Exponent CMS News

.96 security patch and deprecation

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:03:19 +0100

A few helpful updates for everyone. First, we have provided a security patch for you .96 installs. Many of you are still running some really old Exponent code, so we want to make sure you guys have the latest patches to keep them running smooth. It is strongly recommended you

download and install these patches immediately.

There are two files in this patch that are important:

files/.htaccess
modules/filemanagermodule/actions/picker.php

Just upload them to those exact places on your website, in your current install of Exponent .96 and they will take care of some known security issues. Make sure you don't miss the .htaccess file, it will be invisible on you system in some cases (if you are not familiar with web development).

.96 will no longer formally be supported

Second, we want to encourage everyone to move on from the .96 codeline into .97. The .97 codeline is the current stable version, and we have a pre-beta release of the new 2.0 codeline available as well. Both of these are currently the focus of attention, and we will not continue to support .96 or provide patches.

Thank you all for your continued support of Exponent CMS!

Web Design Company Online Innovative Creations (OIC Group, Inc.) launches new website

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:21:54 +0100

Peoria, Illinois based web design, web hosting and web application development company, OIC Group, Inc., undergoes re-branding as 'Online Innovative Creations Group'; Launches new website Nov. 3.

PEORIA, IL, November 3, 2009 – Online Innovative Creations (OIC Group, Inc.), a web design company, announces the launch of its newly-redesigned website. This is the first redesign of the Online Innovative Creations website since 2005.

“We are excited and proud of our new website, as this achieves a significant milestone in our on-going marketing efforts,” said Fred Dirkse, president and co-founder of Online Innovative Creations. “2009 has seen OIC expand into two new markets [Atlanta, Georgia and San Diego, California], with Cedar Rapids, Iowa on the horizon for 2010.

“Our new website showcases the quality of our work, as well as the power of our open source content management system, Exponent CMS, and will be a key tool in our continued success in the web design and web development market.”

The Online Innovative Creations website features a portfolio of recently developed websites that feature a wide range of features and industries with everything from E-commerce to non-profit organizations. The new website also features an informational web marketing blog and a “Tools and Features” section for OIC's flagship product, the Exponent Content Management System. The “Tools and Features” section includes screen shots and descriptions of Exponent CMS content modules and E-commerce features.

The new Online Innovative Creations website was developed using the Exponent Content Management System. Exponent CMS is an open source content management software system giving non-technical users the ability to update and administrate their website content using an easy in-line administration interface. Visit the new OIC website for more information and screen shots of Exponent CMS tools and features visit. For more information on the Exponent CMS open source project, visit the open source cms project online.

Founded in 2001, Online Innovative Creations is a privately-held website design company headquartered in Peoria, Illinois. OIC specializes in developing highly-functional and easy to edit websites using its own Content Management System software. OIC is a full-service web marketing company offering Web and Email Hosting, Search Engine Optimization and Link Building services, Pay-Per-Click Advertising Management, Email Marketing services, Social Marketing services and custom PHP web application development. Online Innovative Creations has regional offices in Atlanta, Georgia, Carlsbad, California and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

For more information on Online Innovative Creations (OIC Group, Inc.), visit the web design company online or call (309) 680-5600.

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Exponent Presentation Posted

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:38:02 +0100

Well we ran into a few technical difficulties getting the web conference software set up. It turns out that Adobe ConnectPro requires Flash 10 where as simply Adobe Connect that we had tested on only requires Flash 9. It took a bit to get all the computers updated. If I remember correctly, we finally got started about 6:45 - 7 instead of 6:30.

The good news is that we did get the presentation recorded. Head on over and check it out.

www.screencast.com/users/MarkDuBois/folders/WOW/media/d3327a36-adaa-4701-a448-ae8af56e2a8b

Aftward, slide over to the forum to let us know what you thought our follow up questions.

Regards,
Jonathan Worent

OIC Invited to Give Exponent Presentation to Local World Organization of Webmasters Chapter

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:44:59 +0100

Online Innovative Creations has been invited by the World Organization of Webmasters, Central Illinois chapter to give a presentation on Exponent.

First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jonathan Worent. You may know me better from the forums as pebcak_error. I have been a developer with Online Innovative Creations for a few months now. Outside of OIC, I am also the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) Central Illinois chapter president.

Being the WOW chapter President, Exponent user, and OIC Senior Web Developer, I am in a unique position. I have twisted the rest of the OIC team’s arms to give a presentation on Exponent at our next WOW meeting (Oct. 15th 6:30pm CST). Normally, our meetings are in person (and private as there are dues to be a World Organization of Webmasters member). But as an Exponent user (and developer) I wanted to try to get you, the Exponent Community involved.

We are going to attempt to broadcast the WOW meeting as a web conference so that you guys can listen in on the Exponent presentation. I only have 40 connections available. They will be on a first come first served basis so you’ll need to email directly for more information.

October 15th
6:30 PM CST
Only 40 spots available
Email jonathan@oicgroup.net for information.

Follow Exponent CMS on Twitter!

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:07:00 +0100

The open source Exponent CMS project has now joined the Twitter social networking page.

Follow @exponentcms for the latest updates on development enhancements, code releases, webinars and other happenings with the Exponent CMS project!

URL: http://www.twitter.com/exponentcms

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Exponent 2.0 Preview Release

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:39:57 +0100

The Exponent 2.0 codeline has now become Open Source and available for download.

This release of the code is targeted towards developers and community members wishing to get more involved in documentation and bug testing. Over the last month, us here at Online Innovative Creations have shifted our focus towards getting the systems and guidelines in place to allow for more community involvement in the development process.

Although us here at OIC are very pleased with how Exponent's new framework is shaping up, we don't feel it has the polish you'd expect from a beta release. We also don't want to miss out on the valuable input and help we stand to gain from the community who's itching to get their hands on the code.

You can download a copy of the current MVC codeline on exponentframework.org. Be sure to check out the latest Developer Blog before you get started to know what to expect from on install.

Thanks to those community members who've been so patient (and persistent!) in getting in to the new code. Your support has been encouraging.

Playing with Matches posted

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:57:06 +0100

A big thank you to those of you who were able to attend the second in Online Innovative Creation's series of Exponent 2.0 Webinars held last Wednesday. There were 32 of you in attendance, of which we got some very good feedback.

The entire screencast can be found under our developer blog section on exponentframework.org:
http://exponentframework.org/blog/playing-with-matches/

Our next webinar entitled "Burning the Canvas" is slated to air around the 17th of this month, so stay tuned!

