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OS History   (Content)

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html for more explanation of the difference between the two movements.

The basic philosophy behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, and people fix the bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.

There are many active Open Source Software projects but some may be thinking you get what you pay for, so if it's free there must be something wrong with it. Sometimes this is true but there are open source software projects providing stable, scalable applications. The key is to know where to look and what to look for when evaluating the stability and scalability.

Here are a few interesting facts and examples of Open Source projects:

Apache is the number one web server at nearly 62% of all installations. Second place was help by Microsoft at just under 27%. (Source: Netcraft)
GNU/Linux is the number two operating system at nearly 30% of all servers behind Microsoft operating system at nearly 50%. (Source: Netcraft)

Sendmail (a mail transport agent) sendmail has become one of the standards of the Internet's infrastructure (TCP/IP, Apache, sendmail).

BIND the Berkley Internet Naming Daemon responsible for mapping domain names to IP addresses ran on 95% of all public reverse DNS servers. (Source: Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California).
MySQL founded in 1995 by two open source veterans, Michael "Monty" Widenius and David Axmark, with the help of Allan Larsson and claims 4 million installations worldwide and 30,000 downloads of the software per day making MySQL by far the planet's most widely distributed open-source database. (Source: mySQL)

PHP is a widely used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML and as of May 2003 it was being used on 12,487,030 domains and 1,321,203 IP addresses. (Source: PHP)

Linux Operating System is over three years old and has grabbed 13.7 percent of the $50.9 billion market for server computers, and that figure is expected to jump to 25.2 percent in 2006, putting Linux in the No. 2 position. (Source: IDC)

SourceForge a site providing support tools and resources for the OSS/Free Software movement recently announced a major two year

Generated on February 27, 2009.

Trac - NOC Replacement   (News)

hard to maintain. We're hoping you'll find the trac installation easy to use and navigate, and an improved NOC in all respects.

From the perspective of third party developers, trac provides a useful administration interface from which you can administrate all aspects of your project, from it's description to SVN commits list and file downloads. Trac also has much better milestone and target tracking for bugs and releases.

As a user, you can search the available projects, and use the clean navigation to find your way around. There's also an online SVN browser where you'll be able to look at a project's source code.

Chris is looking to begin converting projects over from the NOC as soon as possible. On request, he can import tracker and SVN history, or alternatively you can start afresh. He'd like to talk to people as he makes the conversion so that if anyone's missing something useful, or has suggestions he can improve the Trac installation for everyone.

Looking to the future, we'll convert the core PostNuke project over to Trac. We'll also try to get single sign on between community.postnuke.com and Trac working if possible.

If you are a third party developer, be aware that we are planning to close the NOC in the future. If you have active projects

Generated on May 4, 2008.

PostNuke Bugfix Weekend   (News)

Generated on March 26, 2008.

MediaAttach RC 1 released   (News)

Functional features

With the display and delete hooks file uploads become possible in all hook-capable modules.
Many different file types are supported (images, music, videos, archives, documents, ...)
The most formats can be displayed embedded.
Enhanced file information like for example ID3 tags are read and cached with pnRender.
Also emedding external videos (e.g. YouTube, Google or Dailymotion) is possible.
Users can send files to themselves in mails.


Security

Files can be stored outside the web root, which is advisable absolutely.
If this is not possible, a .htaccess file can be created automatically for protecting direct access.
Therefore all access is handled by module functions and permissions.
A quota support cares for bounded storage limits.


Integration

Users can manage their own files in the profile.
With a Scribite plugin for Xinha media can be inserted in the editor easily.
A support for needles in the MultiHook also provides possibilities to include files in other content.
A Guppy plugin for Pagesetter is enclosed as well to be able to define MediaAttach fields.
Also the Content module is being supported by a flexible plugin.
More profound integration possibilities for special modules exist with create and update hooks.


