PostNuke

New Core Development Team members

The development team is proud to announce that Axel Guckelsberger (guite) and Mark Trimble (trimble) have been added to the core devs team.

SecurityCenter enhancements

All security related settings and advice for a secure PostNuke installation (like the enhanced AntiCracker) will reside in the PostNuke SecurityCenter. Furthermore, new enhancements have been made to the 0.8 codebase to prevent (potential) csrf forgeries (which is one of the top 10 security issues within the OWASP list).

Footer message from DB to templates

The (legacy) footer message, currently sitting happy in the Settings module, has been kindly asked to move from the database into the theme templates. Fortunately for us all, it did! Lay-out controls should per definition not be part of core settings, but handled through blocks and templates. Lots of themes already have custom footer messages (credits for example) coded in the templates, and designers or site maintainers who really want the footer message to be set from the database (so that it can be changed without touching the filesystem) can use Xanthia's blockzones as a powerfull and clean solution.

Ajax Support Package for 0.76x codebase

While .8 comes with Ajax support out of the box, every module developer has to maintain his own copies for the .76x codebase. There are more and more modules requiring Ajax and/or the Ajax effect libraries, for example Formicula (beginning with 1.0), MultiHook (beginning with 2.0), pnForum (beginning with 2.7) and pnMessages (beginning with 1.0). An AjaxSupportPackage is released at pnForum project file list for module developers to use. Carefully read the shipped readme file!

Ajax in News module

In the 0.8 News module, Ajax technology has made it very easy to allow inline editing of articles, so there is no need to load the full 'edit' page anymore. Furthermore, the textarea is showing the maximum number of bytes to be used, and (while typing) the number of bytes used so far.

Hooks in sequence

If a module has more than one hook to offer, at this moment there is no control over which hook to call first. From release 0.8, it is possible to assign hooks in a defined sequence. This is relevant for especially the transform hooks, for example MultiHook or bb_code, to allow for ordering of hooks execution.

User activity and activation check

Planned for 0.8+ is a user activity check after a new user has registered. At this moment, sometimes users register and never come back to the website. This new check is to see if the users have 'activated' their account, and if not within som xx hours, the user is deleted from the userbase.

Many improvements have been made to the core since MS1 was released. Now the categories code is finished, the News module in the Value Addons section of SVN provides a functional implementation of categories to replace the dual system of topics and categories in use in the Phoenix series. Additionally, for module authors wishing to use the categories system in their own modules (and this is highly recommended), the Quotes module can also be used as example material. Further enahancements to the news module include an Ajax editing interface, but I will leave it to our new team member Arjen to go into more detail here.

So, to the title of the article. We estimate that 0.800 MS2 will be released sometime during the week beginning 4th September. At this point, the core database structure will be finalized and we can begin to finish work on cross database compatibility. That, and the completion of all modules, will be the aim of 0.800 MS3, with the first RC soon after.

Please feel free to test MS2 in development environments once it is released, but we must stress again that 0.800 code should not be used on a live site. No upgrade path will be available from .7x to 0.800 until RC1 is released.

As Robert Gasch said at the PostNuke Meeting in Stuttgart: PostNuke 0.8 is closer than ever and much has been done since the last Meeting in 2005.

Only the release of PostNuke 0.8 Milestone 1 was visible to the community - what you didn't see:

• In one year the core team's mailing list counted 3500 mails


• In the same time 5400 commits were made to the CVS and SVN - remember 1 commit is not always only 1 file!

If you followed the commits during the last few weeks you might have seen that the changes have become less and less essential. There are many changes that only affect templates and non-core modules.

Andreas Krapohl (larsneo) has enhanced the System Info module, originally committed to SVN by Simon some months ago. You can find out what changes Andreas made in the developers blog: Extended SysInfo in .8

The new categories module has been finished and it has become pretty cool: Every module can now have recursive categories without having to code a module specific solution.

The successor to Xanthia is virtually complete. It will be called "Themes" and Mark West has nearly 40 open source templates converted to the new system that have allowed him to test out theme implementation. The only thing remaining is to work out how to handle the legacy opentable and closetable functions. Creation of a basic theme from the admin panel is now possible (with correct file system permissions) and there are a few pre-done layouts available.

Postnuke 0.8 will be able to run on not only MySQL but also Postgres and Oracle as Frank Schummertz is currently checking out the Oracle compatibility. And Mark West is currently reviewing the feature requests looking to cover any feature requests that impact on the system db tables.