Exponent 2.0 Webinar Episode #2 : Playing with Matches

Tue, 19 May 2009 18:01:56 +0100

Come one, come all to the next installment of of the Exponent 2.0 Webinar series: “Playing with Matches”. The webinar will start at 9:00am CST on May 27th.

Overview
In this episode, Adam Kessler of Online Innovative Creations will be taking a deeper look in to the code of the new Exponent Framework. We'll be covering the constructs of the framework, looking specifically at how Exponent applies the MVC architecture pattern.

Keynote
We'll start the webinar with a 15 – 20 minute keynote showcasing the file structure, methodologies applied, development patterns, and the tools available to the developer. The keynote will showcase the importance we've placed on code re-use and extendability.

Demonstration
From there, Adam will demonstrate building a fully featured module (complete with attachable files, tags, and comments) from start to finish in just 15 minutes, showing just how fast and easy it is under the new Exponent Framework.

Sign up to attend
You can sign up now via the link below. Hope to see you there!

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/220634122

Camp Fire Follow Up

Wed, 13 May 2009 22:31:02 +0100

On the 29th of April, Online Innovative Creations presented a webinar showcasing the new and vastly improved features of Exponent 2.0 an the new framework in which it was written on. The event turned out a total 39 attendees, asking a number of very good questions in the question and answer session following the presentation.

As we move forward, we'll be documenting our progress on exponentframework.org, a site we've specifically launched to help incoming Exponent developers stay organized and in good development processes. It's here, we've posted the videos (the webinar itself, and the 2 “lost in translation” videos) for community viewing and commenting. Here's the link:
http://exponentframework.org/exponent-framework-developers-blog

Stay tuned for more on the next webinar coming in the next couple weeks. This webinar will get deeper in to the code, highlighting the power and ease in the rapid development of custom modules within the new Exponent Framework.

Thanks again to all who attended Camp fire, and we look forward to seeing even more eager coders in “Playing with Matches”.

Exponent 2.0 feature focus teaser : Attachable Files

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:44:19 +0100

The ability to attach files to any type of content is just one of the many new features being showcased in the Exponent 2.0 webinar tomorrow night.

All modules in the new Exponent have a configuration option to use Attachable Files. You can then select from a list of display types for your files to display as.

Once your module is configured, the Attachable Item selector becomes available in your module's edit form.

You can now add multiple files to your module.

These files will now be displayed with your content, dependent on what configured view you've selected.

Done are they days of creating file upload forms on a per-module basis. Attaching files to your content is just one of the many things Exponent now does for you.

Learn about Attachable Files and more April 29th at the Exponent 2.0 Webinar.

Exponent CMS 2.0: Sneak Peak Peek Invite

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:07:03 +0100

As everyone who's ever signed up for an account on this site is surely aware that yesterday we (OIC Group) sent out an announcement newsletter for our upcoming webinar on the 29th of this month. I'm sure another good handful of you also noticed we that misspelled the word "peek", which was spelled "peak". We had a good laugh over it, despite our itch of frustration that even a thorough comb-over of the content still left us misspelling the subject line itself. We'll let it be what it is though: a testament of our humanity. We do hope that you'll find the common ground there at least, and join us on the 29th for our Exponent 2.0 Kickoff.

Exponent 2.0 Open Source Debut
Online Innovative Creations (aka OIC Group) cordially invites you to join us for the first in a series of webinars leading to the official Exponent 2.0 Alpha Release in early July, 2009. The kick-off webinar entitled Camp Fire will be held the 29th of April at 6PM CST. Details are below, along with RSVP information.

The New Exponent
We've been quiet over the last year (admittedly TOO quiet), however, Online Innovative Creations has been diligently re-working the core code of Exponent. Based on an MVC architectural pattern, the resulting codebase is a robust framework offering rapid application development, a drastic increase in code re-usage, and a drastic decrease in code duplication.

The Administrative Interface has also undergone major enhancements, allowing an Exponent Administrator to quickly and more effectively manage all types of content, including Exponent's new and highly customizable E-commerce system, complete with online event registration.

While the new Exponent sports a new and powerful engine under the hood, the intuitive nature you've come to love about the system remains as the cornerstone concept for future development.

The Webinars
The goal of these webinars is to not only show off the powerhouse of flexibility that Exponent has become, but also to gather community support and feedback. More than ever, we are commited to making Exponent 2.0 a successful, well-managed open source project.

Each webinar will start with a condensed half hour presentation of the topic at hand, followed by a question and answer session. All episodes will be hosted via Go-To-Webinar, and each episode will be screen-casted and published on exponentcms.org shortly following the episode.

Exponent Webinar Episode #1: Camp Fire
April 29th, 6:00pm CST

Online Innovative Creations will be showcasing a high level overview of the many new features in the Exponent 2.0 release coming in July, 2009.

Presentation Highlights:

a high-level overview of the MVC architecture and the development benefits gained
a showcase of new UI and Administrative features
highlights of our extreme search engine friendliness
new E-Commerce system
new file picker with on-the-fly Image Editing
new module configuration

You can sign up for the webinar here:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/412114850
Space is limited.

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing
information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements:
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees:
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

A big thanks to the Exponent Community for your continued support. We hope you're as excited as we are! If you're not yet, we think you will be soon!

Online Innovative Creations (OIC Group), Inc.

0.96.6 themes updated for 0.97

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:42:18 +0100

Maia Good has taken all of the themes that were previously shipped with 0.96, and converted them to 0.97 themes.

The newly converted Exponent ^CMS themes are now available for download.

Here's what was done:

Put the exponent_theme_headerInfo() function in the 0.97 way
Put the exponent_theme_footerInfo() function in
Created a css folder for the css file
If more than one css file was named in the index.php, they were combined so the CSS would stay in the same order as they were mentioned int the index.php
Left any unused css (not mentioned in the index.php) either as filename.css_orig or in an original folder under CSS folder
Adjusted navigation for a couple of themes so they would show correctly
put :focus wherever there was :hover (Maia couldn't help herself, she's the hover/focus crusader ;)

These conversions have not been thoroughly tested. The main concern was to get them functioning in 0.97.

We hope you find them useful!

Exponent Community Shout Out for April

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:43:33 +0100

This month, for our first installment of the Exponent Community Shout Out, we're tipping our hat to Maia Good: an avid Exponent user, promoter, contributor, designer, developer, and all around web savant.