Migration

An import from the file system is possible.
Moreover import options for Downloads 2, Mediashare, PhotoGallery and pnUpper are ready.


Comfort

Direct support for Categories.
Images can be scaled down.
Space-saving multi uploader if JavaScript is available.
Thumbnails can be cut out individually if desired.
The new search functionality is being supported.
The creation of bit torrents for files is possible.
Comprehensive PDF manual.


MediaAttach can be used as easy as every other display hook module (for example EZComments). But if one engages in it, he quickly perceives that the strengths of this module are it's flexibility and it's adaptability. It not only unifies file management and media integration, but can also be used as a gallery for example. Different annexed template sets illustrate several possible applications.
Also interesting is that one can activate MediaAttach also for MediaAttach itself which leads amongst others to the possibility to attach media to other media items.
The module offers concluding dozens possibilities which can all be used, but may not. For this reason it is excellently suited for being employed in project-specific areas and is furthermore in line with our framework idea why it is going to constitute an enrichment certainly.

Links

Download
Bugtracker
Patches
Feature Requests


Have fun with testing and giving feedback :)

Generated on March 7, 2008.

Development Update, 2008-01   (News)

.8 Final: the next step after RC3
Since the release of RC3, already a lot of bugfixes have been committed to the repository. The developers have agreed to address all new features to the .9 tree, where the two major changes (UTF-8 and gettext, see below) are already in active development. This should result in much shorter release cycles (and earlier release dates) also, and give module developers much more clarification on what to change in order to make their module work under the new major release. If needed, an final bugfizing weekend may still be organised for .8 final.
The upgrade from .764 installations on certain systems has been improved, by increasing the memory_limit to 64M. However, this only works for php version 5.2.1 and above.
Upgrading to .8 together with some 3rd party modules may raise problems when the modules upgrade process is not failsafe for .8 or if the upgrade function uses core functions of modules that are not available yet. Therefore the upgrade of 3rd party modules in general is avoided by following a white list of core modules.
Most site-specific data can already be easily overridden using the /config and /themes directories. The Multisites module however still needs some futher thought on the best way of running multiple sites from a single install. One method having multiple unrelated (i.e. non table sharing) sites of a single install would be to have config/site1, config/site2 etc., this will be postponed to a next release.
The Tour module is now in a state where it can be translated to other languages as well. Just translate the templates and put them in a subdir with the appropriate language abbrevation, all within the pntemplates directory.

MultiCategorization introduction and issues since
As earlier announced, a last fix for supporting MultiCategorization has been added to the core just before the release of RC3. Since those changes, another small fix was then required to be fully backwards compatible. On the module-devs list, the devs have discussed a lot on how to solve these issues. Chances are great that if the new (already committed) patches do not solve the problems, MultiCategorization might be postponed to later versions in order to fully test the new features.
For more information on MultiCategorization, visit this thread in the forum.

DOM extension to use correct paths in JavaScript
Some javascripts, eg. the lightbox, need to know the path to the system and the entrypoint as well (which can be configured in the settings), otherwise they may fail in case of short urls being enabled. Since dynamic javascript creation might be a performance problem, some inline javascript is added to the pagevars to extend the DOM:
- document.location.entrypoint: will be set to what is configured to be the entrypoint
- document.location.pnbaseURL: will point to the result of pnGetBaseURL();
Any ideas on how to make his more unobtrusive are very welcome!

PostNuke Upgrade Distribution
In previous articles and posts, the term '.8 upgrade pack' was used to represent a full .8 package, including 3rd party modules, to upgrade to .8 from an existing .764 installation. However, the term 'upgrade pack' is not quite correct and misleading, because it implies to be an upgrade package with changed files only, while the main parts remain as-is. The transition between .764 and .8 requires a complete exchange of all files, so the so called upgrade package is a complete distribution.
Now it remains what modules should be in an upgrade distribution, to be able to fully upgrade an existing .764 installation, including new versions of 3rd party modules. These include Downloads 2.2, pnMessages, Polls 2.0, bbcode / bbsmile, Weblinks, EZComments and MultiHook at least. This might need some additional testing with certain versions also.

