Internet Scout

Metavus 1.2.0 Digital Collection Platform Released

Monday, April 14th, 2025 - 10:14am

Version 1.2.0 of the Metavus open-source digital collections platform is now available. Three noteworthy additions in this new release include:

ChatPDF: a new plugin that allows ChatGPT to be asked specific questions about files uploaded to a collection, with answers placed in associated metadata fields. ChatPDF can be leveraged to jumpstart cataloging or for other AI-driven explorations. This capability is currently being used to help manage the ATE Central resource collection.
PhotoLibrary/ExifTags/IIIFServer: new plugins that provide support for assembling a photo collection, including automated extraction of embedded information into metadata fields, collection display, and online delivery. This feature is currently being used for the ATE Impacts photo library.
EduLink: a new plugin that allows collection materials to be made available directly within multiple learning management systems (LMSs). As part of the STEMLink service, this capability is currently being used to make NSF ATE-created educational resources available in LMSs across the country.

About Metavus

Metavus is an open-source digital collections platform aimed at helping collect, describe, and disseminate resources online in customizable formats. Key features include:

Fully configurable, extendable schemas and vocabularies for records, collections, events, pages, news, and users, providing unlimited flexibility in describing and managing resources.
Processing and data manipulation rules based on conditions and search parameter sets, supporting total adaptability in modifying and tracking content.
Customizable privileges based on content and user metadata, offering limitless options for granting and controlling access to resources.
Plugin-based architecture, providing unlimited opportunities to expand and enhance ways to ingest, manipulate, and disseminate content.

Metavus 1.2.0 can be downloaded from the Metavus website and can also be found on GitHub.

ATE Central Releases ATE Impacts Book

Thursday, August 22nd, 2024 - 11:59am

ATE Central is excited to inform you about the upcoming release of the new ATE Impacts 2024-2025 book! You can order copies of the ATE Impacts book online - and digital copies of the book can be accessed once available on the ATE Impacts site as well. The digital copies will be viewable across all devices via any web browser.

The ATE Impacts 2024-2025 book showcases the work of the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education Community. This edition includes a foreword from National Science Foundation Director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, and features the work of 24 centers and 35 projects across the seven ATE areas, as well as applied research.

By highlighting ATE grantee's successful and innovative work, the book encourages broader participation in the program by academic institutions, educators, and industry partners. Dissemination of the ATE Impacts book advances understanding of the importance of technicians to the strength of high-tech industries that drive the nation's economy.

For 30 years, the NSF's Advanced Technological Education program has improved educators' teaching, broadened students' knowledge, and enhanced technicians' skills. Through the ATE program, NSF has influenced the career paths of individuals from historically underrepresented populations in STEM fields and added diversity—of thought, perspective, and experience—to the technical workforce. The book supports and complements outreach activities conducted by ATE PIs and staff in broadening their audiences and sharing their stories with various partners and stakeholders.

We hope that the digital and print versions of the book will be helpful to those of you within, and beyond the ATE community. Here are some ideas for how you might use copies of the ATE Impacts publication with campus colleagues, your industry partners, students, and others.

Promote STEM Education and the ATE program to deans, department chairs, and other colleagues.
Give students a sense of the depth and breadth of the STEM fields available to them.
Emphasize the long-term benefits of education and industry collaboration by sharing the book with industry partners.
Distribute among new faculty and staff members to help them better understand the outcomes and opportunities offered by NSF and the ATE program.
Showcase the impact of STEM education and ATE by sharing the publication with local journalists, government officials, or campus marketing staff.

We also encourage you to visit the ATE Impacts blog for more stories, statistics, and ATE-related content. If you have any questions or feedback, please email us at info@ateimpacts.net, or visit the ATE Impacts contact page.

ATE Central Releases Latest Impacts Book

Thursday, July 28th, 2022 - 11:12am

We are excited to announce the release of the ATE Impacts 2022-2023 book. Copies can be ordered online through the ATE Impacts website, and digital copies of the book can be accessed there as well. The digital copies are viewable across all devices.

The ATE Impacts 2022-2023 book showcases the work of the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education Community. This edition includes a foreword from United States President Joseph Biden and features the work of 33 projects and 28 centers across the seven ATE areas, as well as applied research.

As part of the Impacts book, ATE collaborated with Vox Television to release several videos highlighting the experiences of the ATE community. These videos feature students, administrators, educators, and industry partners sharing how ATE initiatives impacted their lives and careers. The videos can be accessed on ATE's Impacts videos page.