Maia has been an active member of the community since its inception back in 2004, participating heavily in building the community ever since. You'll undoubtably know Maia best as maiagood in the Exponent forums. Maia participates daily in helping to solve whatever issues arise. Maia has also written a very detailed theming tutorial for the Exponent 0.97 release.

Focusing her attention closely on accessibility, Maia's sites reflect that attention to detail with excellent content structure. “vesta.org is one of my favorite sites because of how well I structured the content, and how easy it is to navigate, especially for a bilingual site," Maia starts. "I also like the variety of types of content – text, photos, videos - all shown in a pleasing, and easy to find way on casieplatt.com. crisislab.com is a very simple, very effective with comments both on news and movies. I guess I'm biased on this one because I also like the movies content a lot.”

“Exponent is simple to use whether you are a designer / web developer or a person managing content updates.” Maia said when asked what she likes most about Exponent. “As a designer you can define what content to display and how to display it simply creating a Smarty template file which uses the CSS you want, putting it all into your own theme area, and with no need to change core files. As a content manager Exponent allows you to add, modify, and delete content by selecting the appropriate module for the type of content you are working with, whether it's a FAQ, or a calendar of events, in a WYSIWYG environment, there's no need to learn a different interface.”

Aside from spending an exorbitant amount of time playing with all things Exponent, Maia has done (and still continues to do) quite a bit of traveling in her life. “We have a home in Maryland, and currently one in Turkey. I have traveled extensively. I have been to over 30 different countries and have lived in six of them (Brazil, US, Germany, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey) for more than one year,” says Maia.

Recently, Online Innovative Creations (OIC Group, we're re-branding [new site in the works]) asked Maia if she would help us out by taking the reins as the Exponent Community Lead. She's since been very busy and was instrumental in working with us to get the 0.97 release out the door.

On behalf of us here at OIC Group and the rest of the Exponent Community, we say thanks a million Maia! Exponent wouldn't be what it is without you.

0.97 Stable is here

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:03:05 +0100

The Exponent Development Team is proud to announce the release of Exponent 0.97.0 GA. The code has undergone rigorous testing, bug fixing, and cleanup. We feel this is our best release yet, with many new features and enhancements that continue to make Exponent simple.

Feature Highlight of 0.97.0

Deeper integration with The YAHOO! User Interface (YUI) Library.

Many components now take advantage of YUI's JS and CSS framework, including Navigation Management, News, Calendar, Image Gallery, Navigation Module Views, and the administrative chrome. A very tight integration with YUI Loader also provides a great framework for YUI Developers to quickly get scripts up and going, letting Exponent and YUI handle the work of figuring out dependencies.

Drag and Drop Tree style navigation management.

Organize your pages with ease by barreling down through your navigation in tree style format, quickly adding, editing, and deleting pages. An administrator may decide at any moment to re-arrange the site structure, and can do so easily within seconds by dragging and dropping single pages or whole hierarchy wherever they see fit.

Pod Casting

The Resource Module got a significant upgrade, now allowing it to be configured to Podcast. Upload you MP3's, videos, and other media files that will allow others to subscribe, and automatically download your casts to their favorite podcatcher, like iTunes.

RSS Syndication

The News Module is now capable of pulling in and displaying RSS feeds from any RSS source. You can mix your news posts in with your RSS syndications, seamlessly displaying posts from both Exponent's News Modules and non-Exponent sources alike.

Navigation Module and YUI

YUI's Menus and Menubar have been ported as standard views in the Navigation Module, coming in 4 different flavors: YUI Top Nav, YUI Top Nav JS, YUI Side Nav, and YUI Side Nav JS. The Top Nav and Side Nav views will display the same as their JS alternatives, only differing in the style in which the menus are built; for example, YUI Side Nav is built by progressively enhancing markup on the page, while YUI Side Nav JS is built from Javascript. YUI Side Nav offers more flexibility to designers who're better with HTML and CSS, but lack in Javascript, while the YUI Side Nav JS view offers much greater speeds on sites with large hierarchies (http://ci.peoria.il.us).

Minification Engine and CSS inclusion

Creating, managing, and minifying your CSS has never been easier. As a designer develops their Exponent theme, they can simply create and drop their stylesheet documents into their theme's CSS directory, and Exponent will automatically include your document in your site. The way in which Exponent will include your stylesheets depends on wether or not the DEVELOPMENT flag is set. In the administration control panel, by turning error reporting on, this will include all CSS files in the head of your document. When error reporting is then toggled, all CSS files are gathered up, minified as one document, allowing for much faster load times.

The {script} plugin

The script plugin solves another of the problems defined by YAHOO! (http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html). By wrapping your inline javascripts in {script} {/script} within any modules view files, your scripts are removed from their location in the document, and moved to the bottom of your document before execution, thus allowing the visual page to download without the javascript processing overhead. YUI Loader is built in the {script} plugin, allowing to load both YUI and non-yui scripts as a dependency for execution.

Looking Forward

As excited as we are about the 0.97.0 release, we have even more exciting plans for the future of Exponent. Exponent is very easy to use and administrate currently, and very soon it will be combined with ease of development. We've been working hard behind the scenes to deliver a product that will set Exponent apart from other CMS's and bring it to the forefront as the leader in the Content Management Arena. Stay tuned for more on how you can get involved in the process.

Update to Job Openings

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:33:14 +0100

The OIC Group has filled their project management position, and is now in search of a Rockstar Developer.

Read the updated job description here.

2008 Open Source CMS Awards

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:09:34 +0100

Packt Publishing is running their 2008 Open Source CMS Awards now. Please make sure to go and nominate Exponent. Because of the requirements we are only really in the running for a couple of categories and give us the best chance of making the finals we are asking that all users who want to nominate Exponent CMS nominate it in the Best Open Source PHP CMS category.

Make sure you go to Packt's website and nominate Exponent today!

Exponent CMS Job Openings

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:55:01 +0100

We are currently hiring for one full time position - *Rock Star* Developer.

Exponent 0.97 Beta

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:29:07 +0100

Exponent 0.97 Beta is out the door and in to the light of the public eye. With tons of bug fixes and many interface, speed, and architectural enhancements, this release of Exponent is the most promising yet.

Security Patch Released

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:24:02 +0100

A minor security vulnerability was reported where a malicious user could create an account using certain tags as their username, firstname, lastname or email address which would cause javascript errors in the user administration interface.

This patch will update the files to necessary to clean the data before it gets added to the database to safeguard against these attacks.

This vulnerability applies to all versions of Exponent. Patches have made for all releases, including the 97.0-Alpha.

The patch can be applied using the Extension Upload utility or you can simply unzip the package in your root Exponent directory to overwrite the old files with the new patched versions.

The patch can be downloaded here.

0.97 is here

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:02:46 +0100

Download and try out your new Exponent 0.97 Alpha. More blogs and docs to come.

Stylesheet Files - Faster and More Flexible

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:29:33 +0100

Exponent version 0.97 will include several changes to how CSS files are structured, included, and stored on the file system. The goals for these changes were: a) To improve download speed for sites using Exponent; and b) To simplify CSS style cascading for themes.

Improved Download Speed

To improve the download speed Exponent now compresses and combines all CSS files and creates just one file to be downloaded. This improves download speed both by transmitting less information and also by keeping the http requests to an absolute minimum, as suggested by Yahoo's "Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site".

CSS File Compression

Compression is not really the correct word. What we do is: minify. "minify" was a Google "Summer of Code" project that takes as input CSS and/or javascript files and outputs a minimal version of them. "minify" strips out whitespaces, linebreaks, unnecessary punctuation, and comments and outputs a one line version of the file with the smallest possible file size.

An advantage to this "minify" process is that it allows us to be verbose and comment our CSS and javascript files, which makes them easier to maintain. We don't have to worry that our comments and indents are adding to the size of the page download. All information unnecessary at runtime will be stripped and will not be part of the download. Go ahead and comment your stylesheets to your heart's content. One month from now you will not remember why the <ul class="em"> has a red background, unless you put in /* This list is used for emergency information and the boss wants all emergency information to have a red background */

Combined Stylesheet Files

We now collect all the stylesheet files and pass them to the new PHP class called minify. The files are both stripped of unnecessary information and combined as one file in the output: /exponent/tmp/css/exp-styles-min.css. This combined file is the complete CSS needed for the theme and will create only one http request thus speeding page download.

A second advantage then to this "minify" process is that we can be flexible with the file structure. We don't have to have just one very long and unmanageable style.css file to keep the http requests down. We can have many different files while developing. We can match our CSS files to our views, making it simpler to find the styles that affect a specific module and view. And in the end, no matter how many CSS files our theme has, there will only be one http request for CSS during page download.

Flexible and Manageable Stylesheets

Stylesheets are intended to be flexible. Their "cascade-ability" allows for styles to be defined and redefined as needed. The style for a given entity is applied as a combination of the definitions with the last value given for any attribute being the value used.

Typically there is one file with the basic styles for a site (which becomes larger and larger, and more and more confusing as styles are tested and changed), and maybe another one or two for specific features of the site, a drop-down menu, or a popup image gallery. Exponent now makes it easier to keep styles manageable by allowing files to be used which are specific for a module and module view. Let me explain this new hierarchy and how Exponent loads the stylesheets to be combined.

Files Cascade Hierarchy

Stylesheets are now in a file hierarchy as follows:


   /exponent
      /themes
         /common
            /css
               /required
         /<mytheme>
            /css
               /required

This hierarchical file structure provides a default order of inclusion for CSS files to allow for proper cascading of styles.

File Loading Order

The order of style definitions is the most important thing about cascading style sheets. Using the file hierarchy Exponent will load stylesheets in order, allowing for styles to be redefined by a designer in the <mytheme> directories. Here is how it works.

Exponent will first load the required stylesheets located in /exponent/themes/common/css/required. Any stylesheets included in this directory are assumed required by the system in order to display correctly.

Upon finding a file in the above directory, Exponent will immediately look inside /exponent/themes/<mytheme>/css/required/ for a file of the same name. For example, if admin.css exists in /exponent/themes/common/css/required/, Exponent will look inside /exponent/themes/<mytheme>/css/required/ for admin.css. If it finds the file, Exponent will include this file directly after the one from the common area. This allows CSS rules defined in /exponent/themes/<mytheme>/css/required/admin.css to override CSS rules defined in /themes/common/css/required/admin.css.

This is done for all files in the common CSS directory, and in the end Exponent will place any theme specific files. For more details about configuring and debugging your cascading stylesheets read the blog post "Applying Styles to Themes in Exponent 0.97."

... and There is More

There is a lot more in the works to make Exponent faster, more flexible, and more robust. Check back soon. We'll be telling you about creating your forms in module views, and chaining different modules, and much more.

Real-Person Friendly (RPF) URLs

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:26:51 +0100

SEF URLs are ready and working in Exponent 0.97. We all have been waiting to checkmark that box in site configuration and use friendly URLs for our sites.

The wait is over and was worth it. The Exponent Team has gone one step further in their implementation of Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs. They have made them what I call Real-Person Friendly (RPF) URLs. Search engines don't like URLs that look like:

http://www.mydomain.com/index.php?section=13

or even worse:

http://localhost/alpha097_0210/index.php?action=view&id=1&module=newsmodule&src=%40random41940a897e943

Do you know any real person that likes them? Sure, we have grown accustomed to getting these long strings in our emails and knowing that we have to cut and paste all the lines in the email to get that one long mysterious address that only a machine can understand. And we hope they do. But, just like the search engines real people don't like these URLs.

We have also been told that if we want our pages to be indexed by search engines to bring traffic to our site, we should get our programmers to change these URLs to something without the ?, &, and other punctuation. It's done in Exponent and, like I said, the Team went one step further. Let me explain.

All SEF URLs are not RPF URLs

A lot of implementations of SEF URLs took the transformation of the URL just one step. A URL like:

http://www.mydomain.com/index.php?section=13

became:

http://www.mydomain.com/index.php/section/13

No more punctuation and the search engines are happy. But, for us humans it's no better, there is no hint about the content we want to see. The Exponent implementation gives us that and more.

Exponent SEF URL = RPF URL

Assuming the URL http://www.mydomain.com/index.php?section=13 is a page in your site that you named News you can now give it the SEF name "news" and the URL in Exponent will now be:

http://www.mydomain.com/news/

Yes! Search engines are happy and so are we, the real people. We can all understand that.

Requirements

To use SEF Urls in Exponent your web server must use Apache and support mod_rewrite and .htaccess files. The Apache website has information on installing and configuring mod_rewrite. SEF URLs do not work for IIS servers.

