No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage! from Monty Pythons "Dead Parrot" sketch. Given that there hasn't been a release for the eZ publish 3 series since October 2007 and December 2007 for the initial eZ publish 4.0 release, coupled by the lack of any concrete information regarding new releases, one may be forgiven in

The Open Nordic Conference is only 2 weeks away, and we have the latest news on our sponsors, speakers, program, and of course eZ Publish 4.1.

Since a bit more than one year, eZ Labs Belgium was born as a result of a long-time symbiosis between a few community members of eZ Publish and eZ Systems. While we are still with just two people in the office (when not traveling that is), it has been quite an adventure already … So time to [...]

Even on the production servers, fatal errors do occur. And when such an error happens, visitors of your web site are confronted with a page with a boring error message and no links the visitors can use to continue browsing the site. This tip shows you how to prepare custom fatal error pages looking just as any other page on your site.

Does eZ Publish have its own blue screen of death? Yes, it does! It is the setup wizard on a production site. And how do you make go off? Well, it's quite enough to have anything about site.ini global override messed up: transmission error, solid syntax error, etc... Over thirty eZ installations and deployments, I was calm enough to figure it out just in seconds, but it still made me sweat... And imagine a beginner... ;)

Federico Cargnelutti has listed a number of Open Source PHP applications that he believes has changed the world over the last 10 years and eZ Publish makes the list. As with any lists of this nature, every one has their own opinion, and the comments make good reading. One that isn't on the list or commented on is PHPList. What's missing in your option?

eZ Systems North America has successfully migrated the caranddriver.com website to run on a platform based on eZ Publish. Car and Driver has been one of America's leading automotive magazines since 1955.

An interesting topic emerged among suggestions in the ez.no forum, regarding themes for eZ Publish. I thought it was an interesting theme, so here's the link: http://ez.no/developer/forum/suggestions/provide_new_themes

And here's what I think:

I have to agree that easier theme management and exchange would help to widespread eZ Publish. Personalization seems like the big thing right now and even if it's not about that, ability to implement selected themes easily might be one of the key factors when deciding on a particular CMS.

However, we need to realize what theme engines we're talking about when trying to incorporate that idea into eZ Publish. Most themes that I know of are prepared for systems that have a very isolated and precise functionality due to the kind of system they are (CMS blogs, forums, shops, web galleries, CRMs, or CMSs with preexisting module sets, etc..), and whose content model, internal structure etc. do not change.

Meanwhile, with eZ Publish we have a content engine that makes it possible to handle most of the above functionalities and nearly everything can be customized. With the system we don't have preset roles for a forum, for a blog etc - we have to arrange that ourselves, minding all the implementation details. There's entire list of other dimensions that have to be taken under consideration (sections, access rules, caching, custom overrides, class modifications, structure...). Many of those things are handled or reach to the presentation layer (*.tpl), many of them in a customized way, again.

If some of the themes available for those other, isolated systems, have to be versioned along with the core (for example: theme for version 2.0, theme for version 2.1, etc..), how do we want to handle the change with eZ Publish and its complexity? Would that be possible without limiting of what's one of eZ's key features - extensibility? Wouldn't that concrete the development of the core in some ways?

If I look at ezwebin, I see an intelligent GUI, not a skin. This interface is crucial for developers to ease the learning curve and also pick up some good practices, but with around 40 eZ Publish implementations, we haven't yet had a customer who would fit into ezwebin precisely (or sometimes - at all).

Yet, another perspective.

Much as I appreciate the marketing goals, I don't think they are that important for this level of CMS (and ezwebin versions do just fine for that matter), and nowhere near as important as the core of the system. And there's only so much time eZ people have. I believe we're all much better off getting solutions such as eZ toolbar or eZ Flow (or bug-free stability and security) rather than color variations of backgrounds...

To be continued... here:
http://ez.no/developer/forum/suggestions/provide_new_themes

Et oui me voici à un tournant dans ma carrière. Après un bref passage chez Smile, je démarre officiellement mon activité de Freelance en développement web à compter d'aujourd'hui, mon immatriculation étant validée auprès du RCS de Pontoise. Sans grande surprise, eZpublish sera au coeur de mon activité. Un tournant dans ma carrière et un challenge qui est tout autre : rien d'insurmontable lorsque l'on est motivé. Ma 1ère mission a déjà démarré dans un secteur d'activité que je commence à bien connaitre. :)
Je ne manquerais pas de vous reparler de mon activité une fois que le site qui lui est dédié sera sur pieds. Vous pouvez dores et déjà m'adresser un mail : alimi dot nabil [at] yahoo.fr. N'hésitez pas à me contacter : je serais heureux d'échanger avec vous sur une éventuelle collaboration.

--

A few changes in my carreer. After a few months at Smile, I'll work from now on as an eZ publish freelance developper. This is something I've aimed at since a feww months and this is the right time to try such things. I'm just glad to have even more challenges to face. Please feel free to contact me if you have any opportunities we can discuss about : alimi dot nabil [at] yahoo.fr.

Et oui me voici à un tournant dans ma carrière. Après un bref passage chez Smile, je démarre officiellement mon activité de Freelance en développement web à compter d'aujourd'hui, mon immatriculation étant validée auprès du RCS de Pontoise. Sans grande surprise, eZpublish sera au coeur de mon activité. Un tournant dans ma carrière et un challenge qui est tout autre : rien d'insurmontable lorsque l'on est motivé. Ma 1ère mission a déjà démarré dans un secteur d'activité que je commence à bien connaitre. :)
Je ne manquerais pas de vous reparler de mon activité une fois que le site qui lui est dédié sera sur pieds. Vous pouvez dores et déjà m'adresser un mail : alimi dot nabil [at] yahoo.fr. N'hésitez pas à me contacter : je serais heureux d'échanger avec vous sur une éventuelle collaboration.

--

A few changes in my carreer. After a few months at Smile, I'll work from now on as an eZ publish freelance developper. This is something I've aimed at since a feww months and this is the right time to try such things. I'm just glad to have even more challenges to face. Please feel free to contact me if you have any opportunities we can discuss about : alimi dot nabil [at] yahoo.fr.