XOOPS

Xoops

File:LogoXOOPSWikipedia.jpg
File:ScreenshotXOOPSWikipedia.jpg
Developer(s)	The XOOPS Project
Stable release	2.4.3 / December 31, 2009
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	Most languages
Type	content management system
License	GPL
Website	http://www.xoops.org/

XOOPS is one of the world's leading free Open Source content management systems (CMS), written in PHP, used for creating websites. It uses a modular architecture allowing users to customize, update and theme their websites. XOOPS is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is free to use, modify and redistribute. XOOPS is supposed to be pronounced phonetically as it would be in English, as "zoo'ps".

Overview

XOOPS is an acronym of "eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System". Though started as a portal system, it is now developing as a Web Application Platform. It aims to serve as a web framework for use by small, medium and large sites, through the installation of modules. For example, a small XOOPS installation can be used as a personal weblog or journal, but this can be expanded upon and customized, for example users might add the appropriate modules (freeware and commercial) to store content in news, forums, downloads, and more. Constantly updated and improved, it draws praises from reviewers

Due to its popularity all over the world, there are several books written about XOOPS in many languages .

Awards/Recognitions/Achievements

XOOPS received numerous International Awards and Recognitions, among them the First Runner-Up status in the SourceForge.net's 2006 Community Choice Awards in the Development category, it was selected due to its reputation as Open Source CMS for testing by eWeek, and the latest in Awards/Recognitions in 2008 being from Germany's Chip Magazine (5 Stars), Adobe Edge Magazine(Top 3 content management system), and ONDD (one of top Open Source CMS for Medical Professionals). It also received the 2008 China Open Source Software Contest Award and the 2009 Grand Prize in OSS Challenge in Korea

It consistently ranks as Top 5 CMS in the Open Source CMS Awards organized by Packt Publishing. In 2008 it ranked Top 5 in Best PHP Open Source CMS , and was Top-5 finalist in 2009 Best Overall CMS Award category. Onokazu, a founder of XOOPS, won the title as one of "Open Source CMS Most Valued People" at the 2008 Packt awards., and Taiwen Jiang, the current Lead Developer, won the same award in 2009.

XOOPS is the most active and downloaded CMS project on SourceForge.net

Key features

Community

Because XOOPS is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) the growth and development of XOOPS is dependent on the contributions of a worldwide community effort.

Database

XOOPS uses a relational database (currently MySQL) to store data required for running a web-based content management system.

Advanced access control layer

Administrators have the ability to grant specific groups of users specific access rights to content and features such as edit, delete, upload, add attachments, publish content, and so on.

Modularized

Modules can be installed, uninstalled, activated, and deactivated using the module administration system.

Core features usable by modules

XOOPS possess a number of core features that can be used by modules like permissions, comments, notifications and blocks features.

Personalization

Administrators have the ability to set specific permissions for user access and control of individual elements of their websites.

User Management

The ability to search for users by various criteria, send email and private messages to users through a template-based messaging system.

International language support

The XOOPS community has official support sites around the world for non-English-speaking users. Additionally XOOPS itself supports multi-byte character sets for languages that use characters not in the Latin alphabet, for example Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean, etc. The multi-language support is also available on the PDF generation feature provided by the TCPDF library.

Theme-based skinnable interface

XOOPS uses themes for page presentation. Both administrators and users can change the look of the entire web site by selecting from available themes.

Templates

XOOPS uses the Smarty templating engine which allows many benefits such as easier separation between business logic and presentation logic as well as content caching.

Built-in LDAP authentication

Some SEO add-ons

A number of XOOPS modules contains features to facilitate the indexing of a website in search engines, like metatags, title tags and occasionally some URL rewriting. However, XOOPS does not give its users full control over their URLs. Where URL rewriting is possible, XOOPS often uses redirects that may confuse search engines. In addition, some XOOPS modules create duplicate content by making the same information available on more than one URL while in other cases (especially in case of multilingual sites), several sets of content may be made available through the same URL.

See also

• Content management system
• Free software
• Open source software

External links

• XOOPS Project Site