MidCOM 2.6.0 released

This is the first MgdSchema-driven version of MidCOM that is able to utilize features found in latest Midgard releases.

MidCOM is the default Content Management interface in Midgard CMS, and provides developers a production-proven architecture for building new web applications. With the MidCOM framework PHP applications have powerful localization, configuration, style handling and data abstraction features.

Changes in MidCOM 2.6 series

This release has brought a lot of changes to the MidCOM framework:

* New on-site editing interface

  - Floating menu bar for accessing all site management features
  - AJAX "click to edit" WYSIWYG editing of content
  - Integrated contextual help screens
  - User interface messages powered by ProtoGrowl
  - Drag and drop navigation organization

* Datamanager2 - rewritten data rendering and editing system

  - TinyMCE for WYSIWYG editing
  - Integrated image and file insertion pop-up
  - New widgets like an AJAX "chooser" and CAPTCHA entry
  - Schemas can be used as page types used in style template loading and CSS
    body classes

* Database Abstraction Layer for all MgdSchema types

  - Access Control Lists (ACLs) for managing permissions
  - Integrated Revision Control System (RCS) enabling browsing and reverting
    changes in all content
  - Event handlers and triggers for different database activities
  - Components can register their own MgdSchema types
  - Components can register _watchers_ to get notified about changes in database
  - Automatic handling of access control and content visibility checks when
    fetching objects

* PEAR packaging

  - MidCOM is now fully PEAR packaged and available in the
    _pear.midcom-project.org_ channel
  - Components can be installed and upgraded as separate PEAR packages
  - Support for inter-package dependencies
  - _Style packages_ support for installing new style templates
  - Prototype and Script.aculo.us javascript libraries come bundled with MidCOM

* Performance improvements

  - Largely refactored Navigation Access Point (NAP) system for better
    performance
  - Possibility to use _memcached_ for caching ACL and object tree information
  - Possibility to use Squid for caching generated pages

* New libraries available

  - midcom.services.at - Scheduled execution of operations
  - fi.protie.navigation - Flexible site navigation renderer
  - org.openpsa.notifications - User notification library supporting email, SMS
    and other means of notifying
  - net.nemein.ping - Weblog update ping notifier
  - org.routamc.positioning - Geographical positioning of users and content,
    making MidCOM a Geospatial Content Management System (GeoCMS)
  - net.nemein.tag - Content tagging and retrieval using folksonomies
  - org.openpsa.qbpager - Paged browsing interface for Query Builder results
  - ...and many more. There are over 70 MidCOM components available in public

Requirements and installation

This release requires Midgard 1.7.6 or newer and PHP 4.3 or newer.

Midgard 1.7 users must manually upgrade their PEAR installation and make some changes to the database format. With Midgard 1.8 the database changes and package installations are automatically handled by Datagard.

Installation of MidCOM is outlined here:
http://www.midgard-project.org/documentation/installing-midcom-with -pear

Upgrading

Upgrading from MidCOM 2.4 is outlined here:

http://www.midgard-project.org/documentation/upgrading-midcom-from-2-4-to-2-6/

Issue tracking

Please file your bug reports and enhancement requests in the Midgard Gforge issue tracker:

http://gforge.nehmer.net/tracker/?group_id=6

More information

Tarjei Huse, maintainer
tarjei@nu.no

Henri Bergius, core developer
henri.bergius@iki.fi