the best of both worlds when it comes to publication options. Combining this with the emerging Joomla enterprise versions allowing multi-site hosting of 1000′s of sites under the same administration hood, the WordPress for Joomla module becomes even more powerful and expansive.

“WordPress for Joomla is the most complete blogging soution for Joomla 1.5. While Joomla! is extremely versatile, it does not make for the best blogging platform. WordPress is the best blogging platform there is. With its ease of use and its pure blogging power you could not ask for anything else. WordPress is very rich in features, allowing authors to password protect their posts, as well as have WordPress decide if comments are spam or not with great accuracy. You can even blog on your iPhone/iPod Touch directly onto your Joomla! site!”

Information about the WordPress Multi User version can be found here:
http://www.corephp.com/wordpress-mu/wordpress-mu-for-joomla.html

At the CMS Learning & Business conference, Lead Developer Rafael Corral presented a seminar on the WordPress MU for Joomla module, saying:

“”You will no longer need to display WordPress inside a wrapper! This solution will blow your mind!”

CMSWire has done a nice write up of the seminar, reporting:

“Corral listed the primary benefits of WordPress within Joomla:

• Use of tags
• 3000 WordPress plugins
• Finely tuned SEO capabilities

Just released, the component is subscription based and costs US$ 80 a year and the multi-user component US$ 100.”

These are important modules for Joomla as it continues to expand as a web platform. The ability to integrate different bulletin board softwares like Vbulletin and SMF have been very popular with web designers, as well as integrating with 3rd party image software like Gallery 2 or other ecommerce platforms. The integration of stand alone CMS software systems like these into Joomla increase the complexity, design, and configuration options for webmasters who need to build complex sites and social networks.

How does running WordPress and Joomla together in the same installation affect performance?

“Some load time issues will occur because of using two applications. Corral says front-end time issue is insignificant, there might be some longer load times in admin section.”

This is a post from Web Dev News, a site brought to you by Xavisys Web Development.

CorePHP releases WordPress MU for Joomla Module

The top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems:

1. Drupal
2. WordPress
3. Joomla
4. Media Wiki
5. Liferay
6. TYPO3
7. Moodle
8. Dolphin
9. Pligg
10. Movable Type

Honorable Mention:
Xoops, Geeklog, e107, Mambo, Nucleus

1. Drupal:

Drupal gets the top nod because of its ease of use, vast number of modules, great user, developer, and support community.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: core CMS, Views, CCK, Organic Groups, & huge library of contributed modules.
Disadvantages: complex, needs more top quality themes, frequent security upgrades.
Outlook: Huge potential to continue growth and expansion on this platform over time.
Website: http://www.drupal.org/

2. WordPress:

WordPress is a simple and elegant CMS, perfect for single user blogs, with a large number of themes and modules available online.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Easiest CMS to use, customize, and extend.
Disadvantages: Lacks many of the social networking functions, ecommerce, forums, wikis, etc. used on more expansive sites.
Outlook: Best for personal publishing, huge user community, will continue to be the preferred choice of bloggers for years.
Website: http://www.wordpress.org/

3. Joomla:

Joomla has one of the largest user communities of any CMS, everything you need and more to develop social networks, ecommerce, & archive sites.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Professional standards, internationalization, customization.
Disadvantages: too many commercial products for Open Source development, difficult to learn.
Outlook: Strong challenger for the top CMS spot, commercialization of extensions should continue to provide many income opportunities for 3rd party developers.
Website: http://www.joomla.org/

4. Media Wiki:

Media Wiki invented a whole new way of working on the web, and is a CMS for collective authoring of documents, used to power the one of the largest and most popular sites on the internet, Wikipedia.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: If you need a wiki, it is the best.
Disadvantages: Does not include many other functions / extensions of other CMS platforms, doesn’t theme well, most sites look the same.
Outlook: Follows the model to success of doing one thing extremely well, has the support of the Wikipedia Foundation, very popular authoring model.
Website: http://www.mediawiki.org/

5. Liferay:

Liferay is a popular new CMS that is great for building portals, and offers a professional look and feel that sets it apart from the other platforms.
License: MIT
Programming Language: Java, PHP, Ruby
Main advantages: collaboration, calendars, internationalization, design.
Disadvantages: More closely tied to a commercial outlook / corporate structure than most Open Source projects.
Outlook: Not as well known or implemented as some of the other CMS platforms, but nice design & features to set your sites apart from the crowd.
Website: http://www.liferay.com/

6. TYPO3:

One of the most complex and professional CMS platforms out of the box, TYPO3 is popular for business websites, especially with European companies.
License: GNU
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: design, extensions, customizations, flexibility, professionalism.
Disadvantages: too difficult to learn for most, too many proprietary conventions.
Outlook: Strong CMS for web development, sure to continue with a core of specialized developers and corporate clients, but loosing support and market share to other platforms.
Website: http://www.typo3.com/

7. Moodle:

Moodle is one of the most unique CMS platforms on this list, designed specifically for Course Management and Education, and used for online learning platforms.
License: GNU
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Huge user and development community, online education, no real competitors or similar products, extremely powerful.
Disadvantages: not really applicable for most web design purposes.
Outlook: Look for this “Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment” to continue to be the standard online operating system for education and spawn many interesting mashups with other CMS platforms as well as many more modules & extensions.
Website: http://www.moodle.org/

8. Dolphin:

Boonex Dolphin is popular among web designers who want the latest in social networking, with an industry standard look and all of the features of the popular online communities out of the box.
License: Creative Commons
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Plug-n-Play user community with all the bells & whistles.
Disadvantages: not really Open Source, must pay to remove ads, requires specific hosting requirements, difficult to install, buggy.
Outlook: Look for Dolphin to continue to be a popular choice for social networking, though its “cookie cutter” design runs the risk of becoming stale with too many sites implementing the same design.
Website: http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/

9. Pligg:

Pligg is a Digg clone that provides social bookmarking functionality for websites, allowing users to post links, vote them up or down, and leave comments.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Best for Social Bookmarking, can be themed and extended to build top quality sites like Mixx, Redditt, Del.icio.us, etc.
Disadvantages: difficult to install, mod rewrite problems, poor support on community boards, questionable Open Source future.
Outlook: With the 1.0 release of Pligg upcoming within a couple of months, look for a big surge of use back to this platform but watch out for increased commercialization.
Website: http://www.pligg.com/

10. Movable Type:

Movable Type is the main challenger to WordPress for a personal blog platform, and supports multiple users, Themes, and Tags.
License: GNU
Programming Language: Perl
Main advantages: Blogs
Disadvantages: Too closely tied to commercial products and services compared to most Open Source communities, Perl.
Outlook: Look for MT to fall off the list as other of the blogging platforms below increase in popularity, but sustain development as PR for the company’s commercial offerings.
Website: http://movabletype.org/

Honorable Mention:
Xoops, Geeklog, e107, Mambo, Nucleus

This is a post from Web Dev News, a site brought to you by Xavisys Web Development.

The Top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems