Frequent versions

Instead of periodic versions, we now release new package of Saurus CMS after each feature or bugfix.

One package for installation and upgrade

Up until now, we had two different packages for installing a new site and upgrading existing site to latest version. From now on, there is a single package for doing both. Use scripts /install.php or /update.php accordingly. In addition to browser interface these operations can be executed from the command line.

Also, there is no need for version 4.6 middle step when moving from 4.x to 4.7 any more.

Enterprise Edition open sourced

Saurus CMS EE is now open sourced, like Saurus CMS CE. So you do not need Zend Optimizer nor license key to run it. Please contact us to obtain access to Enterprise Edtition.

Git version control

Users of Git version control can now clone their copy of Saurus CMS CE directly from Github.com. Users of Enterprise Edition will receive a access to private repository.

RSS of version log

Subscribe to Saurus CMS version log to stay up to date with upcoming features and fixes.

New install guide

Check out the new install guide for more details.

Version 4.7.0 of Saurus CMS Enterprise Edition is now available as update package.

Code optimizations

Many older and experimental features have been removed for better performance and lighter product. The following modules have completely gone: Statistics, eShop, Events, Resources, version 3 style templates and MSSQL support. Please see the full list of optimizations.

File manager tweaks

File manager now remembers the last used view: whether thumbnails or file listing. It also allows deleting files when opened from Article editor.

"Site down" page

When the database connection is not available, Saurus CMS now displays a customizable human friendly page along with possibility to send notification to site owner.

More

Please consult the whole change log for details.

How to get it?

Enterprise Edition is available for customers who have valid software assurance or service level agreement. Please write to saurus@saurus.info for a download link.

We have just released 4.7.1 update for Saurus CMS Community Edition. Full installation package and update to Enterprise Edition are soon to follow.

What's new?

This release brings some new tweaks to File manager which now remembers the last used view: whether thumbnails or file listing. It also now allows deleting files when opened from Article editor.

Otherwise, 4.7.1 is mostly about fixing bugs and security issues. Please consult the whole change log for details.

Give it a try

You can give the new features a try at our public demosite or download a version update.

Yes, we finally did it. Welcome to the new era of version 4.7.0 with renewed license policy, package naming and access to the source code.

Instead of three basic packages, previously called Free, SE and Full, we now have just one which should fit the needs of most complex modern websites.

What's included

The new product package includes the following :

• Everything previously found in Saurus CMS SE
• Section-based meta-info management (SEO)
• User access/permissions (ACL)
• Profiles and Custom Assets
• Internal cache

Of course there are no limitations over content volume.

Package naming

Version 4.7.0 will be released as Saurus CMS CE (Community Edition) and Saurus CMS EE (Enterprise Edition).

Saurus CMS CE

Community Edition is open source and licensed as MPL 1.1. This means you can freely use, distribute and sell it. You can also add modifications with condition that these modifications are published under the same license. Also, you can embed it to bigger projects which can use other licenses.

The source code is manged at Github.

We do not offer warranty or official support for CE but keep an eye on forum at all times.

Saurus CMS EE

Enterprise Edition is sold as annual service level agreement (SLA) covering commercial product code, problem solving, support and consultation about product usage, installation, upgrading, development.

Although the functionality is comparable to Community Edition, each release of Enterprise Edition is thoroughly tested by Saurus. Also the release cycle is much more conservative.

The EE pricing depends on the service volume, time and number of sites covered.
EE source code is currently closed as it contains commercial modules. We are in process of re-packaging them as extensions - when done, EE code will be open sourced.

Add-ons

Additional functionality for both EE and CE is available as extensions. Currently some functionality embedded as modules still only work for EE.

What else changes

The offer of -80% discount for same customer for additional products will be discontinued as CE is free for everybody and EE pricing depends on number of sites.

We also discontinued offering free Saurus CMS SE for NGO-s as the Community Edition gives much more compared to current SE.

We will no longer offer trial licenses for new releases. You can still order those for versions 4.6.5 and earlier.

Paid services

Saurus offers range of services related to Saurus CMS: training, consultation, installation, upgrade. Also, we can develop new functionality or extensions for you.

Who can move to Community Edition?

Users of Saurus CMS Free will get rid of the content volume limit and gain additional functionality.

Users of Saurus CMS SE get additional functionality.

Users of Saurus CMS Full will loose some functionality.

Previous and new packages compared

Please download the comparison in PDF format.

To better support future developments of Saurus CMS, we are currently optimizing code during which we will remove some older and experimental features. The result will be faster and lighter product and smaller installation package. Here's what the next Saurus CMS upgrade will miss:

Statistics

A year ago we announced discontinuation of Statistics module, now we will remove it completely. All related product code, graphics files and database tables will be removed. So, write down the strategic numbers and install Google Analytics tracker under Admin > Properties > Site properties.

Version 3 templates

For backwards compatibility, version 4 included PHP-based templates from version 3. The next product update will remove these templates and tries to replace them with Saurus API based templates when possible:

Replaced content templates

These version 3 templates will be replaced by appropriate version 4 template:

1 Column Layout > Articles: 1 columns

2 Column Layout > Articles: 2 columns

Article headlines > Articles: bulleted list

News with Archieving > Articles: news with archive

Forum > Forum

Advanced search > advanced search which can be called by ?op=advsearch in URL

Gallery > Gallery. In version 3, pictures were kept in database. Version 4 uses filesystem based galleries. Next version upgrade will export pictures from database to new folders /public/galleries/album_name after which they will be deleted from the database.

Documents > Documents. In version 3, documents were were kept in database. Version 4 uses filesystem based document template. Next version upgrade will export files from database to new folders /public/galleries/section_name after which they will be deleted from the database.

Object's detail view

As with content templates, we will also replace detail views of article, forum post and comment by their version 4 counterparts.