By highlighting the ATE community's successful and innovative work, the book and videos encourage broader participation in the ATE program by academic institutions, educators, and industry partners. Dissemination of the ATE Impacts book advances understanding of the importance of technician education and its role in supporting the high-tech industries that drive the United States' economy.

Metavus 1.0 Released

Thursday, July 28th, 2022 - 10:41am

Metavus 1.0 has been released and is available for download on the Metavus website.

Metavus has a plugin-based architecture, with the core functionality providing basic infrastructure. At the same time, plugins build on the core to deliver extended and expanded capabilities.

Highlights of Metavus include:

Ready to use right after downloading
Quick installation, usually less than five minutes
Fully customizable metadata fields and schemas—Metavus supports 17 distinct types of metadata fields
Powerful built-in search engine which supports keyword, per-field, phrase, and term exclusion searches
Over 25 plugins included, with additional capabilities such as URL checker and OAI-PMH server

More information on Metavus can be found on the Metavus Features page, along with a Metavus demo site and a documentation page on specific Metavus concepts.

We look forward to your feedback on Metavus 1.0.

CWIS version 4.1.1 released

Monday, May 21st, 2018 - 1:31pm

CWIS version 4.1.1 has been released and is now available for download on the Scout site.

This is a maintenance release, focusing primarily on bug fixes, robustness, and increased PHP and MySQL/MariaDB compatibility. More specific detail about additions and fixes can be found on the Change Log page.

PLEASE NOTE: This will likely be the last version of CWIS compatible with PHP 5.x. Active support (from the PHP team) for PHP 5.6 ended in January 2017, and all support (including security fixes) has ended for PHP 5.5 and earlier. PHP 7 provides many substantive benefits - we recommend upgrading ASAP to the latest version of PHP.

This new version of CWIS is also available in an even more turnkey package, as a Vagrant "box", that you can run on your local desktop computer. Instructions for loading the new release via Vagrant (after you have Vagrant running on your computer) are available on the download page.

We look forward to your feedback on this new version of CWIS.

CWIS 4.1.0 Released

Friday, February 9th, 2018 - 10:08am

CWIS version 4.1.0 has been released and is now available for download on the Scout Site.

A few highlights of this new release:

- CWIS should now be fully WCAG 2.0 AA compliant for accessibility when using the default interface.

- Emails generated via rules can now be held for approval before being sent, and there is a browsable log of outgoing emails.

- All help pages are now managed by the Pages plugin and are editable via the plugin's WYSIWYG interface.

- And there's definitely more - as usual, much more detail about new additions and fixes can be found via the CWIS Revision History option on the Administration menu.

The minimum PHP version for CWIS 4.1.0 is 5.4, which came out in 2012. If you're running PHP 5.3 or earlier, this might be an excellent time to upgrade to 5.6 or even 7.2, as support from the PHP team (including security fixes) for PHP 5.5 and earlier has ended. At Scout, we have moved to PHP 7 on our production sites because of the significant performance increase it brings.

As always, after installing the new version we ask that you use the Register with Scout feature on the Administration menu to let us know you're using the new version of the software. It really helps us determine what kind of operating environments the software is running in, and where to go next with development.

We look forward to your feedback on this new version of CWIS.

CWIS version 4.0.1 Released

Monday, September 18th, 2017 - 12:22pm

CWIS version 4.0.1 has been released, and is now available for download on the Scout Site.

This is a maintenance release, with bug fixes and increased compatibility with a wider range of LAMP environments, but there have been a few improvements and additions:

    CORE IMPROVEMENTS
    - Extended SearchEngine to support 'user is not' searches
    - Added help text to all settings on System Configuration and Advanced System Configuration pages
    - Any errors reported by enabled plugins are now displayed on the Administration page (as well as the Plugins page)
    - Added "uadd" command to cwis command line utility.

    CORE IMPROVEMENTS (Internal)
    - Revised string handling code so that the mbstring extension is no longer required (though it will be used if available)
    - ResourceFactory::ImportResourcesFromXml() added to simplify installation
    - Session cookies now have the Secure and HttpOnly flags set when appropriate, to help minimize the possibility of XSS attacks

NEW PLUGINS
- SavedSearchMailings: replaces the saved search mailing feature previously in the core software, and adds support for saved search emails for search results from non-default schemas (e.g. blog posts, events, pages, etc)

    PLUGIN IMPROVEMENTS
    - DrupalSync: Better error reporting when login sync fails
    - MLPHPList: Add local cache of user information to speed up generating Mailing List Metrics page
    - BotDetector: Do not assume that any IP listed by httpBL as "suspicious" is a bot (as this includes many IPs that are just part of public wifi networks)

The minimum PHP version for CWIS 4.0.1 is 5.4. At Scout we have moved to PHP 7.0 on our production sites because of the significant performance increase it brings. The minimum MySQL/MariaDB version is 5.0.

