eZ Publish

eZ Publish is an Enterprise Content Management platform with an easy to use Web Content Management System. Typical applications range from a personal homepage to a multilingual corporate website, which include role-based multi-user access, e-commerce functions and online communities.

eZ Publish (pronounced "easy publish") is an open source enterprise PHP content management system developed by the Norwegian company eZ Systems. eZ Publish is freely available under the GNU GPL version 2 license, as well as under proprietary licenses that include commercial support.

Homepage: ez.no

eZ Publish supports the development of customized web applications. Typical applications range from a personal homepage to a multilingual corporate website, which include role-based multi-user access, e-commerce functions and online communities.

The software is widely used in web applications of varying type and size worldwide, among them MIT (specifically the controller's office), Vogue magazine, the US Navy DASN and the Swiss public broadcasting organisation Schweizer Fernsehen.

Dual-licensing

The software is provided for free, and may be used and modified according to the GPL. In addition, paid professional support is available with the eZ Publish Enterprise Edition. Furthermore, a commercial license is also available, granting the right to use eZ Publish under license conditions different from the GPL.

To support its commercial operations, eZ Systems has a network of certified partner companies that perform application implementations. Currently there are approximately 200 partners worldwide. The company itself employs about 110 people in Norway, Denmark, France, United States, Germany and Japan. The eZ community, composed of programmers, designers and users can be found at the eZ Community site.

Technology

eZ Publish is written in PHP. The recommended web server is Apache. Some alternatives, such as Lighttpd, Hiawatha, Cherokee, are fully functional and lightweight.

The database abstraction layer enables the use of most common databases, i.e. MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle, without changes to the core system, by using drivers.

The software is cluster-ready and enforces the separation of content and presentation via XML storage of all content.

eZ Publish features

•     User defined content classes and objects
•     Role based permissions system
•     Template engine
•     Version control
•     Workflow management and task system
•     Image conversion and scaling
•     Database abstraction layer
•     Multi-lingual support, with Unicode
•     libraries for XML, SOAP, localization and internationalization
•     Search engine support

eZ Components is a library of standardized modules for speeding up application development. It includes functions for compressing binary files, optimizing performance through caching, connecting to several databases, debugging, RSS, generating graphs for analysis, converting images, supporting email and validating user input.

In an effort to transition the development from a company-driven to a community-driven model, the whole source of the eZ Components were donated to the Apache Software Foundation, relicensed from the BSD to the Apache 2 license and renamed to Zeta Components.