ocPortal
Developer(s) | ocProducts Ltd |
---|---|
Initial release | February, 2004 |
Stable release | 9.0.24 [1] / February 4, 2016 |
Development status | Active |
Available in | English |
Type | Content Management System |
License | CPAL |
Website | ocportal.com |
Relaunch as Composr CMS
ocPortal is now known as Composr after a relaunch and re-brand in early 2016. Upgrading[2] from ocPortal v8/v9 to Composr v10 is supported. Current ocPortal users should also check the Migration roadmap[3] for more information.
About ocPortal
ocPortal is a free and open source content management system (CMS) written in PHP and based on a MySQL backend database. The software has been developed by British software developer Chris Graham since 2004,[4] with contributions from programmers Chris Warburton, Paul Duffy and Philip Withnall, and designers Allen Ellis and Robert Goacher.[5]
Associated companies
Bitnami announced the release of a new installer stack for ocPortal towards the end of June in 2009.[6] Installatron, a plugin for hosting control panels also includes ocPortal within its list of included scripts.[7] In early 2010 ocPortal was one of the first websites to use Facebook's Hiphop HP on a live site and in Production. ocProducts founder Chris Graham completed a number of tests and reported a number of bugs not yet found by Facebook.[8]
Features
ocPortal has a number of features which can be included when installing the software or added later.[9] Some of those features are:[10]
- Self extracting installer option
- Automatic Site map Generation
- Support for short URLs
- Highly Web standards compliant, see more information below
- Theme Wizard
- Rich Media Support
- Social Media Syndication
- RSS & Atom Support
- Media Galleries including optional watermarking
- News & Newsletters
- Forums
- Shopping Cart & e-commerce functionality
- Customisable Pages
- Web Banners
- Images of the day option
- Site statistics and analytics support
- Downloads
- Calendar
- Quizzes and Surveys
- Points store
- Search functionality
- Support ticket support
- External software integration support
- Polls – Simple voting system by users
- Catalogues for Links & FAQs etc.
- CEDI (Structured Wikis)
- Blogs
- Chat Rooms, Instant Messaging & Shout-out boxes
- Multi-site network support including shared membership
- Multiple User group support and customisation
- Control of user privileges
- Unique Realtime "Rain" visual usage tracker
Standards compliance
ocPortal complies with a number standards.[11] covering areas such as web publishing, accessibility and internationalization, metadata and data storage and distribution.
Web publishing
HTTP 1.1, XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.1, CSS 3, HTML5 rel semantics, OpenSearch 1.0, DOM, SVG & ECMAScript
Accessibility and internationalisation
WCAG 1.0 and 2.0, with support for AAA, Unicode, ATAG,[12] Internationalisation, UK Government, recommendation for access keys & Section 508,
Data and feeds
XML, RSS 2.0 (all formats/variants), Atom 1.0, iCalendar 2.0, LDAP 3 & OPML.
Metadata
Dublin Core, hCalendar, hCard, hReview, rel-nofollow, rel-enclosure, rel-license, rel-tag & XFN (limited support)
Criticisms
ocPortal's weak points have been noted as its relatively small community. Very few community addons or themes have been released for ocPortal [13] when compared to projects such as Drupal and Joomla.[14]
Early versions of ocPortal were hit with a setback in the form of a HTTP Remote File Include security vulnerability which “presents itself when an attacker provides a remote path to the 'req_path' variable through the URL”.[15] This security vulnerability was fixed in later versions and several processes were added to make any future vulnerabilities less likely.
History
ocPortal was originally released in February 2004 [16] and the current version is Version 9.
- January 2009
- Included in the Opensource CMS Demo program [17]
- June 2009
- Included in the Killerstartup's “Web App Tools” list [18]
- September 2009
- Added to the CMS reports top 30 web applications from a list of 1,700.[19]
- December 2009
- ocProducts moved to new offices in Sheffield [20]
- June 2012
- Included in Webhosting Search's list of the best web tools [21]
Version history
- 1.0 - March 2004
- Included limited page support & basic features.[22]
- 2.0 - August 2004
- Software largely re-designed.
- 2.1 - November 2004
- Introduced member database, attachments.
- 2.5 - October 2005
- Added discussion forums.
- 3.0 - July 2006
- Included a UI overhaul
- 4.0 - August 2008
- 4.2 - September 2009[23]
- Included a major Adminzone overhaul, Gallery re-design, and added the ability to transcode video and an innovative real time visual usage tracker.
- 6.0 - March 2011[26]
- Included many performance improvements, stability improvements, and usability improvements.
- Included SEO, and Social Media integration improvements as well as a large scale upgrade to the ocPortal code as well as security upgrades.
- 9.0 - Aug 2012
- Major improvements to the templates and theme systems. HTML5 is now standard including improved CSS3 support. New Anti-Spam and Content Filtering systems top a very long list of other improvements.
References
- ↑ ocPortal Version 9 release article
- ↑ Upgrading from ocPortal v8/v9 to Composr v10
- ↑ Migration roadmap
- ↑ Interview with Chris Graham on The Admin Zone website
- ↑ About ocProducts
- ↑ Bitnami press release
- ↑ Installatron ocPortal script
- ↑ Facebook engineering blog post
- ↑ The Industry Standard, 3.18.10
- ↑ CMS Matrix ocPortal page
- ↑ ocPortal standards list
- ↑ ocPortal ATAG Compliance
- ↑ WebmasterFormat review of ocPortal
- ↑ Alexa traffic rank
- ↑ Symantec Security Response
- ↑ Quarkbase information relating to ocPortal
- ↑ Opensource CMS ocPortal Review page
- ↑ Killer Startups ocPortal listing
- ↑ CMS Report - ocPortal added to CMS Reports top 30 List
- ↑ Syndication of ocPortal news relating to the new office
- ↑ Webhosting Search - Useful Web Tools
- ↑ ocPortal history – major versions
- ↑ CMS Wire Version 4.2 release article
- ↑ CMS Report Version 4.3 release article
- ↑ ocPortal Version 5 release article
- ↑ ocPortal Version 6 release article
- ↑ ocPortal version 7 release article
- ↑ ocPortal Version 8 release article
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to OcPortal. |
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