Mukurtu CMS 4
Our development team is hard at work on building the next major version of Mukurtu CMS. We will keep this page (and our newsletter) up to date with all the latest news and announcements.
FAQs
Why is Mukurtu 4 necessary now?
Mukurtu 2 and 3 are built on Drupal 7. Drupal 7 is nearing its end of life and user support, and we need to ensure that Mukurtu remains a stable, safe, and current platform.
What platform will Mukurtu 4 use?
Mukurtu 4 is being built on Drupal 9.
How do we update our site to Mukurtu 4?
Mukurtu 4 is a substantial technical departure from Mukurtu 2 and 3. You will not be able to “upgrade in place”, the same way you update from 2.1.5 to 2.1.6, etc.…
Our team will provide migration pathways to bring your content forward to a new Mukurtu 4 site.
Can we just keep using our site as is?
Your current Mukurtu site won’t suddenly stop working when Mukurtu 4 is released. However, since Drupal 7 will no longer be supported after November 2022, that also means that your site will no longer receive updates, bug fixes, or Drupal security updates. We strongly encourage all users to migrate to Mukurtu 4 once it is officially launched. Any older sites still running Mukurtu 2 or 3 after Drupal 7 support ends do so at their own risk.
Can you include ________ in Mukurtu 4?
Maybe! But not right away.
Our focus for the Mukurtu 4 launch is to have a stable platform that supports as much existing functionality as possible so that all users can continue to use Mukurtu.
We have a list of new features and improvements that have been generated by Mukurtu users. We are working on those right now. If you think of something that is not on the list below, let us know through the Mukurtu 4 community channels below.
What if I want to start a Mukurtu site before Mukurtu 4 launches?
Since there will be a way to migrate content from a Mukurtu 2 or 3 site to Mukurtu 4, you can start working with Mukurtu anytime.
If you would rather wait until Mukurtu 4 is available, there is always lots of advance work that can be done for any project that is not platform dependent – organizing files, creating or cleaning up metadata, etc.…
Timeline
This is our most recent development timeline. It will likely fluctuate as we go. We will do our best to keep it up to date.
Features at Launch
At launch, Mukurtu 4 will include all the same core features, functions, and tools already available in Mukurtu CMS. Many features will work differently on the back end, but they will carry forward the same core values. Below is a non-exhaustive list of features we are planning to include at launch:
- Digital heritage
- Dictionary
- Communities
- Cultural Protocols
- Collections
- Mukurtu core metadata
- Rich media
- Multi-page documents
- Broad suite of user roles and responsibilities
- Comments
- TK Labels
- Roundtrip
Tentative 5-year Roadmap and Migration Path
This is the latest information available for our roadmap and migration path for the next five years. As we are in the middle of a fundamental re-write of Mukurtu CMS, our timeline (and Drupal) will continue to evolve and be updated accordingly.
At this stage, the identified features have been selected exploration due to their frequent user requests. This list is not exhaustive, and more features will be added as needed. Depending on the results of exploration and testing, features may or may not be included in production.
Overview
As a part of the migration from Mukurtu CMS 3 to 4, we will release an early Mukurtu 4 Beta in late 2021 that will be the foundation of the Mukurtu 4 release. Part of the early 2022 development timeline will include creating early Mukurtu 3 to 4 migration tools that will enable sites to migrate their data.
In addition to iterating through current Mukurtu CMS functionality for identified bugs, usability, and accessibility improvements we will begin actively investigating and working on these features:
- Improved user management
- Improved commenting system
- Improve translation and localization tools
Community Engagement
Begin gathering feedback from beta testers. Selection and implementation of community forum and documentation center for Mukurtu CMS 4 beta testers is in process. Continuing to use GitHub and GitHub discussions is likely, but other platforms are being considered.
Overview
During the summer of 2022 we are expecting to have a Mukurtu CMS 4 release candidate finalized and ready for early testing and the possible migration of stock production Mukurtu CMS 3 sites.
Continue iterating through current Mukurtu CMS functionality for identified bugs, usability, and accessibility improvements. Active investigation of these features:
- OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer) integration
- Additional metadata schema support
- Introducing standard Drupal 8/9 theming more readily
Community Engagement
Continue to gather beta testers and early adopter feedback and incorporate into future work and plans.