Creating SEF names

Creating SEF names for sections is a simple task and the names are saved in the section definition. Remember, you do need go to to Configure Site and enable the checkbox for SEF URLs for these names to actually work.

You have two choices for creating the SEF name:

Allow Exponent to create them automatically.
Create your own.

If you use choice 1, Exponent will automatically create friendly URLs from the name of the page section by transforming the name into all lowercase letters and replacing any spaces with a hyphen. If your section name is "About Us" then the URL friendly name for it is "http://www.mydomain.com/about-us/".

If you use choice 2, you can be more flexible and decide yourself what each section is called. Maybe you'd rather not have hyphens, then you could just give your section an SEF name of "aboutus". It's your choice.

Exponent will also create SEF URLs for actions in the form:

http://www.mydomain.com/module/action/var1/value1.../varN/valueN

No more 404 File Not Found Error

This is the friendliest thing about the Exponent implementation of SEF URL. An incorrectly written URL no longer will show a 404 File Not Found error. Exponent will use the search module capability to show the results of the best match to the URL typed. For example, assume you sent your friend a URL http://www.mydomain.com/events/ Your friend rather than cut and paste just remembered that you sent a URL about an event coming up and types...

http://www.mydomain.com/event

Here is where the implementation for Exponent shines. Exponent will search for "event" and show the results, which will give your friend a chance at simply clicking on the right link.

For more technical details on the Exponent SEF URL implementation please read the blog on this subject.

No more tables in forms!

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:02:28 +0100

The news that Phillip posted on 01/25/08 shows that there are many, many improvements in the works for Exponent soon. Don't miss reading his post. There's so much there!

I'm trying out the new Exponent and will be writing here to tell you the news. Today I want to point out one more feature for that release which is near and dear to me - the Exponent Forms subsystem no longer uses tables!!!

Remember this default contact module?

Remember trying to style it or any other form in Exponent? Of course. We're still doing it. But, 0.97 will change that.

Here is the new default view for the contact module:

And here is a piece of the code for the default view:

<div id="nameControl" class="control">
   <label><span class="label">Your Name</span>
   <input type="text" id="name" name="name" value="" size="30" /></label>
 </div>
 <br />
 <div id="emailControl" class="control">
   <label>
     <span class="label">Your Email Address</span>
     <input type="text" id="email" name="email" value="" size="30" />
   </label>
 </div>

Looking at the code you will see that we will have easy control over how our forms, labels, inputs, buttons look. Information is in <div>s, with <id>s and classes giving us very specific control about style.

Do you want the labels to be next to the input areas rather than on top? Change your css, add:

span.label { float: left; padding-right: 1em; }

And voilà!!!

You want the labels and the inputs to be centered, with the labels text right justified? Yes, change your css.

span.label { float: left; padding-right: 1em; width: 28%; text-align: right; }

I have gotten carried away with this topic. It is, like I said before, near and dear to me. Next time I'll try to give you news, rather than a tutorial... ;-)

I'm looking forward to the 0.97 release and I'm sure that if you are all reading the news here, you will also be happy to see it happen soon.

0.97 - alpha sneak peak

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:06:22 +0100

The Exponent team is wrapping up development for its 0.97-alpha release of Exponent. We've packed so many new and exciting features into this release, we had to skip the 96.7 release, and round it up a notch. Read on to sneak a peek and what's to come.

New Theme
We'll be shipping default with a new theme called Coolwater, a theme created by Erwin Aligam and released on Styleshout.com.

Administration Quick Links
Makes it quick and easy to get certain tasks done, including the Preview functionality, logout, change password, etc...

Cleanup for Admin Panel default view.
A much prettier interface for the traditional admin toolbar.

New Admin Container Chrome.
Permissions and actions for modules are being migrated to flyout menus, and soon here, we'll move all module level permissions in to those menus. Currently, a hard coded module will not have this chrome as it is provided by the container module's default view, where hard coded modules bypass container all together. The HTML and menu's will soon be taken care of in subsystems/template.php.

FCK Editor Enhancements
Larger editing area, styles now viewable within editing area, more concise control over HTML output, and much more configurable on the theme level.

CSS Engine
With new configuration options passed to exponent_theme_headerinfo(), you can allow exponent to use YUI's reset-fonts-grids.css, include CSS files from the common directory, and include all CSS files within themes/mytheme/css/ and themes/mytheme. Once the files are gathered, they are run through a minifaction process, combining the CSS into one file for inclusion, reducing page load time.

Image Gallery
Image Gallery now has configuration options for thumbnail size and popup size. What's nice here is that the gallery will check to see if you've changed the size of your popups or thumbnails, and rebuild them if needed.

Also, the default image gallery popup window is now built to use a YUI panel to display the image, adding a very nice display for popup images.

In the works is a slideshow view for image gallery, which might not make it's way in to the alpha release, but most definitely will be there for GA.

Printer Friendly
A printer friendly function can now be added to your theme, allowing a configurable environment for allowing visitors to fire off a printer friendly window of your page content.

Search Engine Friendly URLs
We finally got SEF URLs. Configurable in Exponent's Site Configuration, each page in an exponent site can now be accessed in a search engine friendly way. As a kicker to Exponent's SEF system, is that specific blog posts, news posts, or any other content can be added to a router map file, allowing you to fully customize your search engine friendly URLs. The icing on the cake for Exponent's SEF's: typing in an incorrect SEF URL will automatically fire off Exponent's search function, returning to the visitor a list of possible matches for the SEF name it could not match. Adios 404 errors!

Google Translation Module
The google translation feature is now an addable module in Exponent. This module was originally created and contributed by Imran Somji. It was cleaned up slightly and will now ship default with Exponent.

YUI Menubar
With Exponent's tight integration with the YAHOO! User Interface library, we're now shipping with "YUI Top Nav" as a view for Navigator Module. The folks at YUI have done a great job in creating an excellent and easy to style solution for flyout menus, and we've integrated them into Exponent.

And this is just the short of it. Stay tuned for our up and coming release, along with a detailed feature list, demo's and how-to's to help everyone make the best use of Exponent!

Security Patch for 0.96.6

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:08:03 +0100

All Exponent 0.96.6 users are recommened to patch your installations with the following patch, which addresses a vulnerability in the file management interface.

