WordPress 3.5 gets a media management makeover

 WordPress, the world's most widely used blogging software, has made it easier for people to share photos and videos of their cats. Enterprises that use the software for content management system (CMS) duties might find the improved multimedia capabilities helpful as well.
In development since last July, WordPress 3.5 comes with a revamped media manager, as well as a new default theme that offers a more sophisticated page layout.
"Media has long been a friction point and we've listened hard and given a lot of thought into crafting this new system," said WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg, in a blog post announcing the release.
The most heavily used blogging platform today, the PHP-based WordPress is used by approximately 17 percent of all Web sites on the Internet, and by 55 percent of all sites using a blogging and CMS platform of some sort, according to an ongoing survey conducted by W3Techs.
WordPress 3.5's new media manager provides an easier way for users to insert images and videos into their posts. Users can now drag and drop images and video files from their desktops directly into a drop zone for each post. Adjusting the settings for each image -- such as adjusting image size -- has also been streamlined. And importing and embedding multimedia from other Web sites, like YouTube, has been eased as well.
WordPress will also come with a new default theme, Twenty Twelve, which will add a more sophisticated style to the standard blog layout, compared to WordPress' previous default theme, Kubrick.
Twenty Twelve offers a fresh set of fonts, as well a home page template that can be easily customized through additional widgets. Through its Post Format feature, Twenty Twelve offers more ways to customize posts, so they can be dedicated to sharing single photographs, or for posting individual links or quotations. Twenty Twelve also works better with mobile devices, with its ability to automatically size each page to fit the screen size.
A number of updates in WordPress 3.5 should please administrators as well. The new version will allow blogs to be posted on high definition displays, such as the Apple iPhone's retina display, without pixelation. A new page for cataloging plug-ins will allow developers to keep shortcuts to the plug-ins they use across multiple sites. And the dashboard has been simplified. For instance, the link manager that appeared on the upper left side of the screen has been rendered redundant and removed.
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Joomla's Latest Offering: An Option to Build Free, Hosted Sites

The Joomla open source web content management system (WCMS) community announced a new website-building offering today.
It's launching Joomla.com, where users will create and build freely hosted Joomla websites. Joomla partnered with SiteGround, a web hosting company who has built the server infrastructure that will accommodate the free Joomla sites.

Upgrade Options

It's a free hosted website solution that makes Joomla CMS, as Open Source Matters Inc. Sarah Watz President said, "a more accessible option than ever." Open Source Matters is a New York City-based nonprofit that provides financial and legal support for Joomla.
According to Joomla officials, Joomla.com also offers:

• Free site name at the joomla.com subdomain with no hosting costs (ex:mywebsite.joomla.com)
• Pre-installed additional extensions, templates and all available languages
• Automatic updates 
• No advertising
• Upgrade options to a fully hosted service with custom domain 
• Ability to move anytime to any hosting service

Joomla developers are continuing to work on this fourth Joomla World Conference in November in India. Officials also said a proposal for a new structure and methodology for the Joomla project is being prepared and will be presented to the community for feedback this month.
ar's expected release of Joomla 3.4.  In addition, the community is gearing up for the
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Ektron is Merging with EPiServer

Accel-KKR, the private equity firm that closed 2014 by buying Stockholm-based EPiServer and Nashua, N.H.-based Ektron, today confirmed what CMSWire reported more than seven weeks ago.
It's combining the two web content management systems (CMS) under the EPiServer name to "create the most complete digital experience platform in the cloud."
The news came at the exact time winter storm Juno was pummeling Ektron's New England headquarters — an irony not lost on former employee Fred Bals. Bals, who left Ektron in November after five years as manager of its customer advocacy and media relations programs, said simply, "One natural disaster deserves another."
But not everyone was as pessimistic. Ed Rogers, who joined Ektron shortly after his brother Bill founded the company in 1998, said it was potentially positive news. Rogers, who was fired in 2011 and went on to launch Akumina, told CMSWire, "New leadership signals a cultural change. I'm hopeful the new team will put the customer first, something that should be good for Ektron clients."

Long, Strange Road

Today's announcement ends weeks of speculation over the fate of Ektron, a company that consistently ranked as one of the fastest growing tech companies in New England in the early 2000s before stumbling in the past several years.
The company will, for now, live on as a brand under the EPiServer name — without either Bill Rogers or Tim McKinnon, the man who just weeks ago said he was running the day-to-day operations at Ektron.
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Responsive Design: Great for Web Sites, Hard for Mobile Devices

Responsive Design: Great for Web Sites, Hard for Mobile Devices

Responsive web design (RWD) is generally regarded, as CMSWire writer Tom Murphy noted today, "just fine for now." But a new survey from Trilibis, a provider of mobile development solutions, claims mobile performance on responsive design websites is often "unacceptable."

Four out of five RWD websites provide suboptimal page weight and load time on mobile devices, according to the survey, "Responsive Web Design: Why Image Optimization Is Crucial for a Mobile-Friendly Customer Experience."

The survey examined 155 responsive websites. Of these, Trilibis found only 21 percent loaded in less than four seconds on a smartphone. Nearly a third required between eight and 48 seconds to load, with equivalent connectivity.
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