OpenCms 17 available

April 9, 2024

OpenCms 17.0 is now available for download.

OpenCms 17 gives content managers the new app "Date search" to find content that has been changed in a certain time range. The "Websites" app allows to easily export the content of a complete site for archiving, directly from the list of configured sites. An option has been added to hide "sensitive" content in the Offline project that will only become public for all content managers when the "availability" date is reached. The default Mercury template has been further improved, e.g. with SEO optimized job postings, a "spacer" function and marker clusters for maps. OpenCms 17 has also been tested and certified using Java 17 LTS and 21 LTS, while keeping compatibility with Java 8 LTS and Java 11 LTS.

Please note that OpenCms 17 will be the last major OpenCms release that keeps Java 8 compatibility. Future OpenCms Versions will require at least Java 11.

We also have updated the OpenCms Docker image as well as the OpenCms documentation and the OpenCms demo site for this release.

Major new features of OpenCms 17

• New app "Date search" to find contents changed in a date range.
• Export complete site contents for archiving in the "Websites" app.
• Option to hide contents with restricted "availability" date even in the Offline project.
• Support for Java 17 and 21 (in addition to Java 8 and 11).

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

General OpenCms features

• The page editor allows WYSIWYG inline editing of web pages and arrangement of content by drag & drop.
• The form based editor allows editing of structured content in a well defined form mask.
• The sitemap editor allows to create new pages and re-arrange the navigation tree by drag & drop.
• Responsive "Mercury" default template based on Bootstrap 4 with many features.
• Headless API for accessing content as JSON from external applications.
• Content creation for mobile devices with preview and device specific content control.
• Structured contents can be defined using a simple XML schema.
• Easy to use "Online / Offline" workflow, changes must be approved before they become visible.
• Link management for all internal resources with broken link detection.
• Integrated image scaling and cropping.
• SEO features with automatic sitemap.xml generation and page alias support.
• Full featured 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.
• File access to the OpenCms content repository over a shared network / SMB drive.
• CMIS and WebDAV access to the OpenCms content repository.
• Integrates Apache SOLR for powerful content searching and noSQL like queries.
• Full text search for web pages as well as in office documents like PDF, MS Office and Open Office.
• Extensions can be added through a flexible module system.
• 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.
• ... and many more

OpenCms 17.0 is backward compatible with all 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10.5 and 10 versions. Templates and other OpenCms developed code from these versions should work mostly "out of the box" with version 17.

Notice for users of Alkacon OCEE Users of Alkacon OCEE require a new OCEE version for OpenCms 17. The update is free for Alkacon customers with a valid OCEE subscription. Please contact Alkacon to receive the new version.

About OpenCms

OpenCms is a market leading solution amongst Open Source CMS systems. The software has been in continuous development for the last 20 years and has an active community of Open Source developers.

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 & Co. KG 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.

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