We look forward to your feedback on this new version of CWIS.

CWIS 4.0.0 Released

Monday, June 5th, 2017 - 10:29am

CWIS version 4.0.0 has been released, and is now available for download on the Scout Site.

More than anything, CWIS 4.0 represents a quantum jump for the software in three areas: maintainability, customizability, and SEO-friendliness. We’ve invested a great deal of time and energy in the almost two years since 3.2 was released, on smoothing out many of the rough edges in the underlying user interface code, adding new conveniences to make CWIS-based sites easier to maintain, and optimizing the metadata and areas of performance most important to search engines.

That said, there have also been some other improvements and significant new functionality added to CWIS since 3.2:

You can now search for when a field was last modified, using the "@“ operator, and search now supports prefix and suffix operators (“^" and “$") for text fields. (See the Advanced Search Tips box at the bottom of the Advanced Search page for examples.)
Search now works across all content types, including entries created and maintained by the Blog, Calendar Events, and Pages plugins, and the search interface has been refactored to be easier to maintain and customize.
User fields can now be configured to be automatically updated when records are changed.
There's a new Piwik plugin, that automatically inserts the header code required for use with the open source Piwik web analytics package.
The Folders plugin now supports folders containing all content types (e.g. resources, events, blog posts) and transferring folders between users.
Metrics Reporter now tracks and reports on stats for the Blog plugin.
Password complexity requirements are now configurable.
The Rules plugin has been completely refactored to use an IF/THEN model, that supports complex search parameters in the IF section and complex email recipient selection parameters in the THEN section.
The Resource Exporter plugin now supports exporting all content types, allowing the export of (for example) events or blog posts.
The Batch Edit plugin now supports batch editing records for all content types.

(One caveat about the new Rules plugin: it will not work with rules set up under the old plugin, so if you’ve been using Rules, you’ll need to make note of the details of any rules you have set up before upgrading, and then manually add them again using the new plugin.)

And there were a few new additions intended specifically to make development with CWIS easier:

All CSS in the default interface has been replaced with SCSS (AKA Sass), which should be easier to maintain and customize.
The Developer plugin now supports a developer.ini file, that can be used to force plugin configuration settings to specific values and force plugins to be enabled/disabled. (See install/EXAMPLE-developer.ini for more information.) It can come in very handy when copying a database from a production site to a development or test installation.
There is a new "cwis" command line utility, that can be used to perform some common operations directly from the command line. (The utility can also be found in the install directory – you'll need to copy or link to it to somewhere in your PATH to use it, and possibly also check that the first line points to the correct directory for PHP, if you have the PHP executable installed somewhere other than /usr/bin/php.)

As usual, more information about additions and fixes can be found via the CWIS Revision History option on the Administration menu. (If you’re maintaining a custom user interface for your CWIS site or are doing development of any sort with CWIS, it’s definitely worth a look – there are some additional very significant infrastructure enhancements, that are not mentioned above.)

The minimum PHP version for CWIS 4.0.0 is 5.4, which came out in 2012. If you’re running PHP 5.3 or earlier, this might be an excellent time to upgrade to 5.6 or even 7.0, as support from the PHP team (including security fixes) for PHP 5.5 and earlier has ended. At Scout we have moved to PHP 7.0 on our production sites because of the significant performance increase it brings.

As always, after installing the new version we ask that you use the Register with Scout feature on the Administration menu to let us know you're using the new version of the software. It really helps us determine what kind of operating environments the software is running in, and where to go next with development.

We look forward to your feedback on this new version of CWIS.

CWIS 3.9.1 Beta Released

Friday, August 26th, 2016 - 2:54pm

CWIS beta version 3.9.1 has been released, and is now available for download.

While primarily a bug fix and maintenance release, getting ready for 4.0.0, it does include a few enhancements worth noting:

You can now search for when a field was last modified, using the "@" operator. (See the Advanced Search Tips box at the bottom of the Advanced Search page for examples.)
User fields can now be configured to be automatically updated when records are changed.
There's a new Piwik plugin, that automatically inserts the header code required for use with the open source Piwik web analytics package.

