From time to time I receive messages from readers interested in knowing what CMS (Content Management System) Phoronix uses and where they can get it. Well, Phoronix as well as other Phoronix-associated sites (with the exception of the forums) use PHXCMS.

Short for PHORONIX CMS, PHXCMS is a proprietary and extensive content management system for web usage. PHXCMS is PHP driven and uses a hybrid of MySQL and XML for data storage. PHXCMS is highly optimized and much more efficient than those that use vBulletin or similar commercial CMS products for storing articles. If Joomla or phpBB were GNOME, PHXCMS would likely be the equivalent to Xfce when it comes to memory usage/requirements and being very (and continually) refined with time.

At this point PHXCMS is not available to the general public, but if there is enough interest after the next version has been completed, it may be turned into a open-source project. The reason it is not an open project at this point is that the administrative area is rather rough and there is much polishing to be done, along with cleaning up the code. Below are a few words through the various revisions that PHXCMS has went through (as well as an interesting look back at history).

PHXCMS-1: This was the original content management system that had premiered with Phoronix.com back in June of 2004. It was written relatively quickly but was able to efficiently scale with size. While quite rudimentary, PHXCMS-1 did, however, did support a fair amount of features under the hood. The latest version of PHXCMS is even able to reference the original database created with PHXCMS-1. Wayback Machine.

PHXCMS-2: Coming out in July 2004 was the next formal of release of the CMS system, which was an overhaul of the original code. PHXCMS-2 nearly doubled the amount of usable features with monitoring popular viewed categories, affiliate articles, and much more. This version had also sported a new interface. Wayback Machine.

PHXCMS-3: Prior to the implementation of PHXCMS-3 were several minor rewrites of PHXCMS-2. However, in time for Christmas of 2004, PHXCMS-3 was ready. This CMS was another major overhaul and had added several features (such as an improved integrated search engine and new administrative options). PHXCMS-3 had featured a much refined layout. Wayback Machine.

PHXCMS-4: 2005 had seen some more moderate improvements to the system, but not enough to call for a version bump. However, in late 2005/early 2006 PHXCMS-4 began to take shape, which is faintly similar to the current working version. The API for PHXCMS-4 and PHXCMS-5 is nearly identical, and most of the page functions could be interchanged. PHXCMS-4 had introduced improved XML parsing, yet another new interface and layout, and a horde of new features available to the end user.

PHXCMS-5: This release was the first time where a new layout for Phoronix.com was not paired with this release, however, some finer tuning had went into this release. Among the notable features for PHXCMS-5 were the removal of HTML tables from the CMS portion (being replaced by other HTML and CSS), browser compatibility fixes, many new under the hood features, CSS image sprites, and a lot of code cleaning.

At this time, PHXCMS-5 is the latest major revision to our content management system. Some of the latter features tacked on included Microsummary support for Firefox 2.0, improved RSS support, CAPTCHA verification support on messages, and other miscellaneous changes.

Phoronix LCH is currently using a combination of PHXCMS-4 and PHXCMS-5 code. SpreadGNOME.org was using a heavily modified version of PHXCMS-5 to support calendar functionality, article commenting system, and many other innovations. PHXCMS-5 and many of the changes that were made for SpreadGNOME.org is what currently powers michaellarabel.com. PyroCPU was based upon PHXCMS-3 and the Phoronix Redblog was based upon PHXCMS-4 and early models of PHXCMS-5. That about sums up major development of the Phoronix content management system.

If all goes well, PHXCMS-6 will see the light of day in 2007. Some of the tentative features include integrated commenting system for articles (similar to what is now offered at michaellarabel.com but with many more end-user options), new CMS installer / administrative area, PHP 5 (much of it written right now is still in PHP 4.x), XML revamping, new MySQL database (first release to break backwards-compatibility with the database), security improvements, and support for new Firefox 3.0 features. PHXCMS-6 will be the most extensive release yet, and will hopefully be release quality for use by the general public. As development progresses, more details and information will come to light. Due to some of my freelance development work, I do already have a heavily modified version of PHXCMS-5 code that has been working for an internal product procurement system for a company along with some other adaptations.

Some points I failed to mention...

- PHXCMS has scaled much better than ever anticipated when it comes to traffic and features.
- PHXCMS-6 will likely feature a CAPTCH replacement (http://www.michaellarabel.com/index.php?k=blog&i=17 if this works out)
- PHXCMS-6 should also introduce plenty of AJAX features.
- PHXCMS-6 will still not feature forum capabilities (forum replacement for vBulletin on Phoronix Forums), but that could be a goal in the coming years for PHXCMS-10.