What's New in Kentico CMS 5.0

Enterprise-Level Performance and Scalability for Large Sites

We take our goal to deliver an enterprise-ready solution really seriously. The new version is designed to work with large number of records, such as users, roles, documents, etc. We optimized not only the database and code, but we also made many changes in the user interface, so that you can work with large number of records. We will publish a more detailed performance report later in January, but I can already tell you that we optimized Kentico CMS for handling 1,000,000 users and 100,000 documents in the database, among others.

We have also added bulk operations in CMS Desk, so you can now easily copy, move, delete and publish multiple documents including all child documents.

Also, Kentico CMS can now use SQL Server Replication. It means you're no longer limited to a single SQL Server, but you can copy your database over multiple SQL Servers to get a higher performance and reliability.

We have also added a full time zone configuration to CMS Desk user interface, so that the end users in global companies can see the dates and times in their own time zones.

User Interface Personalization

We realize that the complexity of the user interface has a significant impact on the CMS adoption in the enterprise. So we added support for personalization of Kentico CMS user interface (CMS Desk) for content editors depending on their role. If you have a user who needs to publish news once a month, she may not need all the features available in Kentico CMS.

With version 5.0, the administrator can enable/disable menu items or parts of dialogs to simplify the user experience to the features that the user really needs. Everything else can be hidden. It also allows you to personalize the WYSIWYG editor toolbar to eliminate users from breaking the web site design with too many colors and fonts.

Widgets - More Power to End Users!

Until now, the web parts were only available to developers. If someone from marketing department needed to add a newsletter subscription box to the right column of her new page, she needed to call a developer. That's why we introduced widgets.

Widgets are actually web parts with simplified user interface that allow end users to add dynamic features, such as forms, polls, newsletter subscription and others to the widget zones defined by developer. The end users are no longer limited to entering static content - now they can also add new functionality to the page! Of course, developers have full control of which widgets can be used on the site and where they can be placed. This technology is so powerful that you can even enable end users to create whole new pages using widgets like developers do with web parts!

And that's not all: the widgets can also be used on a personalized home page, similar to iGoogle.com which is useful if you build an intranet or community portal.

Also, widgets can be used by group administrators in social networking sites to customize their group home pages!

New Design

Kentico CMS 5.0 comes with new and, as we believe, nicer design. The new design allows you to easily create your own skins by replacing our graphics files with your own! If you create a new skin, please be sure to share it with others through our Marketplace.







Active Directory Import Utility

The new Active Directory Import Utility allows you to periodically synchronize users from Active Directory into Kentico CMS. It's useful if you use Kentico CMS for intranet or extranet site with Windows Authentication.








Many Minor Improvements

Other nice, minor improvements include:

• Drag and drop in the content tree
• Impersonation of global administrator as a chosen user
• Side-by-side comparison of document versions
• and others...

You can find the complete version history at http://www.kentico.com/Download/Version_History.aspx
 

Where to Learn More

- Look at Thom Robbins' screencast Kentico CMS 5.0 Beta and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2
- Register for our free webinar Martin's Top 5 for V5 (January 19, 2010)
 

Download

As always, you can download Kentico CMS 5.0 at http://www.kentico.com/download.aspx.
 

How Do I Get Source Code, License Keys and Serial Numbers for v5.0?

We will distribute the source code, license keys and serial numbers during the week of January 4 to those of you who have a valid maintenance (subscription). In the meantime, you can use the trial version.
 

Where Do I Find the Upgrade Procedure?

Kentico CMS upgrade procedure from 4.1 to 5.0 will be available in the mid of January. Since we wanted to release version 5.0 on time, we decided to release the upgrade procedure later, once we fully test it.

We believe you will like the new version and we will appreciate your feedback on the new features!