Greetings CMSMS Users.

Everybody jump for joy, spray the champagne and scream it from the mountain tops: CMSMS 2.0 is here!! Yes, it's really here!!

After a very, very long wait (around three years for this attempt alone) and a great deal of effort, we are overjoyed to announce the public release of CMSMS 2.0. The next generation in the evolution of making managing web content simple.

CMSMS 2.0 has been a long and tiring uphill war, with many large and small battles; some of which we won, and some of which we lost. Throughout our battles the Dev Team has always remembered our primary goal and tagline: "Power for the Professionals, Simplicity for the End Users." This means that the professionals have a standards-oriented, powerful engine to build websites and web based applications, and the system still remains simple and fast for the average non-technical user to be able to manage the content of his or her website.

It began with humble intentions, and while not a complete rewrite, we can say that CMSMS 2.0 is without a doubt a significant re-factoring and renewal of your favorite content management system. The web professional has the power, and CMSMS 2.0 is even simpler for the content editor.

The primary areas we have focused on throughout this release are:

Making the editor's job even simpler.

While still ensuring that the editor's capabilities can be restricted to work within the constraints of the design implemented by the web development professional, CMSMS 2.0 includes a new WYSIWYG editor, an improved and dynamic file manager, and a brand new content managing module. Content editors can now easily find, control and edit thousands of pages without concern that they will accidentally erase somebody else's work.

Improving the performance for the general public

During the development of 2.0 we have gone through numerous code review sessions, performance tuning, and optimization sessions to ensure that the site visitor receives the best performance possible out-of-the box. Depending upon the site purpose, there is even more that can be done to accelerate response times, reduce performance load, and ensure that the website visitor's experience is smooth and speedy.

Give more power, flexibility and ease of use to the website builder

Our new rationalized and unified template, design, and stylesheet management interface will allow the developer complete control over the various different types of templates in a single website (Page Structure, News Articles, News Summary Views, Navigations). Everything is managed from one place instead of dozens of different locations in the Admin console. Additionally, all of the templates and stylesheets can be organized together into 'designs' for easier importing from and exporting to other CMSMS websites.

The new Navigator module allows the website designer to create fast, flexible, and powerful navigations with more power and simplicity than ever before.

The new AdminSearch module allows an editor or a website developer to quickly and easily locate a portion of text or code. This makes their job faster and easier.

A completely rewritten module management interface provides an integrated way of managing, upgrading, searching and interacting with modules.

Reduce redundancy for the application programmer

The new Design Manager module and its accompanying API will increase the speed of development of new modules and applications, as each module does not need to write a mechanism to manage its own templates. This will be a huge time saver for application programmers.

Make it Easier to Install, Upgrade, and Repair.

CMSMS 2.0 now has an exceptionally easy to use "installation assistant", and it is only one file (well, OKAY, there is a README document too). The new installation assistant allows you to:

• Upload only ONE file to your server (please use your web host's control panel, or use binary mode when forced to use FTP).
• Check for compatibility and permissions before uploading or writing hundreds of files
• Check for database connectivity, and existing data in the database, before installing.
• Check if the installer is capable of upgrading your existing CMSMS install before potentially corrupting that installation
• Upgrade multiple versions at once
• Install additional language packs to an existing installation
• Freshen the core files of an existing installation
• Repair the config file of an existing installation
• And more

This will save developers time and reduce complexity when creating CMSMS websites or managing existing websites. One tool assists with all of this work.

Listen to what people say

We went through hundreds of bug reports and feature requests, and looked at each and every one of them. A great deal of them (some of them years old) have been addressed in this release. The Dev Team has listened, and responded to many of these issues and requests. Sometimes it just takes time to find the right way to do things.

That's not all

There is more. There is a revised and improved admin theme (we are down to one). The default content has been improved, the API documentation has been completed (well at least the API portion of it). The admin menu structure has been re-organized, we also have lots of new capabilities for programmers.

There is just way too much to go through in one short document. Don't worry, in sort order more documentation will be available describing what changed in more detail, and how it affects you and your sites.

Where can i get it?

