Words

NBC News recently posted an interesting article where the author notes that the spam industry follows the same Law of Supply and Demand as any capitalist-loving business does. As social networks crack down on fake accounts and fake news, the spam industry is able to charge their customers more to establish such inauthentic accounts.

Facebook shut down as many as 30,000 fake accounts in the past week — but that's unlikely to hurt the multi-million-dollar spam industry.

Although I retired last year from writing stories solely focused on content management systems, I still have a few of my favorites that I like to keep an eye on. One of those favorites is DNN which back in the day we once called DotNetNuke. Less than a year ago, DNN brought to market Evoq 8 which addressed modern day marketing needs for better customer engagement. Last week, DNN showed the industry the ongoing evolution of its product line through Evoq 9. The new release continue's DNN's journey to be more than CMS company as it reaches beyond websites to apps, devices, and other Internet of Things.

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.

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.

Over the weekend, the core developers for CMS Made Simple, an open source project, announced the release of CMSMS 2.0. While not a complete rewrite, CMSMS 2.0 is a significant re-factoring and renewal for the content management system. Many of the changes involved are focused on giving the web professional an easier and simpler editing experience within the CMS.

In the announcement, Robert Campbell further explains how CMSMS 2.0 came to a final release.

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.

On March 24, 2015, the Drupal community lost Aaron Winborn who was diagnosed with ALS a few years ago. In honor of Aaron, the Drupal Association and Angie Bryon recently announced the Aaron Winborn Award. The announcement reads as is:

Spring brought to South Dakota plenty of rain. The lawns are green, the flowers are in full bloom, and it seems we can't go beyond a couple days without a rain shower or thunderstorm. While water is usually plenty for my city, we do things smart around here and restrict water usage for our lawns year round. It's not uncommon in my part of the country to see the weather pattern quickly change from wet to dry. What once was green can turn brown in a hurry.