W00T, school is out and Enano 1.1.6 is released!

Four years of school is finally done! I'm eagerly awaiting the start of my summer projects: lazing around, learning C#, and some more anime watching!

Also, a nice graduation present: Enano CMS 1.1.6 is released!

• A new theme is set for default: Enanium
• A new extra method of security is added to auth systems: Live-ReAuth
• Enano now uses HMAC-SHA1 encoded passwords internally
• External authentication is now supported, via plugins; through this, the Yubikey plugin works
• A new simplified log interface
• The dashboard in the administrative panel has been rewritten to be a little more friendly to new users

To get Enano CMS 1.1.6, head over to the downloads page! We are now using CoralCDN for instant mirroring of the downloads. It is somewhat experimental, so there might be issues. If there are any, please contact us in the forums.

CMS Vendor Meme - Enano CMS

On behalf of Enano CMS Project, I plan to follow through the "CMS Vendor Meme" by responding to the following.

1. Our software comes with an installer program.

Enano CMS itself, once it is dropped into htdocs or equivalent, has a web based installer that can be used to configure Enano completely. Also, our efforts with the BitNami project allow us to say that we do have a regular installer application to run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc. for installing Enano CMS. In the future, we do plan to offer our own set of them on the project though. We also have a commandline based installation sequence that can be automated. Unless you use the BitNami installer, the only step needed to remove it is to delete the folder. The BitNami installer has a standard uninstall script/app depending on your OS. (3/3)

2. Installing or uninstalling our software does not require a reboot of your machine.

Absolutely not! Enano CMS does not require rebooting the machine because it does not have any system level components. Everything is implemented in the web script level. (3/3)

3. You can choose your locale and language at install time, and never have to see English again after that.

While Enano CMS does allow you to choose the locale and language at install time, and never require you to see English again after that, we cannot offer any languages other than English because nobody has stepped up to translate the strings. Give us a break! We are only two people and we started this project in 2006, adding translation support fairly late in the development. (1.5/3)

4. Eval versions of the latest edition(s) of our software are always available for download from the company website.

Enano CMS is Free Software and Open Source Software (under GNU GPLv2), as well as free as in free food. You can always get the latest version of Enano through our Mercurial repository as well. (3/3)

5. Our WCM software comes with a fully templated "sample web site" and sample workflows, which work out-of-the-box.

Well, not really. Enano comes with themes, yes, but that is it. Technically, Enano is a CMS with wiki features available. Enano uses the same workflow as MediaWiki, only slightly different in that it has Access Controls and other features to control what goes on. (2/3)

6. We ship a tutorial.

No, we do not. But we don't really need to either. Again, Enano is a wiki-based CMS, so anyone even remotely familiar with MediaWiki (the style of Wiki our wiki engine is based on) will be able to grasp it quite well. There is a "click here to get started" link on a fresh install of Enano though. (2/3)

7. You can raise a support issue via a button, link, or menu command in our administrative interface.

In Enano 1.0.x, no, but in our development version, 1.1.x, we most likely will. At this time, we are putting the final bits into place for 1.1.6, and a link to the page describing how to get support for Enano will likely be on the main page of the admin panel. (2/3)

8. All help files and documentation for the product are laid down as part of the install.

No way. It would make the install package way too large, and besides, Enano's documentation is also a wiki for people to contribute to. There is already a basic set of information there, but more good documentation is always appreciated (3/3).

9. We run our entire company website using the latest version of our own WCM products.

Well, we aren't a company, but we do run our entire website on the latest versions of our own software. Enano 1.0.6 is for enanocms.org and docs.enanocms.org, while nighthawk.enanocms.org and *.demo.enanocms.org use 1.1.x. When 1.1.6 is released, all sites will be upgraded to 1.1.6, even the main sites. (3/3)

10. Our salespeople understand how our products work.

Well, we don't sell anything, but we do understand how our own software works, after all, we use it all the time! (3/3)

11. Our software does what we say it does.

Absolutely! Enano doesn't claim to do what it cannot do. (3/3).

12. We don't charge extra for our SDK.

We don't charge anything for the software itself, much less the SDK, which incidentally, is part of the Enano sources. (3/3).

13. Our licensing model is simple enough for a 5-year-old to understand.

Definitely. You can get it for free and share to anyone you want under the same terms is pretty simple! Although it could be argued that five-year-olds don't know how to share ;) (3/3)

14. We have one price sheet for all customers.

Yep! We do for the software itself (FREE) and our support services (available here). (3/3)

15. Our top executives are on Skype, Twitter, or some similar channel, and: Feel free to contact them directly at any time.