So you see, it's all cleaning up for .8 Milestone 2

Andreas Krapohl (Larsneo) was the first to speak and explained his latest site project "Rems Zeitung" and his various solutions concerning usability on the editorial side and accessability on the user side.

After this soft start, Frank delivered a speech on the benefits the Ajax will bring in .8 and how it's used in his modules (pnForum, Multihook aso).

Third to speak was another core developer. Robert Gasch went deep into coding philosophy with his presentation titled "Arts & Crafts in Software Engeneering" - next to this he showed the advantages of Postnuke .8 over competetive systems and how the new technologies save up to 40% code in standard modules.

The next topic was the non-sponsored lunch at Subway's.

Newly energized Jazzie surprised the audience with his presentation on the soon to be released version 1.00 of the content module PagEd.

The last presentation of the day was another surprise: Albert Pérez Monfort and Toni Ginard Lladó of the Catalonian Ministry of Education showed us their project "Intraweb" a bundled Postnuke with several custom made and publicly available modules aiming at the Catalonian schools - over 100 schools use this package for their internal and external communication.

Links

• PDFs in the Wiki


• Video clips of the talks on youtube.com


• Indeep reports in German

With joomla_users2postnuke you can import all the user data from a Joomla site into your new PostNuke system.

Download

The second part will explain the templating. We demostrate how to turn an HTML layout into a Xanthia-Theme and explain how to customize module templates and where best to store them save of system updates.

The third part is planned as an introduction into Pagesetter and will emphasize the strengths of Postnuke regarding the interconnction of modules via plugins and API functions. For example how to display the avatar in modules that normally only show the username.

The magazine should be available at every better German bookstall or online at www.phpmag.de.

Because of the module does extensively use functions of the PostNuke API, you need at least PostNuke Version 0.762! With older version of PostNuke the module will not work! Questions whether or how it is possible to get the module work with older Version are not answered!
To use all functions provided by the module you need at least these two Hooks:

• Ratings Hook
  
• EZComments.
  

Of course I do not want to keep from you the feature list:

• PostNuke API complaint module
  
• Complete output via pnRender (XHTML)
  
• New database structure
  
• Completely revised Admininterface
  
• Hook support
  
• More than two subcategories possible
  
• Improved Upload function for files
  
• Improved security for the download area (Captcha Support / switchable)
  
• Works with Save Mode On
  
• Support of the gd library for the Thumbnail creation
  
• Additional sort of categories possible
  
• Comfortable function to edit files
  
• Possibility to deactivate certain downloads
  
• Interactive Upgrade of downloads 1.31
  
• The Module provides system information for a better configuration
  
• and all what I has forgotten.
  

For the users of Updownload or CmodsDownloads here are some useful information.
The module comes with an update script for both modules. This script will work only with the latest version!
A condition for an Upgrade are the following versions:

• Updownload 2.3
  
• CmodsDownload 1.9.6
  

Here are some things which are not possible:

• old comments cannot be taken over
  
• old ratings cannot be taken over.
  

Here is a demo link to the module:
Demo Downloads 2.0

Lindbergh

The five CMS's receiving the most nominations will go forward to the final round and first place is a $5,000 award presented to an open source Content Management System that has been voted 'the best' by an expert panel of judges and visitors at PacktPub.com

Help promote PostNuke by nominating the software today!

Award Rules

1. Only nominations for open source Content Management Systems will be counted
2. Only one nomination per person will be counted
3. The five open source Content Management Systems with the most nominations will go through to the final
4. The top three will be voted for by a panel of three judges. A final fourth vote will come from the results of a public vote on www.PacktPub.com.
5. All three judges are independent and their decision is final
6. The winning CMS will get US $5,000, the second will get US $3,000 and the third placed finalist will get US $2,000.
7. Packt Publishing has no influence, input or say in the final five or winner of the Award

Nominate PostNuke: http://www.packtpub.com/nominations

For more information about the award visit: http://www.packtpub.com/award

For the 3rd time we want to offer this platform for case studies, courses and further development planning and a great chance to get to know each other. More detailed information is available in our Wiki and you can register here.
All previously registered folks should check the [url=http://support.pn-cms.de/modules/dokuwiki/pnmeeting3_0/index_eng#participants]participants list[/url] to make sure that they are already listed.

See you in Stuttgart!
Steffen Voss
Vice-President Postnuke e.V.
www.pn-cms.de