Download whichever patch package below that you prefer. Install manually by extracting over top of your existing Exponent installation, or upload and install via the Upload Extension feature of the Administration module. As always, BACKUP your site first:

Zipped: exponent-0.96.6-GA-patch-1.tar.zip
Tar Bzip: exponent-0.96.6-GA-patch-1.tar.bz2
Tar Gzip: exponent-0.96.6-GA-patch-1.tgz

Thank you,

Exponent Development Team

Flickr Module Contributed

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:18:09 +0100

Robert Brinson has contributed Flickr Image Gallery Module for Exponent 0.96.6. It is available for download on the Module Contributions page

This module will pull the photo sets and photographs from the Flickr account for which the gallery is configured. It makes use of the phpFlickr library version 2.1.0 and Lightbox version 2.02. Once the module is configured, visitors to the site will see photo sets for the configured Flickr account displayed as a list of image galleries. A user can then select a photo set to view the photographs contained in the photo set. A selected photo is then displayed using the Lightbox script to overlay the photograph within the current page. Please post questions/bugs in this forum.

Developer Blogs

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:45:52 +0100

Now that the 0.96.6 release is out the door, we're gettin our blog on!

Be sure to check out our new developer blogs. Adam Kessler (Cletus) and myself (Phillip Ball - OptionDelete) will be keeping you up to date on the latest developments in all things Exponent.

Give us your comments and feedback, and let us know what you think about what we have to say.

0.96.6-GA Released

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:23:08 +0100

The 0.96.6-GA release is now available for download on sourceforge. This release the stable build of 96.6. If you are upgrading from 96.5 or 06.3 there are lots of new features and modules available in this new version.

If you have already upgraded to 96.6 Alpha or Beta this release mostly includes bug fixes.

Below is the list of changes from 96.6-Beta to 96.6-GA. For a full list of changes and please see the CHANGELOG file in the package.

Added / Fixed in 0.96.6 GA
-----------------------

Added ability to specify the quality of the image generated by the thumbnailer.
Added MySQLi Database option. Use the MySQLi database interface for improved MySQL performance.
Added new i18n strings.
Added database encoding check to the createTable function in MySQL class.
Fixes to links generated in search results.
Fixed session timeout check comparing against the string "true" instead of the value true.
Fixed bug in news module with permissions regardling the workflow system.
Fixed bug in resource module download script. Now sends proper headers for download which are recognized by all modern browsers.
Fixed bug in EditorControl which would cause installation problems on PHP4 servers.
Fixed bug which would cause pagination to show an extra, empty page under certain circumstances.
Fixed a bug which was preventing links from being deleted from linklist module
Fixed issue where an upgrade from 96.3 or 96.5 to 96.6 would cause a calendar in the Monthly view to not be shown.
Fixed a bug where a session could timeout mid-post when saving on the bbmodule.
Fixed bugs in file manager which was causing deletes to not be processed correctly.
Removed Image Workshop module and Directory Listing module from release.
Contact form will now use the sender's email address if available to allow for direct replies.
Install Wizard will remove improperly named wizard_pages file from datatypes directory which existed in 96.6 alpha
Icons converted to gif format for better load performance in Internet Explorer.
Many other various cleanups in views.

Exponent 0.96.6 Beta Released

Wed, 23 May 2007 22:40:02 +0100

The new Beta version for 0.96.6 has been released. This release fixes many bugs and features a handful of enhancements and a couple new features. Download, test, enjoy!

Exponent Development Team

New User Guide

Fri, 18 May 2007 10:48:57 +0100

A new version of the User/Editor's Guide was released yesterday (May 17, 2007). This guide has been updated for version 96.6. The new guide is about twice the size of the previous version, featuring many new screenshots and instructions on new modules.

Exponent CMS 0.96.6 Alpha (Bossanova) Released

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 15:58:19 +0100

This is our first public release for Exponent CMS version 0.96.6 (Bossanova) and is an Alpha release. Alpha code is not yet considered 100% stable, so do not run in a production environment. As an additional note, upgrades from previous releases of Exponent have not been thoroughly tested and debugged, so expect issues when upgrading. (Admin Note: Since we posted this news item, it has been reported that after an upgrade you need to run install tables by hand) This alpha release is meant for new installation testing and examination. If you will be upgrading your current previous installation, please report any issues you experience during the upgrade process.

This release contains many improvements to the system, many additional modules and pieces of functionality, new themes, YUI/Ajax integration, as well as the most requested feature for Exponent - a new editor. The Exponent Dev Team has gone the extra mile and enabled selectable editors to provide the most flexibility possible. Although this current Alpha is shipping with only FCKEditor, we have support for Xinha and TinyMCE as well. These will be included in the next release. The more testing this release receives, the quicker we can fix any issues and move it to a stable release state, so please install, test, and submit any bugs you find at www.ExponentCMS.org.

Thank you, enjoy!

Changelog:

Added / Fixed in 0.96.6
-----------------------
# New editors! The single most requested feature is now implemented. Not only do we have a new and better editor, but we have three new and better editors to choose from - FCKEditor, Xinha, and TinyMCE. As of the alpha release, we are only shipping FCK for file size reasons, and TinyMCE needs a bit more work. When 0.96.6 hits stable, we will offer all three editors either packaged with the core, or as add-ons.
# New image management interface. Image management has taken a step forward. Existing image managers are still supported, but you can now upload your image via the editor image selection interface, which saves quite a few clicks. Future: We have some sketches completed for the full Media Manager, which will centralise all resource upload, download, and manipulation into a very kick-butt, AJAXed interface.
# Tags. Our initial implementation of technorati style tags have been added to the calendar, news, and weblog modules.
# User signup notification. Added configuration to send email notification to site admin when new user signsup. Also email the user signing up if configured to do so.
# Various underlying code changes to speed things up and/or make long-term development easier.
# New Guestbook module integrated (contribution)
# New RSS Feed displayer module integrated (contribution)
# Many weblog module enhancements.
# Added 'Can Download' permissions to the resource managers (authenticated downloads).
# YUI (Yahoo's AJAX and CSS library) integrated.
# Several new themes, including a base Barebones theme using YUI Grids for pure CSS driven templates
# "Featured Items" field and views for Calendar & News mods.
# Added Codemap Module (aka Roadmap module)
# Added the Article module to the base install - It was an add-on module
# Added the Wizard Module to Exponent.
# Added in RSS support as default instead of addon patch
# Replaced missing i18n strings all around.
# Added two views to the Textmodule. The new views are "With Header" and "Without Header".
# Added the Tasklist module to the base install (aka Todo Module).
# Added the Slideshow Module to the base install.
# Added the Simple Poll Module to the base install.
# Added a new action, View All, to the Content Rotator module
# Added the Page module to the base install.
# RSSified the newsmodule
# Many new navigation Module views Added
* Children Only 2
* Children Only 3
* CSS Menu
* Full CSS Menu
* Site Map
* Expanding Heirarchy - Children Only (check this one out if you get a chance!)
* Enhanced version of the Breadcrumb.tpl
# Misc login Module changes.
# Added action "showuserprofile".
# Added Listing Module to the base install - It was an add-on module.
# Added Link List Module (allows users to easily create a list of web links).
# Added Imageworkshop module: this module is still in development.
# Added Greeking Module.
# Form Module changes:
* Added form.validate.js into core (or back in).
# Added FAQ module to the base install.
* Added table of contents view (as seen on this www.ExponentCMS.org).
# Calendar Module
* Added RSS.
* Added Search action.
# Added Directory Listing Module.
# Added the new BBmodule (a.k.a. Forum) as seen on www.ExponentCMS.org
# Added the Image Gallery module along with the "View All" view and the "View All with Popups"
# Added Smarty plugin for function.currency_symbol.php for Currency Symbol.
# Added Smarty plugin function.makecase.php for case modification of strings.
# Added Smarty plugin function.rsslink.php for making an RSS link.
# Container Module changes
* Added infopopup functionality & view
* New views
o Two Column Homepage
o Home
o Rightcolumn
# Replaced default view for the search module with one that is more Googlish.
# Added Danish language pack.
# Many other minor improvements (too many to list) on a varitey of modules and views.