Both developers of Enano CMS are available through Twitter, IRC, email, instant messenging, and support forums. (3/3)

Overall Rating: 40.5/45

Meme ID: 9c56d0fcf93175d70e1c9b9d188167cf

Tag!: Mambo, Joomla!, Drupal, PHP-Nuke, TikiWiki CMS/Groupware, TangoCMS, WordPress, BLOG:CMS, CakePHP

Yubikeys and Enano?

Enano CMS, a project that I am involved in, has recently announced Yubikey support through a plugin in the latest development versions. Now, most people, if not all that read this blog may not have a clue on why Yubikey support is so special. After all, its just another authentication method, right? Wrong!

Let me start off this with a little history on Enano CMS for those who don't know what it is. Enano CMS is a CMS that was started with by Dan Fuhry to replace the antiquated web page setup on the Experience UI project. Well, he was also spurred on by me, who joined him later because I had some bad experiences with Drupal and phpBB, Fully Modded. Each of these projects had good and bad things, though. 

Drupal is incredibly modular, but it had a rather clumsy UI at the time. I am told that the UI has been improved since then, but I digress. phpBB Fully Modded was chock full of features. Too many, in fact. However, it was the only truly reliable way of getting all the features needed working together. 

phpBB, Fully Modded inherits all the security issues of phpBB, as well as some of its architecture faults. For example, in most web systems, people can write plugins to hook into the main software package to provide additional features. This has a limiting factor, but it is modular, allowing for easy removal and installation for testing purposes. phpBB does not have a plugin system. Developers of phpBB depend on a MOD extension system, which is quite literally what it says, modifying phpBB itself to add these features. Essentially, they were patches to phpBB. Dan and I saw a huge issue with this, especially after my phpBB site was literally destroyed by crackers over Thanksgiving day in 2006. 

Enano CMS was Dan's solution to these problems. He saw phpBB's inefficiency with security quite damning for it, but it was really the best supported solution out there as far as forums went. So, when he designed Enano, back then called Midget CMS (it was changed to Enano when it was discovered another CMS package with the name existed already), he designed it with modularity and security in mind. Originally, it used regular old hash signatures, but it did not sanction actual code modification to extend functionality. It had an incredibly flexible plugin API added to it for this purpose. Over time, the API was extended, and Enano's core was modified to increase security. For 1.0RC1, Enano's security was truly new. It used 192-bit industrial strength AES cryptography to secure logins. Diffe-Hellman was later added in 1.1.x development, and finally HMAC-SHA1. Both Diffie-Hellman and HMAC-SHA1 are currently in use in Enano CMS. 

Also, after the first rewrite of Enano, the administration was heavily cleaned up, and redone several times to make it simpler and much more intuitive to the new user. The resulting Admin panel is quite easy for a new user to dive right in and use it. Concepts from Wordpress and phpBB were borrowed for the design of the admin panel, which is evident in the style of the panel. I got more involved with the project around the time of 1.0RC1 and started helping Dan figure out aspects of theming and UI to make sure that it was aesthetically pleasing as well as having high usability. The result was a quite nicely done system that additionally doubled as a wiki that could be secured using ACLs or numerous management shortcuts in the page tools.

Where does the Yubikey come into play here? Unsurprisingly, the security systems employed in Enano CMS make the Yubikey a rather good fit for it. Yubico, the company that developed and is marketing the Yubikey, designed the Yubikey system to use HMAC system which Enano also uses. The result? Enano can take advantage of some of the more powerful features of the Yubikey One Time Password (OTP) system. Dan, the developer, fell in love with the idea of the Yubikey and the OTP system. I pushed him to implement support for the Yubikey into Enano's own authentication system. The end result? The smoothest and quite possibly the most secure way to log into a web system is available for anyone who uses Enano and owns a Yubikey. Enano, being as flexible as it is, can function as a blog, a podcasting publishing site, a wiki, and a traditional CMS, among other things.

The Yubikey is special because it is a one time password system that does not require ANY special software on the local machine. It acts like a HID USB keyboard that just inputs the OTP to log in. Since, to a certain extent, it merely is a validation tool, the OTP system could be used for numerous things. The most popular way is for logins, but it could be a good replacement for CAPTCHAs on a company site where full access available to everyone is not necessary. The sky is the limit with a Yubikey!

More information here.