A busy week for Outserve this week as we are attending two events and will be talking at both.

The first event  on Tuesday 31st March will be the West Midlands IT Solutions Showcase at Millennium Point In Birmingham (pictured) where Outserve will be talking to local businesses about how Open Source software can help them save money and become more efficient. The event is free and does not require registration so come along if you can.

photo credit: Iris Chase

The second will be the day after on Wednesday 1st April at Old Trafford Football Ground Manchester (pictured) at the Public Sector Forums Event ‘Harnessing Free and Open Source in Local Government’. With the recent publication of the Governments ‘Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan‘ there should be increased interest in in Open Source from the Public sector.

This is the first release since the creation of the JSST the Joomla Security Strike Team which was formed in August after the high level security issue fixed by 1.5.6 and we think shows Joomla’s commitment to security.

Any upgrade no matter how small requires testing and Outserve would test all customers sites before upgrading to a live site. Even a security update can change the look and feel of a site in an unexpected way so it is always better to test thoroughly. Also adequate backups should be taken and stored safely before attempting any upgrade. Outserve’s own website runs on Joomla and has now been updated to 1.5.7.

Joomla are already talking about the next version 1.5.8 which we should see soon and at Outserve we are all looking forward to version 1.6 which should include some great enhancements including auto updating of extenions (similar to WordPress).

Outserve would recommend any Joomla user still using versions before 1.5.6 upgrade as soon as possible.

The Outserve blog runs on the latest version of WordPress which is an open source content management system specifically designed to make blogging quick and easy although many people use WordPress to run their whole website. With WordPress it is as easy to create pages and static content as it is to create blogposts. The main Outserve website uses Joomla! (sorry the ! is part of the name) another open source content management system that we feel is better suited to managing our website. As with WordPress, Joomla! can also be used solely or partially for a blog. As with nearly all software Outserve looks at solutions on an individual organisation basis and recommends what fits best taking into consideration invidual or organisations requirements.

If you would like any advise on Open Source Content Management systems please so not hesitate to contact us by clicking on the contact us link here.

Finally just for anyone who is interested I have put below part of the wikipedia entry describing blogs the complete entry can be seen here.

A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual [1], with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, one which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.[2] With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning — that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.