And there were a couple of new additions intended to make development with CWIS easier:

The Developer plugin now supports a developer.ini file, that can be used to force plugin configuration settings to specific values and force plugins to be enabled/disabled. (See install/EXAMPLE-developer.ini for more information.) It can come in very handy when copying a database from a production site to a development or test installation.
There is a new "cwis" command line utility, that can be used to perform some common operations directly from the command line. (The utility can also be found in the install directory – you'll need to copy or link to it to somewhere in your PATH to use it, and possibly also check that the first line points to the correct directory for PHP, if you have PHP installed in a non-standard location.)

As usual, more information about additions and fixes can be found via the CWIS Revision History option on the Administration menu. As a beta release, this version is not recommended for use on live production sites. If you are going to run it on a production site (which, to be fair, we’ve been doing at Scout for months), please test and monitor your site carefully.

The minimum PHP version for CWIS 3.9.1 is 5.4, which came out in 2012. If you’re running PHP 5.3 or earlier, this might be an excellent time to upgrade to 5.6 or even 7.0, as support from the PHP team (including security fixes) for PHP 5.5 and earlier has ended. At Scout we have moved to PHP 7.0 on our production sites because of the significant performance increase it brings.

We look forward to your feedback on this new version of CWIS.

CWIS 3.9.0 Beta Released

Friday, May 20th, 2016 - 12:00am

CWIS beta version 3.9.0 has been released, and is now available for download. This is a beta release, leading up to CWIS 4.0.

This version focuses on three main areas:

Interface Refactoring – The standard page start and end in the default interface have been simplified, better documented, and heavily refactored to be more maintainable and much more easily customized. All CSS in the default interface has also been replaced with SCSS (AKA Sass), which should be easier to maintain and customize as well. (It’s preferable to customize your site via the NavEditor plugin and -Override.scss files if possible, before creating custom versions of the standard page start and end.)
Multi-Schema Support – Search now works across all content types, including entries created and maintained by the Blog, Calendar Events, and Pages plugins, and the search interface has been refactored to be easier to maintain and customize.
PHP 7 Compatibility – The latest major version of PHP introduced significant performance improvements and some new capabilities to the language, and in the process made a few changes that broke existing PHP code. CWIS 3.9.0 includes revisions that should allow the software to run smoothly under both PHP 5.x and 7.x.

A few other improvements you’ll find in this release:

The Folders plugin now supports transferring folders between users.
MetricsReporter now tracks stats for the Blog plugin.
Metadata field group names can now be displayed (or not) on the full record page, via a system configuration option.
When a plugin is enabled, any plugins upon which it is dependent are now automatically enabled as well.
Search now supports prefix and suffix operators (^ and $) for text fields.

More information about additions and fixes can be found via the CWIS Revision History option on the Administration menu. As a beta release, this version is not recommended for use on live production sites. If you are going to run it on a production site (which, to be fair, we’ve been doing at Scout for months), please test and monitor your site carefully.

Moving toward 4.0, we’re very much looking toward the future. Because of that, two additional notes:

Some of the existing measures in CWIS to maintain compatibility with old user interfaces have been eliminated, and others have been moved to the BackwardCompatibility plugin. We don’t anticipate these changes requiring much effort for interfaces based on CWIS 3.x, and interfaces based on CWIS 2.x should still be reasonably easily upgradable. Custom interfaces based on CWIS 1.x will definitely require more effort. In any event, if you need to make changes to your custom interface to get it to work with this release and run into difficulty, we’re happy to provide whatever assistance we can via the CWIS support forums.
The minimum PHP version for CWIS is now 5.4, which came out in 2012. If you’re running PHP 5.3 or earlier, this might be an excellent time to upgrade to 5.6 or even 7.0, as support (including security fixes) from the PHP team for PHP 5.5 is ending in July, and they are no longer supporting earlier versions at all. On the plus side, one significant benefit to moving to PHP 5.4+ is that you can now count on short echo tags always being available (i.e. you’ll be able to use <?= $MyVar ?> instead of <?PHP print $MyVar; ?>).

As always, after installing the new version we ask that you use the Register with Scout feature on the Administration menu to let us know you're using the new version of the software. It really helps us determine what kind of operating environments the software is running in, and where to go next with development.

We look forward to your feedback on this new version of CWIS.