Installed Upload Module for simplifying large file uploads (ie. files that exceed the size limit that can be archived in version control).

Silent publishing allows the CMS to invoke the publisher without being contaminated by the publisher output.

Improved authentication logging.

Improved caching system, to allow general-purpose caching of data without risking massing memory leaks from large query results.

New image handling features - auto-shrink images so they are smaller than a maximum file size.

Added general content-handling methods for creating, deleting, validating, and determining access to sites, pages, and content.

Installed Tree class for managing Exsite's heirarchical data structures (eg. site maps, menus, article indexes).

We're starting to develop web application frameworks in ExSite 3.4, with an eye to making them stable by the 4.0 release.  An ExSite web application framework is essentially a common set of data structures and methods that are applicable to a variety of web applications.

For example, consider a toolkit that managed data collection forms on the web.  It provides you with a comprehensive set of features, such as:

• build forms with any number of questions
  
• add new questions to your library
  
• define the answer formats, and allowed responses for each question
  
• multilingual questions/answers, with translation management tools
• reporting and data mining
• e-mailing responses to administrators
• and so on...

Elements of this feature set are required by a wide variety of web applications, such as Surveys, Polls, Registration Forms, Membership Forms, Exams & Quizzes, and so on.  Rather than each web application reproducing this feature set, we instead build an application framework that implements the basic model, along with some helper tools for the view and controller.  The individual applications then merely need to complete the view and controller to provide their users with a suitable UI and access to the features and functions that are relevant to that application.

Incidentally, the above example has been implemented as the Questionnaire framework, which is currently in alpha, and is expected to become the basis for future revisions of the Survey and Registration plug-ins, among others.

Other frameworks on the drawing board are an Article framework (to replace the Zine plug-in for E-zines, forums, and blogs) and an Event framework (for calendars and event management).  The CMS system itself could be treated as a framework as well, but it's not clear yet whether or not this is a good idea.

At the present time, an application framework is simply a subdirectory of the Modules directory in cgi-bin, which contains one or more framework packages.  A web application simply uses the framework package(s) to get access to its methods. 

Now you can link direct to images and documents in your libraries.

Improved handling of over-size content objects - will be published straight to disk, and recorded in the CMS as "pointer to file", to avoid the database hit.

Began implementing language management features to allow you to maintain multilingual mirrors of any/all pages in your site.  The CMS will find the "best" language version of any content object or menu'd page that is shown.  The built-in site mapping and menuing tools are now language-sensitive, and will automatically offer up menu links in the current language, where such pages are available.  Where translated variants are not found, the master language versions will be used instead, ensuring that complete pages and site maps are always generated, even if the translated version of page or site is incomplete.

Installed a new Tree class for handling heirarchic data structures in ExSite.  It is particularly useful for sitemap-like structures, and will automatically build the tree simply by passing it a list of datahashes.  This greatly improves performance for building recursive indexes.

Added key security improvements to the Crypt class, in case you want extra obfuscation of your crypto keys.

Added filename cleaning tools, to ensure file names are shell and URL safe.

Installed Catalog plug-in.  Indexes, searches, and displays items from a heirarchically-organized catalog.

Installed the Questionnaire plug-in and web application framework.  Questionnaires allow you to build question/answer forms in a variety of formats.  Data can be saved for later data mining, and/or mailed directly to a set of email addresses.  Questions and answers can be presented in any number of languages, with unified reporting in the master language.  Translation management features help you keep track of which translations need attention from your translators, and which are good to do.

Zine plug-in received numerous updates, including improved archiving, better Zine configuration, layout improvements, and bug fixes.

Added exception templates - these allow you to replace the template of a page when certain types of errors or other conditions occur.  One use is to present a customized login page when an unauthenticated user attempts to view a members-only page.

Kernel documentation was updated.

The Image library has new thumbnailing tools, which will autoscale and autocrop images, in cases where you want thumbnails of uniform size.

ExSite v3.2 goes live at ExsiteWebware.com.

Integrated Calendar module with the SimpleRegistration module. You can now tie any registration form to any event, and the Calendar module will automatically invoke the SimpleRegistration module to take the registration when the user indicates they want to register online.

