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Web 2.0, Ajax the buzz word today. We have now, yet another Ajax powered CMS MODx, which we will evaluvating for our upcoming spicy village portal in coming days.

MODx is an open source PHP Application Framework that helps you take control of your online content. It empowers developers and advanced users to give as much control as desired to whomever they desire for day-to-day website content maintenance chores.

MODx is 100% buzzword compliant, and makes child’s play of building content managed sites with validating, accessible CSS layouts - hence Ajax CMS. It empowers its users to build engaging "Web 2.0" sites today, with its pre-integrated Scriptaculous and Prototype libraries. If you’re a CSS designer or Ajax aficionado, this is the CMS for you; and if you like what you see today, you’ll love what’s coming.

Strong Web Standards Support - MODx does not force you into awkward and confusing blocks-this or channels-that templating engines or layout rules. You can build XHTML 1.1 Strict sites just as easily as a tag-soup laden table layout. MODx is the dream CMS for CSS designers.

• Web 2.0 Features (yes, that means Ajax) - MODx is the first free PHP CMS to offer an API that fully supports Web 2.0 Ajax technology thanks to script.aculo.us. Expect to see this grow more and more into our manager over time, but you can make use of it today in your own custom applications including live search, web effects, Ajax communications and more.
• PHP Application Framework - a flexible API and a event model that allows to override how the core behaves means that you get both tremendous flexibility, but also the ability to customize the solution to your needs and a simple upgrade path.
• Works in your favorite browser - and yes that means Safari! You can manage your websites from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection and IE 5.5+, Safari 1.3+, Firefox 1.0+.
• Graphical Installer - it’s now easier for less experienced users to get up and running fast with a step-by-stop online installer.
• Improved Rich Text Editors - All MODx RTEs are optional plug-ins, making for a smaller base download. FCKeditor ships out of the box. Adding new RTEs to MODx is simple with TinyMCE available now as an optional download and Textile, Markdown and widgEditors on their way.
• Better handling of aliases and menu indexes - Search Engine Friendly aliases are automatically created from the page titles and the system will check for alias conflicts before saving a page. Reordering your pages with Ajax-enabled drag and drop indexing.
• Robust CSS Menu Builder - Menus made from ULs are ready to go out of the box. Whether you want something simple as a bulleted list for a sidebar or as complex as Big John’s deluxe menus complete with CSS "hover zones", MODx has you covered.
• Improved Meta-tag and keywords controls - consider MODx your #1 free Search Engine Optimization CMS. MODx helps your SEO efforts by making it easier to adjust meta-content of your site on a per-page basis.
• Separate Manager and Web User sessions - simplify your testing and development workflow.
• Improved Document Parser and Error handling - build better custom applications with a more robust API and greatly improved error handling and reporting inside the manager.
• Custom Content Types - use MODx documents to manage your linked Style Sheets, Images and Javascript. Transform them into XML, PDF, Excel or Word documents with snippets and this handy new feature.

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There are many CMS downloads out there however, as a designer I find many of them hard to use and sometime nearly impossible to style. Read on because relief is on the way.

MuraveyWeb is a Content Management System built on top of Ruby on Rails web-framework. It has support for version control, custom document types, WYSIWYG content editors, image transformations and much more.

MuraveyWeb is here and it′s free for the downloading. When you look at the demo it may not look like much but, it is built on the Ruby on Rails web framework, and for an early release has quite a bit of functionality. Dmitry V. Sabanin is the author of this app and his intention is a lofty one.

His aim is to develop a system where a developer can focus on information architecture, user experience and the styling of the site.

More on ajax build open source content management is here…

• Development Status: 5 - Production/Stable
• Environment: Web Environment
• Intended Audience: Developers, Other Audience
• License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), MIT/X Consortium License
• Natural Language: English
• Operating System: OS Independent
• Programming Language: Ruby
• Topic: Dynamic Content, Site Management

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It all works like this:

1. A User makes a request to view a page
2. The server-side script calls a series of application functions that generate blocks of templates
   1. Each section that can be updated/rendered by Ajax calls are separated into their own templates, which enables them to be called on initial page load and separate Ajax-triggered calls from the client.
3. The complete template blocks are sent to the user as a rendered page.
4. As the user interacts with the interface, two specific things can occur:
   1. An Ajax.Updater (see Script.aculo.us) is triggered, which makes an Ajax callout. The callout is sent to the Ajax Handler (which is a PHP script) which handles the call and invokes the appropriate application functions. Those functions initialize template blocks and output HTML. The HTML output by the server is received by the client and inserted into the User Interface.
   2. An Ajax.Request (see Script.aculo.us) is triggered, which makes an Ajax callout. The callout is sent to the Ajax Handler (which is a PHP script) which handles the call and invokes the appropriate application functions. No templates are initialized or output to the client…instead, the client manipulates the DOM on its own to give proper feedback to the user.
5. Rinse and repeat as needed.

