Cofax is a web-based text and multimedia publication system. It was designed to simplify the presentation of newspapers on the Web and to expedite real-time Web publication.

It was designed originally at Knight Ridder to serve the content for several of its newspapers, including its largest, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. Cofax was the tool it used to manage and build numerous web sites across its network for two years.

Concepts Cofax technology pioneered are featured in Knight Ridder's new, more extensive CMS solution called the Single Digital Platform, launched February 2, 2002.

Currently, Cofax is used across the world as an open source, scalable and powerful content management solution provided by numerous independent solution providers.

One of the companies the project is indebted to is Smile. Their work in bringing Cofax to MySQL helps to for fill the promise of its designed database independence.

Read more in our Introduction to Cofax.

Wednesday, May 12th, 2004

Cofax 2.0 RC1 now available for download at Sourceforge. Click here to be whisked directly to the download page. Let us know what you think!

Sunday, May 9th, 2004

Cofax now includes the very helpful HTMLArea. This is an HTML textarea with HTML capabilities. Now Cofax users needn't have any HTML knowledge whatsoever to produce expert looking stories. Many thanks to Badr Chentouf for incorporating this quite useful tool into Cofax.

Tuesday, April 27th, 2004

Cofax is very much active, for those of you have been writing us to ask.

Tuesday, November 4th, 2003

Cofax 2.0 is now undergoing beta testing by the intrepid Cofax crew. Take a look at some screenshots of the incredibly functional new look Cofax. You'll be amazed at how much Cofax has changed!

Friday, March 21st, 2003

Tom Arnold, in this month's issue of Newspapers & Technology writes a piece on open source technology and it's impact. Cofax is mentioned as an great example, as is Smile's effort to port it to MySQL.

Tuesday, January 4th, 2003

Updates to our download page. We have included a manual PostgresSql implementation of the MsSql goon database scheme. This is unsuported as of today, but may very well end up in a complete Cofax release in the future. Contact the author himself for support and information!

Thursday, June 13, 2002

Updates to our contributors page.

Wednesday, June 12, 2002

New Downloads!: This version restores MySQL compatibility. That's right. Get your MySQL enabled version of Cofax right here!

Wednesday, June 05, 2002

New Downloads!: This new version includes substantial stability improvements, a more efficient database schema, a switch to the CDS taglibs templating system for the CMS, a help web application which includes documentation that we will be adding to regularly, and simplified administration in the CDS. Note that the MySQL CDS is currently being brought up to date by Smile.

Saturday, March 30, 2002

The Cofax project is now managed at SourceForge. CVS management of source is now available.

Friday, March 29, 2002

New Downloads!: A combined MySQL/MS SQL Server capable version of Cofax is now available for download thanks to Smile.

Friday, March 01, 2002

New Downloads!: Simplified installation. A singular web app to configure, more sample data and sample templates, plenty of bug fixes, highlight this release.

Tuesday, February 05, 2002

New Downloads!: Cofax now supports JSP templating. A soon to come later release will add Cofax taglibs to bring Cofax ease of use to JSP templates.

Coming early next week: A new release including JSP templating! Sorry for the long delay in updating the site.

Friday, January 11, 2002

Smile migrates Cofax to MySQL: Smile, a Paris, France based IT company migrates Cofax to MySQL and makes it available for download. We hope to merge source trees in the near future. This enables Cofax to be a full open source solution from database to application. Go Smile! More on MySQL Cofax here.

Thursday, January 10, 2002

Previously - June 2000 thru February 2001 - The Knight Ridder Newspaper chain migrates to Cofax: Almost the entire Knight Ridder newspaper online chain launches on Cofax in a series of successful launches, bringing praise from the newsrooms and from online staff. See Cofax In Action for more.

Previously - May 22, 2000 - The Philadelphia Inquirer Launches on Cofax
The following is a letter from Tony Gnoffo, Web Content Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Chris Kilbourne, Executive Producer at philly.com.

Click here to read the rest.

Previously - July 26, 2000 - Disney 'Goes' to Open Source: Check out this great article on Disney releasing their content management system to Open Source. More info at opensource.go.com.

Previously - February 9, 2001 - Cofax featured as cover story at Java.Sun.Com: Cofax got some wonderful publicity when it was featured at Sun's Java home page as a featured story.

Click hear to read all about it.