Core changes and additions in the .9 tree
Mark has already overhauled some core API methods and calls. All systems modules are now using the Renderer Class instead of pnRender. Also, a first pass has been committed in changing all pn* function calls to new object method calls. For example, pnModGetInfo is replaced with ModuleUtil::getInfo and pnSecGenAuthKey is replaced with SecurityUtil::generateAuthKey.
For those who did not know: A class pnCompat.php still includes most oldstyle API calls for backwards compatibility.

GetText and Default DB Charset
Bernd is progressing rapidly on integrating gettext in de development tree, and has added po-files for all core modules. The required PHP version for .9 has already been set to a minimum of 5.1.6, and since version 5.0, MySql supports different character sets and corresponding collating orders. To run an application in UTF-8 (unicode) it is not sufficient to change the character set for PN; we needed to set the database encoding (actually server and client) to UTF-8 as well.
A user who wishes to run his site in multiple languages, needs to decide the database encoding at installation time. The default is UTF-8, because the current iso-8859-1 is restricted to too few language combinations. UTF-8 is a 'no-worry' setting because it will work with any language (as long as it is UTF-8 encoded.
This change is $PNConfig['DBInfo']['default']['dbcharset'] = 'utf-8';

To cache or not to cache, that's the question
Also discussed on the devs-list is the current (and future) state of output caching within PostNuke. Why should any application repeat the same processing tasks on a item that hasn't changed?
Not caching anything is fine if one has got infinite resources to throw at a site (and even then there are limits). But in reality there are finite resources and you need to take steps to ensure that those resources are effectively used. One method for that is not wasting precious resources repeating the same tasks time after time.
The key is effective cache management. Currently we put too much load onto the module to handle it's own caching. Once you then

Generated on March 2, 2008.

PostNuke 0.8 RC3 Released   (News)

PostNuke 0.8 RC3 Upgrade Pack Download
Download (ZIP)
MD5: 02629a822154f9f88a72ebea7f562470
SHA-1: 7ca9de7e7285778122e3d711c1b48f9ee4342396

Download (TAR.GZ)
MD5: eaf730995aec0acebca26f62a9f5ec98
SHA-1: 2245191875cb66d4c2cbda769321b3f0ccb7dc33


PostNuke 0.800 RC3 Core Download
Download (ZIP)
MD5: 95000958fa40f442a40282db5aae1799
SHA-1: aaa57406204bdc1220a6768d6de2021736ffe1cc

Download (TAR.GZ)
MD5: e563098769d0ce448c31a39a92f9b0ab
SHA-1: 5fe83c58707de118a28ba0dd8c72138706d90388


PostNuke 0.800 RC3 ValueAddons Download
Download (ZIP)
MD5: 195a63ac59c1ddce7507ad50b21032d1
SHA-1: 8f64584642ea3959b13a98b1649dfe50921ffa31

Download (TAR.GZ)
MD5: f7436f01187f81f34eb80c4959d46d37
SHA-1: 5ebce8c82fa1599ad81b3bce771d418b6e496329


Release Highlights
There are a number of improvements in RC3 over RC2, these include an enhanced upgrade script, the new Tour module and some last minute categories module improvements.

New Upgrade Script
The two upgrade scripts, upgrade76.php and upgrade.php have now been combined into a single file. In addition to this, a number of interface improvements have been made to make the process of upgrading your .7x series websites simpler and more reliable. The new script also solves some long standing bugs with the update proceedure, so we invite anyone who had problems with the upgrade proceedure previously to try again with this new version.

Tour Module
In an attempt to reduce the learning curve when first starting with PostNuke, a new module has been developed to introduce you to this new release of PostNuke. It provides a first time tour of PostNuke, introducing you to common terms like block, module and theme with which new users may not be familiar and also gives some basic hints and tips on where to start.

