PostNuke

Footnote: 1

Greg is up against some very good competition for the award. All of whom would be a very good selection, in my opinion.

Greg Allan - Lead core developer and founding member of the PostNuke CMS Development Project

Stig Bakken - Core PHP developer and creator of PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository)

Bogomil Shopov - Purplerain contest manager and author of numerous articles on PHP

Philippe Thomassigny - Leads the Ascend Web Content Manager project

Andrei Zmievski - Core PHP developer, author of PHP-GTK and co-author of Smarty Template Engine

Voting closes July 17th, 2002.

Footnote: 1

The policy was not intended (at least in the way I read it) to broach anyones efforts for commercial applications, and plug-ins for PostNuke. What was wanted was to separate PostNuke.com from overt commercial advertisements hidden within news announcements, and to limit our involvement of support for those products. Support being in the form of IRC and Forum support. Unfortunately, the end result seemed to do just the opposite.

In an attempt to rectify this we have come up with a very simple and logical policy towards commercial software.

1) If you produce a module with the intent to sell either the module (block, theme) itself, service, or installation of the module, we will publish that news as well as give it the same consideration that any free module will have in the future. We ask though, that you clearly label your announcement that it is a commercial module, as well as the price and conditions when listing it on the website.

2) PostNuke staff will not offer free support (I.E... IRC Support, Web Based Forums Support, etc) for your module (block, theme). We will host your support chat room if you like, but we will not man the chat due to our limited resources.

3) Hosting specials and announcements on PostNuke.com will continue to be published, but not to the main news page. The hosting type announcements will be relegated to the "Hosting" category for off index viewing due to the volume of submissions.

4) We encourage all questions, development and brainstorming for commercial and non-commercial modules to run across our modslist mailing list. Subscription instructions can be found on the main page.

5) We will not publish overt advertisements for non-PostNuke related items to any of the PostNuke.com's pages. This does not mean that a commercial module, service, installation announcements will not make it to the news page. This is left to the moderator's discretion. As always, contact me if you feel your announcement has been unjustly reviewed.

6) We are working to have yellow pages for PostNuke developers / consultants / service providers in the future. Give us some time on that one though :)

I believe that this is a pretty simple and straight forward guideline. As always, please address any oversights either on this article, or in an email to me.

Footnote: 1

This special ends July 6th, 2002.

Reseller Options available aswell. Please inquire for details. (Reseller plans start at $28.95 and include cpanel and Web Host Manager and resold accounts starting under $5.00 US per month)

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This book will be the definitive guide to PostNuke. It will provide a general overview of Content Management Systems, and cover all topics directly related to PostNuke. Everything that a webmaster running a PostNuke system will need to know, from installation, configuration, usage, and maintenance through advanced options such as templating, module programming, and expanding PostNuke will be covered within this book.

A reader that is completely new to PostNuke will be able to pick up this book and become a ‘master’ at PostNuke simply by following along to their level of need. The book will walk the reader through each and every step of PostNuke; through installation, configuration, usage, community management -- all the way through programming custom modules and understanding PostNuke’s API.

The target audience for this book will consist of webmasters, companies, and individuals who wish to run a CMS-type website using PostNuke. Readers will purchase this book because of its clear, informative, informal writing style, complete information, and the logical progression from topic to topic through levels of complexity. They will appreciate this volume because it is complete, comprehensive, and targeted at the high-novice to high-moderate technical skill levels. This book will provide the most complete, current, easy-to-understand, and useful information about PostNuke.

Some of the book's topics will be: An Overview of Content Management Systems, The History of PostNuke, System Requirements, Installation, Configuration, Advanced Configuration, Multi-Site configuration, Managing Content, Expanding & Modifying PostNuke, Customizing PostNuke, Long-term Considerations for Running a CMS-based Website, On-line Community Development, PostNuke Theme Development, Programming for PostNuke (understanding the Application Programming Interface (API) and Module Development Guide (MDG)), and PostNuke Administration.

This book will be available through the usual retail channels and online vendors to coincide with the non-beta release of PostNuke.

