eZ Publish CMS, Enterprise Content Management System

Does eZ Publish have its own blue screen of death? Yes, it does! It is the setup wizard on a production site. And how do you make go off? Well, it's quite enough to have anything about site.ini global override messed up: transmission error, solid syntax error, etc... Over thirty eZ installations and deployments, I was calm enough to figure it out just in seconds, but it still made me sweat... And imagine a beginner... ;)

eZ Publish 4 autoload generation (requires eZ Components installed)

eZ Publish 4 uses the PHP-5 autoload feature to load classes, which means that when new classes are introduced to the system, the autoload arrays need to be updated. There are several situations when a user might want to regenerate the autoload-arrays:

1. After upgrading eZ Publish, to recognise new classes in the eZ Publish kernel
2. When adding a new extension to the site, to make its classes available to eZ Publish.

Two methods of autoload regeneration are provided: a command-line version and through the Administration Interface (for example in the Setup/Extensions).

Other technical changes/issues:

• It is no longer possible to include template files from the override directory directly, and also override templates are only searched for within override directories. Details/background: http://issues.ez.no/IssueView.php?Id=9595&activeItem=25
• Code has generally been cleaned up, several constants were moved to suitable classes. This may be one of the key problems with extension's port to 4.0.
• Static class functions are now marked as static and some clean up where necessary on class functions that worked both as static and as member.
• Some methods where renamed to comply with PHP5 naming rules.

Deprecated features in eZ Publish 4

Certain features have been deprecated. These will gradually be removed in a future release, when better replacements are ready.

Deprecated datatypes:

• Enum (upgrade script available)
• Ini setting
• Subtree-subscription
• Multi-option (replaced with Multi-option2 in 3.10)
• Package

Deprecated views:

• PDF view
• PDF export
• Global settings
• kernel/form

Deprecated kernel libraries:

• ezxml
• kernel/common/ezoverride.php

Just few months back it seemed like this moment was never going to come...

eZ Publish 4.0 is out there, stable. For those, who don't understand the excitement, little summary. eZ Publish 3.x is (I don't think it's appropriate to say was just quite yet...) doing fine, with hundreds of extensions and thousands of production installations all over the world, but has been getting old for some time. It still only works with PHP4, whose official development and maintenance will seize in just moments. That includes the willingness of hosting providers to keep it running on their platforms. But PHP4 leads to at least two other major problems. One - it offers a very simplified, less efficient object model, and eZ Publish happens to be essentially object oriented, plus more and more so seem PHP developers right now. PHP5 takes that problem away. Two - PHP4 makes it impossible to make use eZ Components and that hurts.

These are the major changes in new version eZ Publish, according to the eZ Systems release announcement:

• Complete PHP5 compatibility
• Full support for using eZ Components, eZ’s PHP enterprise components library
• Performance improvements
• Improved internal XML handling for increased performance and reduced memory usage
• Updated Website Interface with new graphical design and enhancements

Don't expect a revolution, though. You'll see the same administration interface, same old good content management model, same file structure, same setup wizard... As a matter of fact, eZ Publish 4.0 is a PHP5-refactored 3.10.x. Besides, revolution was neither needed, nor demanded.

You can download latest eZ Publish version from http://ez.no/download