My review of the upcoming Blossom 8 Smart Watering Controller

A few years ago, I wanted to replace the water controller for my lawn's sprinkler system. To my surprise, I found even the most basic controller was too expensive to justify replacing my failing system. Then came along Blossom. I found Blossom's original Smart Watering Controller was not only smarter than traditional controllers but also competitively priced. So in 2015, I bought the Blossom, installed it, and smartly watered my lawn all summer long. To date, it is one of the best investments I've made when it comes to lawn care.

This year Blossom is introducing its new, eight-zone Blossom 8 Smart Watering Controller. Featuring Wi-Fi connectivity and a sleek, slim, low-profile design, Blossom 8 is a highly reliable, simple, cost-effective solution that takes the guesswork out of controlling your sprinklers and simplifies your life. Blossom is continuing its efforts in changing the way we water our lawns. They're doing this by moving away from conventional watering controllers that don’t take actual water needs to a smart system that waters based on vegetation type and rainfall numbers into account.

Over the years, I've told people that CMS Report is a side business. While I would never become rich from this blog, I've been lucky enough to have been able to put a little extra cash in my wallet from this website's ad revenue. In truth, what has actually sustained CMS Report is not money but my passion for information systems. I absolutely love this magical process where people, hardware, software, and infrastructure come together to improve the business or organization. A decade ago, I could find no better example of information systems in the real world than the content management system. I decided to write about CMSs and created a blog and website to host those articles. After spending ten years as this site's founder, editor, and primary writer I've decided it is time for me to move on to some new challenges.

When it comes to content management systems, these two questions are the ones that I get asked the most:

• What is the best CMS out there?
• What features do I need to have in my CMS?

Over the years, I've tried answering that question in various forums. But inevitably my initial answers to the first question are almost always:

• It depends on what you want to do.
• It depend on who you're willing to work with.

This leaves us with the second question. What features do you need to have in a CMS? The honest answer is I won't know until I better understand your business goals and current workflow. But I can tell you with a straight face what is the most important feature your new CMS needs to have:

Niels Hartvig recently posted that Umbraco 7.4 has been released. With much focus on improving the user experience, this new version of Umbraco is being subtitled as the "Content type editor update".

Features and improvements highlighted in this update includes:

•  New content type editor
•  Some UX polish + documentation
•  Media library improvements
•  Grid polish
•  Password for user panel (no dashboard)
•  Models Builder

A few days ago, the Agility CMS Team released an update that includes new features and bug fixes. This is the first update since the "big upgrade" threee months ago when Agility introduced a significant rebuild and redesign of its content management system's interface.

Among the bug fixes, probably the most annoying one to me was a bug hat prevented users from being able to delete a linked content item from within grid view. Previously, a user was required to click on the "Edit Content" button in order to remove an item. Before the fix, the work-around was sufficient but annoying due to the changes involved in the expected workflow. Overall though, as a user of the Agility CMS, I've been pretty impressed how much Agility got right in the redesign that the waiting time for the fix was acceptable to me.

As was mentioned earlier this week, today is the day Drupal 8 becomes official and is released for public consumption. The last time CMS Report was given the opportunity to talk about a major Drupal release was in January 2011 with the release of Drupal 7. If you thought the three year waiting period from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 was long, waiting nearly half a decade for Drupal 8 certainly feels like a lifetime in the world of content management. During this cycle of development, Drupal's own open source community has evolved and its developers have introduced hundreds of changes into the Drupal content management platform.

I admit it. When looking at the calendar my eyes have been focused on November 19, 2015. This is the date that Drupal 8, under development since 2011, is expected to be released. But for Drupal 6 users, the beginning of Drupal 8 also marks the beginning of the end for Drupal 6 support. Announced on Drupal.org, Michael Hess writes that Drupal 6 will reach end-of-life on February 24 2016.

As announced in the Drupal 6 extended support policy, 3 months after Drupal 8 comes out, Drupal 6 will be end-of-life (EOL).

On February 24th 2016, Drupal 6 will reach end of life and no longer be supported.

What this means for you:

Three years ago, CMS Report made the jump from Drupal to the Agility CMS featuring its Magazine Publishing Suite. Since then, I've had the opportunity to see Agility's software evolve including improved delivery in the mobile space through responsive web design. While gradual improvements were made in the CMS, probably the biggest change for Agility Inc. was in late 2013 with the appointment of their new CEO, Jonathan Voigt.