Installed Feedback module, for simple communication with site administrators (or others) via a web form.

Upgraded Zine module, with better support for inter-page services, and improved security.

Fixed precompiled templates, which were not working like they were supposed to. Updated the form validation methods.

Editor link tool now allows you to create links to library content, eg. documents.

Added exception pages that can be used for throwing site errors or otherwise handling exceptions. We use these to do authentication challenges on member-only pages, for instance.

Installed Classified Advertising module, which solicits for and displays classified ads under a number of categories. The module is web-service friendly, and can display ads for the local site, or "global" ads across all sites. Ads are automatically expired, and subject to approval by the administrator.

Updated Member manager. New version tracks unlimited member attributes, without requiring any database modifications. It also has member status management tools.

Installed Photo Gallery tool, to display a library in a thumbnail grid. Clicking on a thumbnail brings up a pop-up with the full-size image.

Fixed Rollback function in the Website Manager.

Fixed bug in News module that prevented it from running as an inter-page service.

Fixed bug in publish.cgi that was throwing IE into a refresh loop.

Installed Time library with various time conversion utitlities.

Installed new SiteBuilder module, for simplified website creation by casual users. This is primarily for web services, where members of the public are creating instant websites to deliver some service to their particular market. Some of the functionality was taken from MySite, whose site building functions will be superceded by this.

Updated Wizard tools to allow wizards to self-terminate (ie. no do() method on last step of wizard).

Installed new BannerAd module, for managing pay-per-click, pay-per-impression, fixed-duration, or regular text and graphic banners.

Installed new general-purpose E-commerce module, to serve as a clearing house for all payment gateway transactions. The E-commerce module is normally invoked by another module that requires payment for some service; the E-commerce module handles the communications with the payment gateway, and confirmation of the transaction. The calling module simply waits for the confirmation status to appear in %share, to know what the payment status is.

Installed Publish module, to consolidate various publishing links into a single control panel.

Updated SimpleMenu module to automatically configure the parameter input when inserting menus through the editor's dynamic content tool. Also added a new "submenu" option to the menu types.

Installed WebDir module, to manage hierarchical web indexes. Includes tools for the public to suggest links, and flag links as broken or inappropriate. New links are subject to administrator approval.

Updated session management to make it more developer-friendly. Sessions are now tied hashes, linking to a user key in a DBM file which stores the session data persistently between requests. Loading and saving of session data is handled automatically by ExSite; all the programmer has to do is use the %session hash like a normal perl variable. If session handling is not enabled, the %session hash gracefully degrades to work like %share (ie. stores data for the request, but not persistently).

Installed PrintFriendly module, which can convert any page into a printer-friendly format.

Installed Security module, which simplifies many system security operations, such as managing administrator keys, site services, members, and MySite access type.

Installed new authentication and security code, allowing for MD5 password storage, reversible-encryption password storage, and session-based authentication handling.

Improved AJAX support in dynamic content substitutions. Modules can now use direct substitution (no AJAX), indirect substitution (use AJAX to insert the initial content, but regular page refreshes thereafter), and double-indirect substitution (use AJAX for the initial substitution, and also for subsequent relinks back into the same module).

Installed SlideShow module, which supercedes the old PhotoAlbum module. The new SlideShow has various improvements, including AJAX slideshows, and graphical prev/next/start buttons.

Improved thumbnail handling in the CMS libraries.

Simplified the MySite control panel, by hiding the lesser-used page management functions. They can be restored by clicking on the [+] options link in the MySite control panel.

Added a table editor to the HTML editor. Allows you to modify attributes for tables, rows, columns, and cells, as well as insert and delete rows, columns, and cells.

Revamped the style of the ExSite control panels and administrator interface. Standardized report generation with ExSite::ReportBuilder class (which can be thought of as the view component to ExSite::Report's model component). New icons and layout for the CMS ("Website Manager") module.

Added attribute handling to kernel. Attributes are arbitrary key/value pairs that can be attached to any record in the database. This effectively allows you to extend the schema of the database, without modifying the database structure itself. Attributes can be given datatypes so that they are managed using all the datatype handling logic that regular database fields benefit from.

Changed logout logic to only redirect to a homepage if the homepage has been published.