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Ajay at 5 years of age Ajay has passed MOUS Microsoft Office User Specialist certification exam with 98% marks to become the Youngest Microsoft Certified Office User Specialist. Bill Gates the software giant Microsoft Chairman has given him the website http://www.microsoftkid.com. You can read more about him there.

Ajay started using computer since age of one & a half years.  Ajay can use with ease Microsoft products like Word 2000 , Excel 2000 , Powerpoint 2000 ,  Outlook Express , Internet Explorer , FrontPage 2000 , Access Database . Ajay can himself send out emails with attachments. Ajay even scan pictures  , record video mails and email or talk live on Internet. Microsoft Thailand had gifted Ajay with FrontPage 2000 for making web site which he has already mastered. The site that you are seeing right now is made by Ajay himself using FrontPage 2000.

 Ajay can create  web site with all hyper links, thumb nails, background music, frames , DHTML , Forms etc using FrontPage 2000 . Ajay can insert pictures, type out documents with all formatting, create graphs, sort out data list, create sub-totals, create a power point presentation with all animations and sound .

 Ajay can also perform routine maintenance of the computer. In Access Database Ajay can create fields , make forms for entering data , Enter data , Create SQL queries and make reports based on required data. Ajay has also mastered Macromedia FLASH 5.0 .Ajay can use Gif Animator for creating Gif images. Ajay has started learning Visual Basic.

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Adobe released the Spry toolkit that finally allows web designers to join the, until now, programmer led world of Ajax development. At the same time, Backbase introduced an Ajax development tool for Java applications. But what use is an Ajax powered website when search engines such as Google can′t see it?

Ajax is the future of the web, declare the usual suspects, and with good cause. It is, undoubtedly an exciting technology that is already driving forward the idea of Rich Internet Applications. Yet dynamic client-server interaction and the display associated client-side trickery that accompanies it, cannot and will not be spidered, indexed or cached by search engines that don′t understand Ajax. In fact it′s even simpler than that: search engines not only don′t understand it, they don′t even see it. The irony being that Google is something of an Ajax pioneer, and GMail one of the best known Ajax applications

Think about it. A still typical, static HTML driven website with a couple of dozen short pages will see them all indexed by Google, driving traffic precisely to where it wants to go. An Ajaxified ‘fat client application′ site consisting of a single page (<body> element) and XML based content being loaded by JavaScript under user control (an onload event) with local interaction and navigation makes for a very rich user experience. It also makes for a very invisible site as far as the Google spiders are concerned. For all intents and purposes it is no more, it has ceased to be, it is an ex-website (with apologies to Monty Python).

So what are the workarounds? Well you could have all the content in the page, but invisible to the user. Do that, however, and Google will almost certainly treat it as cloaking, serving up one page for web spiders and another for real people. The end result being much the same, your site gets blacklisted and so not listed. You could design two distinct versions of the content, the Ajax one and a ‘traditional′ one that is accessible to Google. While this may well work in as far as ensuring your site shows up in the land of search, it also means your Ajax development is a waste of time because Google will send everyone to the non-Ajaxified version anyway. Then there′s the database driven site solution of using querystring parameters using a Google sitemap. Apart from there being no querystring appended URLs, courtesy of the Ajax client side searching, unless you create them all artificially which is no mean feat for anything but the least complex of sites (and why bother with Ajax if all you have is a one page vanity web anyway?)

It seems to me that in order to successfully circumvent the Google search engine optimization, cloaking, spider-fodder rules in our Ajax driven vision of the future, you would have to make changes that would allow the SEO gangsters to ply their evil trade. Although there is some glimmer of hope in as far as Google has implemented Sitemaps, and it does enable pseudo content to flag text block priority to AdSense spiders. Until and unless a big change does come, some kind of content duplication would appear the only way forward. We know of one site which has a nifty Ajax navigation menu system that is fully duplicated within a static footer menu purely to bring server generated content to the party and allow Google to see the blasted thing. and much of the Ajax obsessed development community, missing the point here? Is Ajax really only suitable for what has been cruelly described as client-side interface candy and nothing more?

We might run the risk of being called a heretic for saying it, but long rush towards Web 2.0, be careful you don′t get caught by the Ajax tripwire. Ajaxified to vanished.

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