...Coming in 0.96.7
----------------
# Subscription based permissions. Permissions based on an expiring time period.
# Anonymous user permissions. Grant permissions to "non-logged in" users.

Forums Now Searchable

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:05:18 +0100

The search module on the forums page is now configured to search only the forums. This should make it a little easier to find forum posts.

To search the whole site you can still use the search module on the right side nav bar.

This new search module functionality will be available in the next release.

Upgrade Complete

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:42:14 +0100

Due to a series of cascading events, we ended up upgrading our MySql servers to version 5, and also converting the data to utf8. To say the least, it was a long and painful process.
We had to keep everyone logged out of the site today to prevent data loss. All should be well again; if not, please let us know.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

OIC Group, Inc.

Development News Section Added

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 15:11:53 +0100

We've added a section under News for Development related news. We will post regular updates here regarding short term development news that doesn't really apply to the home page news. See the first post for Development news on the upcoming 96.6. release.

RSS Patch Updated

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:51:10 +0100

The RSS Patch has been updated to work with the most current Exponent release. It will also work with the previous 96.5 releases, but users should upgrade to the current release if using previous versions.
RSS will be included in the core system as of our next release on the 1st of December.

You may upgrade your current release installation by installing the patch that has been released on the Sourceforge project page.

Click here to download the patch.

Experienced Developers Wanted!

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:13:54 +0100

The Exponent Content Management System is looking for several experienced PHP programmers with the desire and time to work as "Module Maintainers".

Exponent CMS is looking for talented PHP programmers to take ownership of several of the most important modules that make up Exponent and make them better. The module maintainers job will be to take care of all things that relate to the module(s) they are assigned to.

We have lots of modules available for Exponent, but to keep current we need developers who can keep the modules up to date with the cool features that users are looking for and fix bugs as they are reported.

The job of a Module Maintainer is a very important responsibility. We really need developers who are willing to make the time commitment that this task will command. Please think long and hard before volunteering about whether or not you have the time and desire to make such a commitment, but if you do, we hope to hear from you!

If you have experience programming in PHP and would like to contribute, please contact the Exponent CMS dev team.

Modules Needing a Maintainer

Calendar Module
News Module
Blog Module
Bulletin Board (forum) Module
Image Gallery Module

Exponent CMS Receives Functionality Injection

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:58:29 +0100

Today many new features were checked into the trunk branch of subversion in preparation for the December 1st release of Exponent Content Management System. The current trunk version will be unstable for a bit longer as we work out the bugs, but feel free to check it out and pitch in with bug fixing if you are willing and able.

One major change to take note of, all modules that were previously released as "add-on" modules available for download on the SourceForge site are now included in the base release along with many modules that were lost for a time.

RSS support was added to the base install for the calendar, news and weblog modules.

One new module some users might find handy is the new wizard module which allows site admins to create forms and tie them together as a wizard.

The complete change log is listed below.

*Added Codemap Module (aka Roadmap module)
*Added the Article module to the base install - It was an add-on module
*Added the Wizard Module to Exponent
-required an update to administrationmodule/coretasks.php
*Weblog module changes
-Added in RSS support as default instead of addon patch
-replaced missing i18n strings
*Added two views to the Textmodule. The new views are "With Header" and "Without Header".
*Added the Tasklist module (aka Todo Module).
*Added the Slideshow Module.
*Added the Simple Poll Module.
*Added a new action, View All, to the Content Rotator module
*Added the Page module to the base install - It was an add-on module
*RSSified the newsmodule
*Navigation Module views Added
1. Children Only 2
2. Children Only 3
3. CSS Menu
4. Full CSS Menu
5. Site Map
6. Expanding Heirarchy - Children Only (check this one out if you get a chance!)
7. Enhanced version of the Breadcrumb.tpl
*Login Module changes
-Added action "showuserprofile"
*Added Listing Module to the base install - It was an add-on module
*Added Link List Module (allows users to easily create a list of web links)
*Added Imageworkshop module
*Added Greeking Module
*Form Module
-Added form.validate.js (I don't know if this is new, moved or was accidently deleted from trunk)
*Added FAQ module to the base install
-Added the FAQ with table of contents view (as seen on this site)
*Calendar Module
-Added RSS
-Added Search action
*Added Directory Listing Module
*Added the new BBmodule (a.k.a. Forum)
*Added the Image Gallery module along with the "View All" view and the "View All with Popups"
*Added Smarty plugin for Currency Symbol
*Container Module changes
-Added infopopup functionality & view
-New views
1. Two Column Homepage
2. Home
3. Rightcolumn
*New user notifications
-Added configuration to send email notification to site admin when new user signs up
-Added configuration to send a welcome message to a new users after sign up.
*Replaced default view for the search module with one that is more Googlish.
*Added new smarty plugin (makecase) to manipulate the case of a string from a view.

