Also Michael Dever will be helping me out and developing some of the code himself. I am very excited about this new version, as it is a full re-write it will give me an opportunity to include some of the features that I have been thinking about for quite a while, such as:

1. Plugin Architecture. Hopefully I can make this work well. I have looked carefully at the architectures of WordPress, Webme and Joomla and I hope to make one that can beat them all in performance and ease of use.

2. Users and Permissions. The CMS will include the ability to create different users, which have certain permissions to access certain pages. This is something which I touched on in v0.1.5 but intend to improve.

3. New Control Panel. The admin area will now comprise of a new, simplified, control panel. The aim here is to create a CP that looks empty, but which is full of content.

4. News Page + Comments Feature. I have wanted this for a while. Once I am confident enough with it I will move my WordPress blog to Furasta to prove that it works.

5. Possibly a simple file manager. Although I am strongly considering using KFM.

6. Re-write of the Smarty syntax. Possibly get rid of smarty all together.

Because of the massive difference between v0.1.5 and v1.0 the website http://furasta.org will have to be reconstructed. But it’s all very exciting. Now less talk and I have to get down to the action, tomorrow, after a bit of WOW.

I have abandoned all of the old code and opted to write the whole thing again from scratch. Considering how long it took me to write v0.1.5, about a month of flat out coding every night, I expect v0.2 to be completed in the same sort of timescale. One thing is for sure – there will be no micro-optimisation this time! After all the effort I put into that last time the damn program was still slow. This time I will invest my executable time in more important tasks, ones that only directly affect what’s going on as you load the page, and perform tasks such as server side caching through AJAX so the user doesn’t notice it.

The project is also going to be available from svn from now on. Since I am writing it from scratch there are only a few files in the svn at the moment and there’s also no installation script. But that will come in time!

http://code.google.com/p/furasta-cms/source/checkout

I am taking a completely different approach to writing the CMS this time. In fact I would go as far as calling it an engine rather than a CMS. Basically what I plan to do is build a solid framework that on it’s own does nothing, but has the ability to do everything. There will be no pages except the essential homepage. Everything, I mean everything that will give this program the characteristics of a CMS will be achieved by the plugin architecture. So for example to edit and display pages, I will create a plugin. Obviously the CMS will have to be shipped with a few default plugins, which it will be possible to disable through a plugin manager plugin! I might be going a bit overboard with this idea but in theory it seems like a good one!

So enough talking, time to start writing!

I started working on the design on Thursday and I like the way it looks, If anyone has any layout suggestions I would like to hear them though! Anyway I do realise that it is not 100% cross browser compatible. I looked at it in Internet Explorer 7 today and was shocked as to how all over the place it was. But theres nothing to major there, I might get a chance to fix it tonight. To be honest it took me 3 times what I spent on the design to come up with the content!

In the new website you will see everything you need to get you started. It includes an extensive help page that will teach even my granny how to set up the CMS! But if you still have problems you can email support as the forum is on it’s way. I plan to write something soon on how to take full advantage of TinyMCE because I was messing about with it the other say and is really amazing how much power it has! There is also a short but sweet F.A.Q.

<legal crap>One thing that I need to mention. I have to emphasise that the name of my Content Management System is, and always has been ‘Furasta CMS’, not ‘Furasta’ or any other variant of the word. </legal crap>

There are two incomplete aspects of the website, the Forum and the Template Repositary. I will work on the Forum – I don’t know when, I have evil genious plans for this thing and it might take a while to design. The release of the Template Repositary will co-inside with the release of v.0.1.5 and will support people uploading and advertising their own templates.

Well sin sin. I might write something else later about Writing Your Own Templates and make full use of the Codex that I spent so much time writing!

Try it out

*be sure to read the bugs list before you try!

url: http://macaoidh.name/work/cms/

username: guest

password: soeasytoguess

New functions - In my last post on the CMS I made a list of features that I would add before the next release. I am happy to say that all of those features have been added. It is not very feature-full at the moment and I don’t plan to add many features for v0.1.

Status - It is a very lightweight CMS designed for the use of the layman. It is far from ready for general release in this state but now that all the key functions are done I can concentrate on the visual and graphical aspect of it.

Bugs - Most of them are fixed but if you find any let me know.

1. There is one that I am working on a solution for. If you press the ‘Delete Current Page‘  button it sets the page for deletion. You then need to confirm and it gets deleted or deny and it gets un-set for deletion. The bug is if you press the ‘Delete Current Page’ button, the page is set for deletion and then if you press the back button in your browser it remains set. If you go to delete a page again it will delete all pages set for deletion. As say I am working on a fix and it will be included in the next release.
2. This one will be a bit more difficult to find a solution for. The method that I am using to edit and preview the text is done in JavaScript. I didn’t write this entirely myself because I can’t yet write JavaScript. The problem with it at the moment is it only edits a block of the page – so you can put some HTML in there! I have to do something about this but at the moment I don’t know what I am going to do….

The Future – v0.1

I am very optimistic about this project and I have big plans for the future. 0.1 will be the first stable version readyfor general release. I am still thinking about wether to open source it – at the moment it’s not worth it. If it is open sourced I will have an installer in the next release. This is what I want to complete for the 0.1:

1. Function to edit page order.
2. Function to edit page names and urls.
3. Fix all bugs! The edit text bug will be a hard one!
4. The entire visual and graphical side needs to be set up.
5. I will set up a sample website for the CMS to operate on to proove that it can co-operate with working sites.
6. It needs a new name. The current one isn’t great but i’m working on it.

Code-wise

1. Major re-structure of all functions. I have a funny feeling that i’m taking the long way around on a few things.
2. Create a define.php document to define all page variables in each page, such as url, name etc. This will prevent me from having to retreve the same information from the database again and again.
3. JavaScript, JavaScript and more JavaScript. I have been looking into some stuff – jQuery seems to be the most likely candidate. I have some great scripts in mind to smoothen the look and feel out a bit.
4. Possibly get rid of the current method of making pages as it has been pointed out to me that it could pose some security risks.

I know that I have laid out alot for the next version but i’m off school for the next few weeks so I will have some free time!Thats about it. I welcome any suggestions / feature requests / comments on the current release.

The easiest way for me to explain the functions is to show it to you. I have supplied a URL below and a username/password combination.
URL: http://macaoidh.name/work/cms
username: guest
password: guestpass

Take a look at the pages. Notice the difference between them when you are logged in and logged out. It is very simple at the moment, but I have created a model that I can expand on. Here is a list of current functions:

• When you are logged in you can see the editing panel at the bottom of the page, which displays the log out link.
• When you are logged in you can edit the text on the page. This is currently only a temporary fix because I haven’t set it to update the database yet!
• The page content is currently being called from the database.

By the time my CMS reaches version 1 I intend for it to be a fully functional Content Management System. These are the functions that I intend to implement in the future:

• Make the changes while logged in update to the database. I am finding this quite difficult. It’s easy to create a form and update but when you include all of the JavaScript that I have in order to make the changes editable and viewable in the same page, it becomes more difficult.
• Create more functions for the logged in person, such as add users and more complicated editing options.
• Add the possibility of creating new pages from the front end. This should be easy enough – I just haven’t had enough time to add it!

I’ll keep posting weekly updates on the status of the CMS. Hopefully I can get it up to a state where it is sellable in a couple of months. If it becomes successful i might open source it! At the moment there is no point because most people would be able to create something similar by just looking at it!

Suggestions and some criticism welcome!