The Swing CMS Engine / News: Recent posts

Considering my track-record to date, this next milestone release has been taking some time. The holidays, of course, threw a wrench in the works. But that's not an excuse. Bottom line, the feature implementations that I have mapped out for the next few milestone releases are treading in uncharted territory: XML_RPC, Pinging, Security, etc. Not only do I have to learn how to do some of these things, but I want to make sure (and double-check) that I'm doing it right and, most importantly, safely. ... read more

New version of the Swing-CMS engine has been released, 0.0.6 alpha. This is a functioning release that is probably suitable for many users as-is. It retains it's 'alpha' status due to its frequent changes, especially in its database scheme. This release added several new options into the system as well as many new features. For a full list of changes, see the changelog.

Another alpha release of the Swing-CMS engine. In this milestone, we redid a lot of our database calls for security reasons. We also added a lot of functionality to the system including additional settings and options within the Admin control panels as well as an edit feature for the nodes module.

See the CHANGELOG.txt for more information about new features and revisions.

A new alpha version of the Swing-CMS engine. We've added much more functionality including a delete function for nodes, a Section settings admin panel and a handful of core functions to help developers of modules. We've also added a number of core functions and fixed a lot of bugs in the database queries. In future releases, we will continue to add functionality and core functions to improve the overall engine.

The next development stage release, version 0.0.3 alpha, has been released to the public. Please note that this is still in alpha. But I encourage you to download and try it out. It is fairly functional, just lacking many of the features needed to make this a good CMS engine. We're always looking for feedback.

We're also always looking for module developers.

Today we released Swing-CMS version 0.0.2 (alpha). This is intended as a developer's release.

New features include a basic module API, support for context menus, module loading, theme support, form API (using PEAR.HTML_QuickForm).

I took a very long break to teach myself about several things that would greatly impact the code base of the Swing-CMS engine. You may have noticed recently that I have once again spun up development on this project. We rebuilt a lot of the key components of the engine, including an error handler, a redesigned database, improved function and class handling and a better template system. We are still in the Alpha stages, but I am confident that this engine is now on the right track.

Thanks to the wonders of phpDoc, I have released a preliminary set of API documentation. This outlines everything currently built into the core as well as the actual core module itself. The core module is a good place to look if you need an example of how to write a module for Swing-CMS. We still have a ways to go, but that doesn't mean that modules won't work, they should work fine.

Better yet, if you jump in this early, you can help mold the class functions that you may or may not need for your module.

If you would like to download the latest source...you should use the module name "swing", not "swing-cms". I did some major architecture revisions, and created a new module for it.

I'm back in and coding again, throwing a little bit here and there. I have fixed several bugs and started working on the registration scripts. I was also able to get some of the functionality in place on the backend that I discussed earlier.

I don't yet have the error reporting class set up yet. I expect that will be my next task, as it's very important.

Okay, it's not really as drastic as that.

Things have been quiet on Swing-CMS the last couple of months. I've been helping with other projects. And I took the opportunity to get feedback on my current setup. And after some deep thought, I'm thinking I am going to redo some of the aspects of the system. That said, my next set of modifications to the system will be to try to catch up to what my ideal engine would be at this stage in development. ... read more

I'm back to coding again after a long break for my professional exams. I've already fixed a few things and gotten them up on the CVS archive. Progress will be slow but steady for a while, as I am also working with a voting system project (not yet online) for demo-parties. Worry not, the voting system will have a lot of shared code with Swing-CMS, so I expect to be able to work on both at the same time. Besides, the scope for the voting system is much smaller, and will likely be done much faster. But continue to check back here for status updates on Swing-CMS.

My exams are on June 13th and 14th. I'll likely continue working on this project after that. Progress will be a bit slow at first as I'm going to help a friend make a voting system for his demo-party. But you should expect to see some progress soon.

I appologize for the lack of development lately. This hasn't been forgotten.

At work, we have had a major project drop down the pipe. Sadly, it seems to have had a terrible deadline. As a result, I havn't had much time to work on Swing at all this week. I've had so much overtime this week.

Meanwhile, the deadline for the project is coming up wednesday. I'm going to try to do some work before then, but I can't guarantee anything until then.

According to the CVS stats on the project page, we have no commits and no adds. I don't know why that is. But I assure you, progress is definately being made. We havn't released any files yet because I want to get the core structure in place before we do so. But feel free to add feature requests and send us fan mail.

One of the things I wanted to do before releasing any files was to make sure that we had security in place. I started implementing some minor security features today, and I intend to add more. But we're a step in the right direction towards a file release.

As expected...the initial stages of this system are going rather smoothly. I am finally hooking into the database, and I'm in the middle of designed the database. I have the module system working (though not documented) and the block system working as well (though, again, not documented). Once I get some sort of admin interface setup, I will throw a tarball up on the project page. But until then, there are a lot of things that are temporarily in the config files that I don't want there. ... read more

I have just completed the initial submission of our CVS tree. It took some tinkering, but it should all be there. As always on SourceForge, everyone should have read-only access to the CVS tree. Only my developers have write access to it.

Meanwhile, it's not very well documented at this point. If you want to download and see what I have -- just make sure the 'templates_c' directory has +rw access to world (don't worry, this isn't a security hole). ... read more

Well, I got the project approved today. But for the last week, I've already got a lot of code set up. I have a core system in place that allows for modules, the database connection and even a login/logout system. I havn't yet build the database at all, and I havn't gotten very far in any of the necessary modules. That said, I will still try to get everything on the CVS as soon as possible. If you're interested in helping with this project, drop me a message.