After a long pause in development I have begun writing the first stable version of Furasta – 0.2. I haven’t really done anything with the project since I set up the website a few months ago. But since then I have been building up experience by examining other open source projects, such as Webme, Wordpress and Joomla. I learnt a lot from those projects and they have contributed a lot of ideas for Furasta!

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!

At the momet I am developing my portfolio of web sites. I have a coulpe of sites up on my portfollio page, which I haven’t got round to actually finishing yet (the page i mean), but they are all my own projects and none of them are brilliant!

Therefore I have decided to break out into the lucrative web design scene and I hope to devolpe both my portfollio and my coding skill at the same time. For my first couple of projects I intend to charge very little in order to get the word out there that I am available to do work.

I started my first new portfollio project the other day – TheStrats.com. This work graciously was diverted to me by WebWorks, where I did my work experience during the summer last year. I am basically giving this site away at a ridiculous price, but it is worth having the experience in my opinion.

For the Strats I am using Wordpress. I was a bit sceptical about using it at first but then I looked at all the benifits.

For the designer:
1. Less work
2. Quicker and easier
3. Cost and time effective
For the client:
1. Costs less
2. They can constantly update their website without the need to pay someone to do it for them

The site is coming along well and I like the way that wordpress works, I will consider making more of my sites through wordpress. I also looked into Joomla today. I downloaded it and I am looking into it to see how good it really is. I have heard good things so I expect alot!

But at the end of the day I do want to eventully be a programer so i don’t want to get to carried away with using other peoples scripts, and figure out how to write them myself!!