Phire CMS

History

The Phire CMS project started in 2009 by developer Nick Sagona and was born out of a collection of custom-built content management systems that had been developed by Nick to meet specific client needs. The project started under the code name Phoenix, but was changed to Phire before the official release. Phire is heavily influenced by what has become a standard set of expected features available in other CMS projects, but offers a handful of additional features built directly into the application, such as multiple site management and mobile access and presentation.

The core of the Phire CMS version 1 branch is specifically built on top of the object-oriented PHP library, Moc10 PHP Library, and uses the JavaScript library, Jax JavaScript Library, to enhance the overall user interface and user experience.

Releases

Official coding and development of Phire began in the beginning of January, 2010. Beta-testing occurred between August, 2010 and October 2010, and the official release of the stable version 1.0 was released on November 1, 2010. An update to Phire, v1.0.1, was released on November 22, 2010 addressing security and adding a few small upgrades. Phire CMS v1.1 was released on January 9, 2011 and contains a host of new features and updates, including an easier installation process and support for 12 languages.

Although the name "Phire" has no direct connection, the naming convention for the project code names is influenced by the Marvel Universe, particularly the X-Men set of characters. The project code names do not always have to relate to some element of fire or flame. The "Ph" in Phire itself is more of a play on the "PH" of PHP, the programming language in which the project is written.

Future release

Development for Phire CMS v 2.0 was announced on April 4, 2012 and is currently underway. It will utilize the next generation of the PHP framework that it was built on, the Pop PHP Framework, moving on from the Moc10 PHP Library, which is now at its end of life. While the new version will most likely break backward compatibility and require PHP 5.3 or greater, a good many robust features will be built in and improved upon as directed from community input and feedback.

Features

Phire CMS has many features that are built in, but it also provides a platform for the application to be extended via its API. Phire also takes a more aggressive stance on its support of PHP, as it requires PHP 5.2.6 or above and is fully compatible with PHP 5.3. Phire does not support PHP 4. It also requires MySQL 5.0 or above.

Vulnerabilities

A handful of security issues were discovered in the first official release of Phire CMS. According to Secunia, Phire CMS v1.0 had 25 scripts with a maximum rating of "Less Critical" in the areas of cross-site scripting and manipulation of data. A total of 36 scripts were patched for security for the Phire CMS v1.0.1 release.

Development and community

Being open source, Phire CMS embraces further development and input from the community and supports anyone who wishes to contribute to core code base or to the extensions repository. However, the Phire Developer Center has not officially launched, but is slated for a launch date before the end of 2010. In the meantime, the core code base is available for anonymous checkout via GitHub at