Silva 1.0: The Structured Content Management System =================================================== July 20, 2004 - after two and a half years of development, the Silva team is happy to announce the release of Silva 1.0. Silva is an open source content management system with a focus on structured content and its reuse. It is based on the open source web application platform Zope, and the programming language Python. New in Silva 1.0 are: * Deeply integrated support for Kupu, the WYSIWYG through the web editor with support for both Mozilla and Internet Explorer. * Silva 1.0 ships with full documentation that is a Silva publication itself. When you install a new Silva root you get the option to install the documentation as well. * Other new features include image thumbnail support and image cropping support. "At ETH we operate a mass virtual hosting Silva instance hosting a few hundred sites," says Reinhard Hess, of the `central IT services`_ at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (`ETH Zurich`_). "In addition to that there are a number of sites being run by independent departemental IT units across the university." ETH Zurich has been deploying Silva since 2002 - and they are also developing on the platform. "Silva is well capable to compete successfully with other web CMS products in the enterprise range - either open source or closed source. Silva was a good choice for us. Silva gives us the best cost/performance ratio even in the long term and maximum operational flexibility." The `University of Luton`_ in the UK is going online with a new Silva-backed version of their site later this week. "Silva is a very flexible tool for generating and maintaining web content," says Steve Kendall, who is managing the project. "Previously all web content had to be looked after by a small team of central staff with specialised skills, but now we have the mechanisms in place to return full ownership of the content to the faculties and departments." .. _`ETH Zurich`: http://www.ethz.ch/ .. _`central IT services`: http://www.id.ethz.ch/ .. _`University of Luton`: http://www.luton.ac.uk/ Downloads --------- You can download Silva 1.0 final here: http://www.zope.org/Members/infrae/Silva The -all.tgz ships with everything needed, including Kupu. A list of changes can be found here: http://www.zope.org/Members/infrae/Silva/HISTORY.txt About Silva ----------- Features of Silva include: * Through-the-web user interface with easy access to all features, including access keys. * Extensive documentation aimed to authors and editors, as well as for site managers, designers and system administrators. * Through-the-web structured authoring of documents using a WYSIWIG editor (kupu) or a forms-based editor. Content can be published to the web and exported as XML. Content can be reused in multiple areas of a publication using ghost objects. * Workflow and versioning support allows an author to work on a new version of a document while another version is already published online. * Separation of responsibilities between author, editor, and chief editor roles. Optional full integration with very large user sources using LDAP. Extensive group management abilities (with or without LDAP). * Resizing support for images, and extensive support to position images in document text. Images and files can be imported singly or in bulk. * Flexible customizable presentation using Zope Page Templates. Different sub sites can have different publications and designs. Virtual hosting support for sub sites. Silva extensions include: * SilvaNews - create and manage news and agenda items in Silva. RSS syndication and aggregation support. * DocMa - external server which integrates seamlessly into Silva and allows Silva publications to be exported to MS Word documents, and MS Word documents to be imported into Silva. * SilvaExternalSources - include data from external sources into documents, including CSV files, results from relational database queries or any Python script. More information about Silva can also be found here: http://www.infrae.com/products/silva More information about Infrae, the company that created Silva: http://www.infrae.com Press Contacts -------------- Martijn Faassen, Infrae, faassen at infrae.com