Drew Vogel was educated at Northern Kentucky University, where in 1991 he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre with Directing & Performance Emphasis. Additional areas of study include English Composition & Literature, with an area of concentration on Shakespearean literature. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Drew's goal in writing this book is to bridge the knowledge gap between 'using PostNuke' and PostNuke 'enlightenment'. A reader with limited webmastering experience can pick up this book, and, after reading it, become an expert in using PostNuke.

Mr. Vogel is the author of the Official PostNuke Installation & Getting Started Guide, which will be distributed with future versions of PostNuke; and is the Leader of the PostNuke Documentation Team.

Throughout the years, Drew has written documentation for a variety of software products, though none have been published outside of the product's box. During BBS days, Drew wrote documentation for products such as AreaFix (R. Miranda), Elysium Graphical Editor (C. Brown), and Star-Net/Paragon BBS software (J. Radoff). Drew provided editorial services for the manual for Derek Smart's Battlecruiser 3000AD v2.0 (I know, I know). Additionally, he has written the documentation for his office's internal relational database called RxSIS (Pharmacy Student Information Service).

Footnote: 1

The Rogue Report

We will be releasing at least one more package under the Rogue name. I hope to release .715 (or .72) either next weekend or the weekend after (if you are a betting type person go with the latter). I imagine that there will be a few DB changes, so the version number may escalate to .72. The database changes will be for bug fixes only.

I also hope to have a couple of new modules that have been ported to the API with the next release as well. We do have the Top Lists module ready to go, and I believe that the Ephemerids are ready as well.

The delay in the release is caused from our recent move to the new CVS, as well as the passing of Greg. However, I will be pushing for a release of the maintenance branch as soon as it is ready.

The adam_baum Report

We have decided to rename the .8 series from Ragnarok to adam_baum for obvious reasons. .8 is shaping up to be a very nice and revolutionary release. Many features have already been developed and tested and are ready to go. I am shooting for an August Feature Freeze with an early September release.

We have a ton of work to do in the meantime though. We desperately need people to volunteer to help with the module conversions to the API. As always, if you want your 5 minutes to 1 year of PostNuke fame and glory, we will welcome you into the fun.

Below is a very brief overview of what is in the pan this month for .8. This is meant as a tease, but we invite you to check out the CVS and see the changes for yourself. There are some omissions from the report (namely pnComments, some hooks that have been developed, and the pnExceptions), but it should give you a very nice detail as to what is being worked on.

The following is the adam_baum .8 report from Gregor:

Performance

Mike and Marco have started work on caching PostNuke data with a new set of functions, pnVar*Cached. Mike has written an excellent performance white paper
here.

TODO: Describe it in MDG, use it throughout core, database indexes

Sessions

Mike has begun to take a hard look at the sessions code, trying to isolate workarounds, and make the code saner. Depending on the decision about PHP minimum requirements
this code might be simplified further.

TODO: Fix all session bugs :)

Block layout

The basic block layout system is nearing completion. Modules can register their own tags.

TODO: MDG section for block layout, samples, resolve ML issues

Dynamic User Data

Dynamic User Data is incomplete, however Christopher Grote agreed to take a look at it and make it feature complete.

TODO: Implement required fields, code cleanup

Users module

The users module is currently un-maintained. We are looking for interested parties to take over the module.

TODO: Integrate registration workflow from x-users, templates, dynamic user data

Multilanguage System

The API functions for the new ML systems are complete. Work continues on a translation module.

TODO: upgrade path, translation module, implement storage backend

Installer

With Block layout in place, work on the Installer can begin in earnest. Zoom and Neo are building a nice remote installer which we will try to integrate with the core installer. The
aim is to leverage as much infrastructure as early as possible in the installation. This means loading of the API etc.

TODO: Design Installer architecture.

Database abstraction

Gary is working on table creation / modification support, the remaining omission from ADODB. Jeremy has MSSQL working, and Johnny is working on Postgres support.

TODO: merge MSSQL / Postgres work with core