Exponent 0.96.5 Released - Addendum

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 07:39:49 +0100

Apparently during our upload and release on Sourceforge last night, the wrong file package was tied to the Exponent 0.96.5 Goodyear release. This has been corrected as of this morning, so the current file package should now be correct.

We apologize for the mixup.

Exponent 0.96.5 Released

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:31:04 +0100

Exponent-0.96.5-GA is now available for download. The code is considered production ready at this point. Please report any bugs you find via our bug tool at www.exponentcms.org.

To recap our last news post, we are moving to a 30 day release schedule in order to follow the "release early, release often" philosophy. This current release is our first release in this new process and is also our long in coming 0.96.5 release. There are not a ton of new features, but the system is stable overall and has various performance enhancements, bug fixes and a handful of new features and tweaks. If bugs are found, please report them A.S.A.P. using our bugtool. Bugs that are deemed a security vulnerability or are of a production breaking caliber will be fixed immediately and a patch released. Our next full release will be coming out on December 1st, 2006, and will include many new features including new, switchable WYSIWYG editors, as well as all bug fixes identified over the 30 day release period.

Thank you for using Exponent CMS!

New Beta2 Release and New Release Schedule

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:32:21 +0100

Exponent-0.96.5-Beta2 is now available for download. The code is still considered beta quality, so use with care and please report any bugs you find via our bug tool at www.exponentcms.org.

We are moving to a 30 day release schedule in order to follow the "release early, release often" philosophy. This current release is intended to be availalbe for bug reporting/fixing for the next 10 days, with the next release coming out on November 1st, 2006. The development team will be fixing submitted bugs as well as integrating new features on an on-going basis, with each consecutive release coming out on the first of each month. Patches will be issued between releases as necessary for break-fix and security reasons.

Thank you for using Exponent CMS!

Exponent CSS Framework - alpha

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 14:26:04 +0100

As Exponent continues to push toward release of the long awaited version 0.96.5, new efforts in the design sector are being made to enhance the overall accessibility.

Using the home page as a basis, we've enhanced the design slightly, but most importantly we've ditched all tables for a cross browser, cross platform, table-less design. This framework also boasts a pure CSS drop menu with the .htc file included allowing the CSS :hover pseudo class to work with more than just the <a> tag in Internet Explorer. The CSS files have also been broken up, modularized, and imported as separate .css files in anticipation for an up and coming CSS inclusion feature, making it even easier to design for Exponent.

Also included is another .htc file allowing for .png alpha transparencies in IE as well.

We're showing this code off to allow E enthusiasts to play with it, make any modifications, enhancements, and/or adjustment that may help make it a rock solid framework to work from. We hope to release this code as the default theme for Exponent in the up and coming 0.96.5 GA release.

View it here
Download it here

Security Fix and Performance Enhancements

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 17:59:48 +0100

The Exponent Content Management Development Team has released a patch in response to to the vulnerability posted in the following security bulletin.

http://securityreason.com/exploitalert/1200

Patches have been released for 96.3. They can be downloaded from the links listed below.

Also bundled below for download is a patch that contains a performance enhancement that skips a lot of unnecessary permisson checks for users who are not logged in.

Patches are not being release for 96.5 since it is still, technically, in beta. The fix and performance enhancements will be included in the upcoming GA release.

Users running 96.5 wanting to patch the security bug immediately can do so by following the instructions listed below.

Links to the Exponent Content Management 96.3 Security & Performance Patches.

http://www.exponentcms.org/exponent-0.96.3-critical_patch.tgz
http://www.exponentcms.org/exponent-0.96.3-critical_patch.zip
http://www.exponentcms.org/exponent-0.96.3-performance_fix.tgz
http://www.exponentcms.org/exponent-0.96.3-performance_fix.zip

Instructions for Installing Patches on 96.3
1. Download the patch(es).
2. Go to your Exponent CMS site and login in as an admin user.
3. Go to the Administration Control Panel.
4. Click the Upload Extension link.
5. Upload the Patch

Instructions for Installing on 96.5
1. Edit the subsystems/template.php
2. Find the exponent_template_getModuleViewFile() function.
3.. Find the following lines...

function exponent_template_getModuleViewFile($module,$view,$recurse = true) {
$langdir = (LANG == 'en' ? '' : LANG . '/');

and add the following line so it looks like this

function exponent_template_getModuleViewFile($module,$view,$recurse = true) {
$langdir = (LANG == 'en' ? '' : LANG . '/');
if (stristr($view, "/")) $view = DEFAULT_VIEW;

4. Save & Exit the file.

Thanks,
The Exponent Content Management System Dev Team

Exponent Gets RSS

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:36:45 +0100

Support for RSS feeds is now available for Exponent CMS. The News, Calendar and Weblog modules have all been upgraded to take advantage of the RSS feed system.

You may upgrade your installation by installing the patch that has been released on the Sourceforge project page. RSS support will be included standard in future releases.

Click here to download the patch.

Exponent's shiny new package

Tue, 02 May 2006 15:13:16 +0100

Welcome to the new exponentcms.org. A new look to go with a new software release. The Exponent Development Team has been working diligently in a major effort to get Exponent ready for release with many security fixes and a major feature enhancement for internationalization. This website has paralleled the software release effort.

There is plenty more to come in the near future for Exponent, so stick around, participate in the forums, make contributions and be sure to take part in a rapidly growing community of talented developers, designers, and administrators.

Exponent 0.96.5 Release Candidate 4 Now Available

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:51:48 +0100

The Exponent Development Team is pleased to announce our next Release Candidate (RC) for the upcoming version 0.96.5.

You may download the latest release from: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=118524

This code is still considered pre-release quality, so use at your own risk. We still do not recommend implementing this release in a production environment yet, but it is certainly of high beta quality and the team feels it is very stable overall.

We welcome and encourage reporting bugs on the Exponent Project Source Forge bug tracker. We will be releasing several more RC cadidates and/or patches to fix issues up to our final GA release.

This version includes various enhancements to the system, the largest being the initial implementation of the system-level language subsystem. This implementation isolates all system-level strings (e.g.: error messages, administrative wording, etc) into a language pack, which allows site owners to translate their core site into different languages. You may enter *content* in whatever language you choose, but you can not enter multi-language content and switch between them as of yet - this is coming in a future release. Other changes in this release include performance enhancements and many security fixes.

Thank you for using Exponent!

Fred Dirkse
OIC Group, Inc.