For more experienced users, there is a 'New In PostNuke 0.8' section, where you can discover more about this release of PostNuke, and a distribution tour, where authors of distributions can describe the purpose of their package and how it benefits you as a site administrator. The distribution tour page is stored in docs/distribution/tour_page1.htm, and an example is included in this release. This file is not intended to be viewed outside the Tour module, as the Tour module adds navigational elements around the page.

Finally, module and theme developers can include tours for their module, to introduce users to key features, or help them familiarise themselves with the basics. It is intended to serve as a crash course for all modules - be they complicated (such as pagesetter) or more simple (such as the Pages module). Certain modules have hidden features about which a user may not necessarily be aware, and we hope that the tour module will allow module developers to better promote the features their modules contain.

The tour module supports multipage tours for all modules - simply store tour_page1.htm and any subseqeuent pages in modules/yourmodule/pndocs/, or themes/yourtheme/docs.

Categories Improvements
The categories module received a few last minute improvements in SVN just before the release of RC3. These improvements are

Generated on February 20, 2008.

Bug-Fixing Weekend - A Review   (News)

Consequently the total number of bugs didn't really go down: We started with 65 bugs and 20 patches. After a brief evaluation some of them were moved to .81 or .9 and we started fixing the rest.

Saturday afternoon we still had the number of 65 bugs - because the testers were as busy as the programmers. And even all through the Sunday this number followed us.

All in all we were able to fix ~50 bugs and we are down to 44 open bugs - some of them are partly feature requests and thus are postponed till later versions. The is no priority 5 bug - only 2 upgrade related priority 4 bugs are left. They are regarded as showstoppers and are assigned to Mark West who will fix them in the next few days. So if you want to test wour modules with .8 - pick up the latest SVN version.

While most programmers tried to fix .8 bugs some others worked on their modules: Marco Kundert is in his last throes of his work on pagemaster - a full port of pagesetter to .8 techniques. Jörn and I worked on the next version of "Content". It has pretty much grown but as Jörn fixed some issues in pnForms along the way, we can not release this version before we have either a new RC or a final of .8.

The team is currently discussing if we need another RC or if this is going to be the final. It is only a matter of weeks unt

Generated on January 15, 2008.

Bugfix weekend starts   (News)

within an agile process. If you want to attend, simply contact me in Skype (username: weckamc), so that I can add you to the party.
Those who don't have Skype available and want anyhow report errors or patches, might refer to the [url=http://noc.postnuke.com/tracker/?group_id=5]according trackers[/url] in the NOC.
We are looking forward to active participation and stay in this spirit: Happy Bugfixing! :-)

Generated on January 12, 2008.

Developers Love Feedback   (News)

good. And it's not even only good feedback they love! As long as the criticism is based on fact, well argumented and constructive.

Developers can't read you minds and [b]they[/b] know their work, [b]they[/b] can use it. Once in a while I read comments about modules like "Nice start, but there is still a lot of work in it and it's a bit buggy." Well?? If you don't report bugs and if you don't make suggestions on how to improve a module, you can't expect that things will change to your taste.

You are not a programmer? Okay: There are new module releases in the module database now and then - download every module and test them!! That is the least you can do for the community.

Certainly developers won't answer every single PM or feature request you write - but be sure: They will see and appreciate your work.

This is what YOU can do for Postnuke ;-

Generated on January 11, 2008.

Big Final Bug-Fixing Weekend   (News)

We will then try to test the changes and make the final release as soon as possible.

We hope not only to attract Core developers - also module developers and themers might join and have a productive weekend with some nice chatting.

What you can do

We open a Bug-Fix-Weekend Chat in Skype - If you want to join, drop me a line via PM and tell me your skype name
Test everything you need for your sites with the RC2 or the latest SVN version and report all bugs in the noc.

Generated on January 7, 2008.

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