Date:
21 Nov 2009
Category:
Announcements
Discuss:
18 comments

It's been a while since a blog was posted here... a lot is going on and an explanation of what we've been up to and what we are planning is long overdue. So here goes.

For those of you that don't know me, my name is Joe - Joseph if you're angry with me or if you're my mother - and I'm the co-founder and technical director at Airlock. I've been working with Allen and advising him in a commercial capacity for the past year or so.

A year? Boy does time fly.

This time last year I was in the middle of scoping a major project for MTV - the development of the supporting sites for the European Music Awards. We'd just finished supporting a series for the BBC called World On the Move which was the first full commercial test we had undertaken on the Symphony platform. It was a resounding success - the project won us a Sony Radio Academy Award - and the culmination of two years of research into the Open Source CMS landscape.

Symphony was it; the holy grail I'd been searching for.

Now, like most of you, I spend a lot of time online. So far today I've caught up with the latest news on forward.com over coffee, posted a geocoded rant on the forums of the BBC, voted for my favourite artist in a competition run by Virgin Media, watched a cool interactive 3D map of the recession on TV, started planning my next holiday on Original Travel, viewed a viral from Heineken, made a donation to Save The Children (a charity I've supported for years), read a review for a book I was recommended on authorsplace.co.uk and paid a parking fine I picked up this morning via westminster.gov.uk.

Now you're probably thinking "where is he going with this? We all spend a lot of time online. What's the big deal?" Well the common thread about the above is that they are all experiences powered by Symphony.

We've come a long way.

Symphony is a commercially proven, enterprise ready platform that scales to meet any requirement, from a personal blog to a whisky based social network to managing multiple live streaming media feeds for MTV across 23 territories.

BTW, that last project hit 17 million hits an hour at peak and records more than a billion - yes, a billion - votes, breaking all expectations.

When I first started working with Allen, my first order of business was to push to make the project 100% Open Source. I have always been a proponent of the movement (I launched the first Open Source browser-based video player back in 1999), so this was a natural first step. Since then we've refreshed the site and focused on maturing the platform as well as building this amazing communinity.

So what does the future hold?

Lots ;)

Symphony is now Symphony CMS Limited, a UK registered company (#07003464). dedicated to making the Symphony platform the best it possibly can be. Allen is a director of the company and will continue to look after day-to-day operations and the future development direction of the platform.

The company is 100% independent and is already commercially successful. We have a host of exciting services that will be launching on site in the coming months, from industry leading SLA-backed support services to a unique hosting platform with full support for XSLT 2.0.

We will also be releasing a new brand and a new website. Here's a sneak peak:

The new look www.getsymphony.com

It should go without saying that the community around Symphony is what really marks it out as a platform. We truly are community driven. Many of you contribute core code, many more give time for the development of extensions and bug testing.  We want to build on this. Recognising that community is at the heart of the project, we will be establishing a Symphony steering group which will be primarily made up of elected community members (look out for a full post on this front soon). This initiative is designed to give focus to the development roadmap of the project and to ensure that all of the stakeholders in the project have full representation.

There's so much going on at the moment that I've only really scratched the surface today.  We'll be posting regularly to keep you abreast of developments... watch this space!

Allen's 10¢

Due to the sheer amount of content and changes coming to the new Symphony website, the existing site will be taken down on the 27th of November and it will be back up on Monday 30th November. The team will work over the weekend to upgrade our website infrastructure and migrate any existing data across to the new environment. And yes, everything will be powered by Symphony :)

Comments

  • Nils
  • 21 Nov 09, 4:16 am

You know how to tease us! :)

… alas, it’s time to save “ye old site” and that little powerhouse graphic for sentimental reasons then … I must say I’m rather fond of the latter, but nonetheless looking forward to what the future has in hold for all of us!

Loving the new look guys! Cant wait to see the new site. Very excited.

Wow. :-)

This is absolutely fantastic - congratulations to Allen and the rest of the team. There are exciting times ahead for Symphony!

Awesome. Absolutely amazing achievement! Alliteration! (sorry) So excited for you guys - well done again.

This is very exciting. We all know it was possible, but it looks like you guys continue to take the significant steps needed to make Symphony a recognized, 1st class (or ‘top of mind’ as the marketers would say) platform. Good luck and congrats to you all!

@Joe I totally dig the style of this post; don’t know how to put it, but it’s more effective combo of promotion and communication than you see on a lot of your ‘peer’ projects.

@Allen So I’ll just have to rely on the Google cache to get my fix next weekend…

Huge congratulations to the whole team behind Symphony and many thanks also to the fantastic community.

The future sounds very exciting!

Amazing; I love the new look! Thanks for the update. Can’t wait to see the fruits of y’alls labor! We appreciate the heads up.

So cool!

Amazing; I love the new look! Thanks for the update. Can’t wait to see the fruits of y’alls labor! We appreciate the heads up.

So cool!

Sorry for the double comment post.

Nice look and concept. I’m completely consumed by that image! Amazing!

I love the new Symphony teaser page. Cannot wait to see more.

  1. Sounds great
  2. Looks great
  3. Exiting times

Congratulations!

Looking forward to the next transformation of symphony. Congrats!

Looking forward tot the documentation … ;)

Really looking forward to this. It will be nice to have quality documentation, and will really help make this and even better tool.

Create an account or sign in to comment.

Symphony • Open Source XSLT CMS

Server Requirements

  • PHP 5.3-5.6 or 7.0-7.3
  • PHP's LibXML module, with the XSLT extension enabled (--with-xsl)
  • MySQL 5.5 or above
  • An Apache or Litespeed webserver
  • Apache's mod_rewrite module or equivalent

Compatible Hosts

Sign in

Login details