Development Blog

It's been a while since my last blog update - I've been very busy developing the social networking aspects of MonkeyCMS. We're working towards giving MonkeyCMS similar functionality to sites such as Facebook so not only can you provide content, but you can also create a huge community at the same time - this 'Web 2.0' (I hate that phrase) approach will give you the head start over your competition and will promote both user interaction and return visits.

Version 1.3.1 has just been released and adds private messaging options to the software. The next release contains one of the key new additions - user groups. These can be thought of as mini sites within your own site. Your users will be able to set up groups on specific subjects and you can choose to allow or disallow them. These groups can also contain photo albums and mini discussion areas - similar to mini forums.

MonkeyCMS is heading in an exciting direction over the coming months and will become, by far, the most versatile content management system available.

Date: 29-04-2008 10:36 Author: Colin Polonowski Views: 529 Comments: 0

Images are now associated with content when they are uploaded via the gallery import or the image upload box on content pages. This has opened up new functionality and also means we have a few more functions to use to display all images related to a piece of content.

I was thinking of changing the way galleries are handled by using this changed image storage method, but this would reduce the things you can do with the galleries and images. Instead, on top of the MonkeyCMS in-built galleries, you can now effectively make any piece of content a gallery of its own by accessing all of the associated images. Images can now also be edited and deleted via the image popup on content pages by going to the Current Images tab and selecting the image you wish to edit or delete.

Version 1.2.7 is on course for a release this week.

Date: 04-03-2008 13:23 Author: Colin Polonowski Views: 620 Comments: 0

Over the last few days I've been working on a proposal for a potential eCommerce site for a client. I was close to suggesting OSCommerce as my platform of choice for this project, but then I thought about MonkeyCMS' ability to handle such an application and it's actually not likely to be a big challenge. MonkeyCMS is ideal for holding a huge product database in an easily searchable and maintainable way. The only thing it doesn't have is any sort of shopping cart.

As a result I am thinking of developing a shopping cart plugin that could turn a vanilla MonkeyCMS installation into a full online store. Imagine the possiblities of using Monkey's content manipulation and storage engine alongside a traditional online store - this one plugin could make Monkey a very attractive alternative to the dedicated free and open-source eCommerce applications.

In terms of timescales, it all depends on whether I get the project on the back of my proposal - if I do then I can justify spending the time creating the plugin as I'll be paid for those hours. If not then it is definitely still something I want to look into so once I'm past the 1.3.0 milestone release I expect this might get a lot of my time.

Date: 26-02-2008 12:45 Author: Colin Polonowski Views: 648 Comments: 0

Version 1.2.5 is finally out and available to download. This version sees a big increase in functionality with the gallery application.

I've already started working on 1.2.6, this is going to be a relatively minor release tidying a few bits up in preparation to return to the advertiser portal code (which is now moved to the 1.3.0 milestone release later this year). One nice addition to 1.2.6 (and it's code I've actually finished already) is the ability to restrict fixed templates to registered users, specific users or groups; effectively giving the same functionality to index pages as there is already attached to content. The only fixed templates that can be restricted are those that are set to be Pages.

I'm also going to be adding some additional thumbnail code to allow you to create 'Image Shack' style thumbnails and also the option for you to allow your visitors to submit photos to your galleries. I am hoping all of this will make 1.2.6.

Date: 26-02-2008 12:38 Author: Colin Polonowski Views: 580 Comments: 0

Today, I am working on a complete rewrite of the protectedimage.php script - this code has been in place since the very first deployments of MonkeyCMS in it's pre-beta rollout across our various sites. As my knowledge and understanding of PHP has improved I have bolted on functionality and the image script has become both complex and inefficient.

I will be rewriting it to provide a much more streamlined interface and to make future additions much more straighforward.

I am aiming to complete this code and then roll it out to a couple of sites for testing before I release version 1.2.5 later this week.

Date: 25-02-2008 09:50 Author: Colin Polonowski Views: 602 Comments: 0

I am currently working through the Gallery aspect of MonkeyCMS. This will allow users to import massive image galleries with a few clicks. They can choose which images (from previews) to include in each gallery 'album' and even rotate images that are not in the correct orientation. This is quite an exciting aspect of MonkeyCMS development as it adds some major new functionality and proves the content storage 'mechanism' works well for all sorts of content types. Galleries were possible with MonkeyCMS before, but from version 1.2.5 we'll be making them a whole lot easier to add to your site.

Some of the gallery functionality will also translate over to the standard image uploads etc in future releases.

Date: 22-02-2008 13:41 Author: Colin Polonowski Views: 568 Comments: 0