releasing sky lanterns
Open source news from Pimcore, DNN, Magnolia, Joomla and more PHOTO: Gianandrea Villa

Pimcore teased the launch of its latest update, Pimcore 5, in September's open source wrap up. 

True to its word, the company release Pimcore 5 last month during its Partner Conference in Salzburg, Austria.

Powered by Symfony Framework 3, Pimcore has boasted that its latest version is a “modern and future-proof software platform.”

Pimcore’s ecommerce framework, which previously existed only as a product extension, has become part of the core Pimcore product. This move “makes Pimcore the one and only truly integrated open source platform for CMS, DAM, PIM and ecommerce,” Pimcore Marketing Manager Christian Kemptner claimed.

With the release, Pimcore users receive a number of new features to play with, including:

  • Direct editing in the Object Grid
  • Improved rendering experience of complex objects
  • Huge performance improvement for big objects in the admin interface
  • Tag and snippet manager improvements.

In other open source news this month:

(Editor's note: we updated the article to include news from DNN) 

WordPress

Following the release of WordPress 4.8, the team at Automattic have been working on WordPress 4.9, the “second major release of 2017.”

WordPress 4.9 will seek to simplify editing code and managing plugins and themes, deliver a user-centric way to customize a site, and polish some features added over the previous months. 

The release date is set for November 2017, but expect to see four beta releases and potentially a release candidate in October.

SilverStripe

SilverStripe 4 is edging closer to release. In September, SilverStripe 4.0.0 beta3 hit the digital streets, bringing the number of bug fixes and enhancements to more than 80 since the beta1 release.

The beta3 release focused on building out the campaigns and assets sections, including a focus on UX with the adoption of the TreeDropdownField, making it easier to select pages from deeply nested trees. You can download the SilverStripe 4.0.0 beta3 release from its download page.

Magnolia

Magnolia is close to releasing a content tagging feature, according to its public Trello board.

“Authors who manage large amounts of content need better tagging,” the Trello card reads, explaining that tags are essential for finding, reusing and aggregating content. Here’s what the feature, which has no set release date (but October is a long month), will serve up:

  • Tag any coarse-grained content element: pages, products, events, etc.
  • Light and quick: select an item, press a keyboard shortcut, type a tag
  • Support auto-completion when looking for a tag
  • Tags can be created on the spot or predefined
  • Support batch tagging of multiple items
  • Tagging should work on search results to easily tag a set of items you've found.

Joomla

Joomla lovers will be spending October experimenting with the newly released Joomla 3.8. This new release features over 300 improvements to the popular open source CMS, with two major features aimed at developers:

  • New Routing System: The new routing system gives users more control over their URL structure, including the often requested ability to remove IDs from URLs
  • Joomla! 4 Compatibility Layer: The development of Joomla! 4 has made some changes in how the core code is structured by migrating classes to use PHP namespaces. Joomla! 3.8 includes a mapping layer to allow developers to use the older class names while being able to take advantage of the new class name structure.

Joomla also recently announced The Joomla World Conference, taking place in Rome Nov. 17.

DNN  

In August, ESW Capital acquired DNN Software to further invest in the CMS platform and open source ecosystem. 

On Oct. 2, Clint Patterson announced he is rejoining DNN. Patterson, who was Sales Engineer and Training Manager at DNN Software from 2012 to 2015, rejoins as Ecosystem Manager. In his new role, Patterson will collaborate with all members of the DNN ecosystem: developers, practitioners, partners, integrators and ISVs.

Separately, the company is planning to release DNN 9.2 in the fourth quarter, a major release that will include a command-line interface (DNN Prompt), Asset Manager, Page Manager refresh, Module settings refresh and a Connectors API.

Other Open Source Headlines

The open-source cross-platform document-oriented database program MongoDB will also be hosting an event in San Francisco on Oct. 12, 2017.

Additionally, the Open Source Summit Europe 2017 will be held in Prague from Oct. 24 to 28, 2017.

Looking a little further ahead, Liferay is preparing for its annual London-based Liferay Digital Solutions Forum (LDSF) happening on Nov. 8. NopCommerce, an open source ecommerce platform, is also readying for its annual NopCommerce Days Conference, which will be held in New York City Nov. 16 to 17, 2017.

A Busy Final Quarter

As we cruise the last quarter of 2017, we can expect to see major releases from DNN, SilverStripe and WordPress at the very least.