Drupal 10 will be released in June of 2022. We will look to develop Mukurtu CMS features and functions for Drupal 8/9 but also for the eventual move to Drupal 10.
Overview
With Drupal 7&8 approaching the end of support for core updates in November 2022, the Mukurtu CMS will continue to identify pain points for migration and as needed, release updated migration tools and workflows. Major feature and base functionality will be complete and the Mukurtu CMS team will turn toward adding additional functionality, increasing the pace of Mukurtu CMS 4 migration for users and looking towards new plans and completing any already identified development needs.
Drupal 10 will be released in June of 2022. We will look to develop Mukurtu CMS features and functions for Drupal 8/9 but also for the eventual move to Drupal 10.
Continue iterating through current Mukurtu CMS functionality for identified bugs, usability, and accessibility improvements. Active investigation of these features:
- 3D media in DH items
- Enhanced Mapping functionality
- Expanded Taxonomy records (eg: person records, place records)
Community Engagement
Continue to gather beta testers and early adopter feedback and incorporate into future work and plans.
Overview
The Mukurtu CMS team will continue to iterate through identified bugs, usability, workflow, and accessibility improvements and continue to identify and apply security updates. We will pause on development of new features to analyze and reflect on the progress made and the current Mukurtu 4 (Drupal 9) technology environment. Part of this analysis will be to pause and check for Drupal 10 compatibility. Drupal 10 has a hard end of support date of November 2023 as there are some major dependencies that will be sun setting in November (Symfony 4) and December of 2023 (CKEditor 4). While this migration will not be as drastic as Drupal 7 to 8 migration, we will need to ensure we are not relying on any soon to be deprecated code.
Community Engagement
Continue to gather Mukurtu 4.0 user feedback and incorporate into future development plans.
Overview
Beyond finalizing and publishing the update path to Drupal 10 and Mukurtu 5 the Mukurtu CMS development team will continue to work on identified software bugs, usability, and accessibility improvements and continue to identify and apply security updates to Mukurtu CMS 5. We will also actively investigate community identified updates or upgrades current to Mukurtu CMS 5 functionality or actively investigate the addition of newly identified features.
Community Engagement
Continue gathering Mukurtu CMS 4 user feedback and incorporating into future development plans.
Overview
By this time, the Mukurtu CMS team will need to perform a ground-up evaluation. Included in this evaluation would be a full environmental scan that encompasses current user needs along with a comparison of all available and comparable software and a current technical and administrative skill survey of all Mukurtu CMS team members. The purpose of the evaluation is to affirm the current trajectory of the software project or make course corrections as user needs and technologies evolve.
During this time, the Mukurtu CMS Development team will continue to work on identified software bugs, usability and accessibility improvements and continue to identify and apply security updates.
Community Engagement
Continue gathering Mukurtu CMS 5.0 user feedback and incorporating into future development plans.
Overview
Reflecting off work completed during the ground-up evaluation the Mukurtu CMS team will make strategic and operational decisions based on the findings of the ground-up evaluation. These decisions, based on the outcome of the evaluations, could include:
- Continuing the Mukurtu CMS software project as-is and continuing to use Drupal as the base technology.
- Migrating the base technology to another framework.
- Merging efforts with a separate identified open-source software solution and providing solutions packs that would supply the functionality of Mukurtu CMS on top of another Library focused content management system.
- Planning for a slow wind-down of the Mukurtu CMS project if the features and functionality of Mukurtu CMS users are present in other readily available open-source systems.
During this time, the Mukurtu CMS Development team will continue to work on identified software bugs, usability and accessibility improvements and continue to identify and apply security updates.
Community Engagement
Continue gathering Mukurtu CMS 5.0 user feedback and incorporating into future development plans.
Get Involved
Do you have suggestions? Requests?
Are you interested in giving feedback on proposed developments? Contributing to the conversation?
Do you have the technical skills to test pre-release versions of Mukurtu 4? Interested in helping other Mukurtu users?
If the to any of the above is yes, we invite you to join the Mukurtu Community forum. We are ever thankful to the communities and individuals that have helped drive the developmentof Mukurtu in the past. Now we want to be even more transparent and bring in more voices and experiences. At this time we will be focusing conversation on Mukurtu 4 development, but we are planning to open the forum to all Mukurtu topics in the future.
The Mukurtu Community Forum is part of the Mukurtu GitHub repository, and a GitHub account will be required to post.