CMSMS 2.0 is, as always available for download from our downloads page http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/downloads/, and from the forge http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/cmsmadesimple and we expect that in short order you will be able to grab a CMSMS 2.0 stack from bitnami and be able to install 2.0 via softaculous and our other partners.

Were can I find more information?

The Dev Team has released information about 2.0 at various times throughout the development cycle. You can read those articles here.

Additionally, a document for current CMSMS users introducing the major and significant changes in CMSMS 2.0 can be found on our documentation website here.

Why did it take so long?

Though there are a hundred technical and political reasons why this project has been ongoing for nearly three years, there are a few primary reasons why this project has taken so long:

• It has been a huge undertaking.

  Every single line of code has been affected in some way. Some has been deleted, others documented and optimized, and there are tens of thousands of lines of new code. Also, during any project such as this sometimes there are backward steps that cost time.

• We knew that this would be a major change in CMSMS

  We sacrificed time to try to ensure that we would be releasing a quality, stable piece of software in which we knew most of the issues people would encounter, and solved as many as possible.

• We are all doing this in our spare time, as volunteers.

  It is after regular work is done, when we don't feel too tired, or don't have other tasks to do, or have guests. And no, not even OUR (very special) significant others will allow us to skip special events or family holidays for CMSMS. So we have to squeeze our devoted work for our favorite content management system into our "hobby time".

• We are still busy maintaining, supporting and developing CMSMS 1.12.x

  As well as our various websites. The forge, the main website, the forum, docs site, and the various language sites that we manage. As well as helping you.

  Though in a perfect world we would have liked this to go faster. We know that we have been keeping you on the hook for a long time... realistically speaking CMSMS 2.0 is already a fantastic success.

Support for 1.12

Our focus will continue to maintaining and continually improving CMSMS. We are moving forward from this point with the 2.0 series. The CMSMS 1.12 series will be supported security and critical issues for one calendar year (365 days) from now. After this, the Dev Team members may not provide support for your issues, or your issues may be moved to a different location in the forum where the Dev Team members have no obligation to respond.

Thanks, thanks, and more thanks.

Throughout the development and testing process of 2.0 (there has been by our estimation thousands of man hours spent just testing and fixing 2.0) Hundreds of people have helped with the development. And though we can't thank them all individually there are a few groups of people that need to be mentioned (in no particular order).

• The French Community

  We cannot thank this community as a whole enough. though a few individuals are named below; this community has gathered together and really stood by our development efforts. They have provided suggestions, and reported issues, and kept their translation up to date at all times. They have stood by us in our grumpy times (and we hope we have stood by them in theirs). We cannot say enough good things about these people. A few people of note (mostly because they have been busy with us during the beta period) deserve special thanks:

  • Jean-Claude Etiemble (France) (also a member of the Dev Team)
  • @archeos (forum)
  • @tomek (forum)
• The Dev Team

  There have been what seems like a thousand online meetings discussing and voting upon the pros and cons of this feature, or that feature. How it should look, and how it should operate. Additionally The Dev Team members have spent countless evenings researching, developing, testing, installing, upgrading, documenting, and testing again new versions of the software. And it was entirely volunteered. Amazing stuff. The CMSMS community owes a great deal of thanks to the all of the dev team members. Including (but not limited to):

  • René Helminsen (Norway)
  • Fernando Morgado (Portugal)
  • Matt Hornsby (Canada)
  • John Scotcher (UK)
  • John Beatrice (USA)
  • Anne-Mieke Bovelett (Netherlands)
  • Robert Campbell (Canada)
  • Rolf (Netherlands)
  • Ronny Krijt (Netherlands)
  • Mark Reed (USA)
  • Kevin Danezis (France)
  • Ruud van der Velden (Netherlands)
  • Tapio Löytty (Finland) (former dev team member)
  • Goran Ilic (Austria) (former dev team member)
  • and still more...

Have fun with CMSMS!

The Dev Team is extremely happy with this release. A culmination of around three years, and thousands upon thousands of hours of effort. We thank you for your patience, and hope that you are as happy and excited about this renewal of CMS Made Simple as we are.