Get the new OpenCms 8 now!

May 9, 2011

Alkacon and OpenCms logo

OpenCms 8 is now ready and available for download.

OpenCms is one of the most popular Open Source Content Management Solutions. This new version was developed by Alkacon Software GmbH with the support of the international OpenCms developer community.

OpenCms 8 contains a greatly improved user interface for content managers and numerous other enhancements.

Major new features in OpenCms 8

  • The "Advanced Direct Edit" mode allows to create page content by drag & drop.
  • The new sitemap editor allows to create new pages and rearrange the navigation tree by drag & drop.
  • A multiple file enabled upload dialog all based on HTML replaced the old "Upload Applet".
  • The new "Content Subscription Engine" allows to inform users when important documents have changed.
  • The XML content editor now support <xsd:choice> elements.
  • The new publish dialog supports session based selection of content as well as add/remove of individual resources.
  • Extended support for creation of content for mobile devices with the <cms:mobile> tag.
  • A central "Shared Folder" has been added that is available from all sites for sharing content.
  • JPA support has been added to the database layer, so there's support for 10 additional databases.

We recommend everyone who uses OpenCms to update to the 8.0.0 release. OpenCms 8 is fully backward compatible to all prior 7.x versions. Templates and other OpenCms developed code from version 7.0 or 7.5 should work "out of the box" with version 8.

Users of the Alkacon OCEE packages require a new version of Alkacon OCEE for use with this OpenCms release. OpenCms 8 requires Alkacon OCEE version 3 or newer.

Please check out the release notes for further details of the changes in this release.

Features of OpenCms in General

  • "Direct Edit" allows creation and modification of content directly from a web page.
  • Structured contents can be defined using a simple XML schema.
  • Includes editors with WYSIWYG and syntax highlighting functionality.
  • Easy to use "Online / Offline" workflow, changes must be approved before they become visible.
  • Link management for all internal resources with broken link detection.
  • Support for WebDAV access to all resources in the OpenCms repository.
  • Integrated image scaling and cropping.
  • Full featured internal user management that supports the concept of "Organizational Units" (OUs).
  • Allows management of multiple websites within one installation.
  • Contents can be served dynamically or exported to static HTML files.
  • Extensions can be added through a flexible module system.
  • Full text search for web pages, but also in PDF, MS Office documents etc.
  • The "time warp" feature allows to view resources which are expired or not yet released.
  • JSP integration for dynamic functionality in templates, dynamic forms etc.
  • Distribution includes a complete demo website "Wonderful World of Flowers".
  • ... and many more

About OpenCms

Independent research has shown OpenCms to be a market leading solution amongst Open Source CMS systems. The software has been in continuous development for the last 10 years and has an active community of Open Source developers.

More than 100 international IT companies have been registered as official OpenCms Solution Provider on the OpenCms website. A steadily growing list of reference sites also shows the increasing use of OpenCms.

OpenCms is an enterprise - ready web content management solution build in Java and XML from open source components. OpenCms can easily be deployed on almost any existing IT infrastructure and provides powerful features especially suited for medium and large enterprise internet or intranet applications. OpenCms is open source software distributed under the LGPL license.

Alkacon Software GmbH is the company responsible for the development of OpenCms. Today OpenCms is a leading open source CMS solution in widespread use all over the world. Many businesses and organizations use OpenCms as a cost effective, professional alternative to expensive license products.

Alkacon Software GmbH offers its customers training, support and add-on products for OpenCms. This gives our customers a layer of security and convenience often required for mission critical OpenCms installations. Please see the Alkacon product overview for more details.

The team at Alkacon Software - The OpenCms Experts wants to thank everyone who has contributed to this release of OpenCms.

Back to the news overview

Download OpenCms

  • OpenCms 18 adds a new "Place element" mode in the page editor that allows precise element placement as an alternative to drag & drop. Reused content is now clearly marked. Automatic typographical correction of quotation marks has been added to all of the editors. “Dead links” in content that is entered in a WYSIWYG editor are now automatically disabled. Our Mercury template includes several new features, such as setting different image formats for mobile and desktop and many more.
    Size:249633KB

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Try the OpenCms Live Demo

Alkacon OCEE

  • Alkacon Software - The OpenCms Experts

    The Alkacon OpenCms Enterprise Extensions (also called OCEE) are a commercial extension for OpenCms. Alkacon OCEE adds features to OpenCms that are often required for running OpenCms in a medium or large Enterprise, where data consistency, security and failover are highly important.

    Learn more...