Removed content templates

The following rudimentary templates are completely removed without a standardized alternative: External application, Business trips, Personnel, Birthdays.

eShop

Saurus CMS 3 included an eShop module which also existed in version 4 product code without any usage. The next upgrade will remove related database tables, administrator's tools and Saurus API tags.

For bigger e-shops we recommend using Magento open source platform. For smaller shops, you can still use Custom Assets and Profiles feature in Saurus CMS.

Events and resources

These were experimental developments which do not make any sense in current Google Calendar era.

Gzip

Saurus CMS administrator's view allowed you to turn on gzip compression for index.php and styles.php but caused problems with IE6 and did not have any effect for included static files. We suggest to turn on both compression and Etags in Apache configuration instead. Just follow our guide to site performance.

Session length

From Admin > Configuration you were able to set the session time limit for authenticated users. Unfortunately it caused problems for 3rd party extensions which used alternative authentication methods. So we removed this feature and recommend setting session length in PHP configuration.

MS SQL

Saurus CMS included some experimental support for Microsoft SQL database which has been removed now.

Other modules

In addition, the following exotic modules were also removed: Mapped sections, Spam, ServIT, Ploting functionality and version 3 Metadata.

The following is an attempt to figure out the web content management packages and their market shares in Estonian webspace. A year ago, we created a script which guesses the technology used by a website by checking out its HTML source code. It reads the meta generator tag and checks various patterns like names of the subdirectories and linked system files. /admin subfolder is also investigated.

Analysed sites

In total, 59 700 websites within .EE domain space were scanned, covering near all of Estonian public sites:

• 28% of the sites used branded software package or custom backend created by a known web firm to dynamically generate the pages.
• 2,3% are most probably static, created by tools such as MS Frontpage or Adobe Dreamwaver.
• 69% of times we didn't manage to detect any widely known technology.

Compared to last year's report, these proportions remain the same, differing by just couple of percents.

Open source vs proprietary code

In 2009, open source packages have gained additional 5% of market share and now make up 32% of all content management systems, leaving the rest 68% to proprietary packages.

Content management systems

When comparing the market shares of CMS-es, we used the same scale for known packaged CMS-es such as Joomla or Wordpress and custom sites created by web firms like Hansanet or CMA who use home-grown non-packaged frameworks.

Our script detected 181 products or web firms out of which the biggest market share belongs to open source Joomla! (16%). Saurus CMS (6,7%), various sites created by web firm Hansanet (6,7%), Wordpress (6,2%) and Tiger CMS (3,8%) follow.

Compared to last year, the most new shares were gained by Wordpress (+3,7%), Elitec (+1,5%), Drupal (+0,7%), Edicy (+0,7%), Saurus CMS (+0,6%) and Joomla! (+0,4%). Biggest loosers were Infinit CMS (-1,6%), Basebuilder (-1,3%) and Ebeling (-0,8%).

For more detailed analysis, grab the full list of CMS-es and their market shares.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics made a nice rise and is now used by 21% of all the websites, compared to last year's 5,3%.

Saurus CMS

Although this research found 1 143 installations of Saurus CMS, we really think there are about 2 000 sites out there. The addition comes from intranets, sub-sites and sites out from .EE domain space.

Thanks to Zone, Mekaia and Gretta Grupp for their support, also to all software creators and site owners. Please leave a comment or write to rene@saurus.ee in case we missed something or if you have a suggestion for improvement.

Warm thanks to Attila Németh who has added Hungarian translation to latest version of Saurus CMS. You can grab his work from Localiztions page where you also find instructions of how to add your own localization.

Version 4.6.5 is released as beta, the stable version is now 4.6.3.

Now up to 500 objects in Saurus CMS Free

We increased the content limit in the free package from 150 objects to 500 so you can create sites with bigger content volume free of charge now. You have to upgrade your copy of Saurus CMS to version 4.6.5 to enable the new limit.

What else is new?

In editor mode, new objects are now created in the position where you clicked the "New.." menu item. Previously, new objects were created always as first element in the list.

The editor toolbar now features a list of sites/languages for easy switching.

The internal cache now only flushes the current site/language when new content is created. Perviously, entire cache was flushed.

Please consult the whole change log for bug fixes.

Give it a try

You can give the new features a try at our public demosite or download a version update.

Version 4.6.4 is released as beta, the stable version is currently 4.6.2.

Alias enhancements

Dynamic site URL-s (eg sitename.com/?id=123) are now redirected to their human-friendly form (eg sitename.com/news) by default.

This setting can be turned off from Admin > System > Configuration > Aliases section.

All site-wide hyperlinks in dynamic format (sitename.com/?id=123) will be replaced by corresponding aliases (sitename.com/news) during page display.

This feature is turned off by default because it may slow down page views in bigger sites which do not use Saurus CMS cache. You can turn it on from Admin > System > Configuration > Aliases section.

If aliases are configured to contain site/language name (eg site.com/en/news), the site root (site.com) displays the default site/language instead of currently selected site/language.

Saurus API additions

You can now perform search across multiple sites. To accomplish this, use the new parameter "sites" in the "init_search_results" API tag which is a comma separated list of site/language extensions from where to display search results. Use "all" for all sites. By default only the active site is searched.

New variables: $site_extension, $glossary, $locale to replace $lang variable.

The tag "init_language" is now deprecated and replaced by more dynamic "init_sites".

System requirements have changed

Support for PHP 4 is discontinued since Saurus CMS version 4.6.0. The Zend Optimizer needs to be at least version 3.3.0. In case of PHP 5.2.10+, Zend Optimizer needs to be at least 3.3.9.

Give it a try

You can give the new features a try at our public demosite or download a version update.

You can now follow Saurus CMS in Twitter and Facebook.