ImpressCMS Community - ImpressCMS Blog

ImpressCMS - Puzzling it all together

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:46:07 -2300

Software projects nowadays are complex beasts. They are constructed of many different pieces, all meticulously puzzled together to bring you a perfectly oiled machine. Or at least that’s the way it should be in a perfect world.

On the current planning, ImpressCMS 2.0 final is about 5 months away. That seems far off, but there are still loads of things that need to be done before we get there.(more...)

Supporting Multiple Versions

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:31:06 -2300

ImpressCMS has multiple releases of the project that are maintained and supported concurrently at the moment. All these releases need support of course. Sometimes, the definition of the term 'support' can be subject to interpretation, and sometimes that interpretation can yield surprising results.

Support for a release is very important, but it also has an impact on the amount of effort that can be invested in new development. If we dedicate all our development effort towards support, there will never be a new version of ImpressCMS, and that's not our goal. (more...)

New Year's Resolutions

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:11:24 -2300

In Belgium, it's customary to start a new year with one or more New Year Resolutions (note the capital letter). In most cases, those resolutions are as short-lived as they are impractical : very. Resolutions like 'No More Alcohol'! or 'I'll lose 20kg' are amongst the most popular around the changing of the year. No wonder most people give up, if those are your goals.

But, it has become customary as well that you get bombarded with news items on television, radio and in the written press helping you with keeping those promises you made to yourself. Most of these news items focus on the same thing : don't go too far, and keep it simple.

Now that's an approach I can relate to. I will go even further and implement this good advice in practice.

My New Year's Resolution for ImpressCMS is instead of 'take it easy', 'make it easy'. ImpressCMS is a great system, but it has several rough edges. These rough patches are sometimes preventing people from seeing the power and opportunities that ImpressCMS offers.

I'm no PHP Guru by far, but I can start by identifying small enhancements. If I get some more people to work with me that way, I'm sure we will see improvements at a breakneck speed.

Defining support

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:21:24 -2300

We’ve decided to label the ImpressCMS 1.2 branch as a long term support (LTS) branch, coexisting alongside ImpressCMS 1.3.

Long Term Support means that the ImpressCMS 1.2 branch will continue to receive security and bugfix updates throughout the entire ImpressCMS 1.3 lifecycle, up until 1 month after the final release of ImpressCMS 2.0.

ImpressCMS 2012: Year Five!

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 01:10:00 -2300

Wow! The reality of our history just sank in - ImpressCMS is about to enter its 5th year! There have been 4 major releases and 12 other final releases during that time, along with all the alpha, beta and release candidates in between. With the release of ImpressCMS 1.3, we have embarked on an entirely different path, one where we have begun to unload all the additional weight of (poorly structured) legacy code.

When Marc_André and I were planning for the 1.3 release, it became clear we didn't want to be burdened by a roadmap. But, we didn't want to just wander around and hope we'd stumble on something significant, either. We set about identifying The Big Things - things important to everyone that could be the foundation of great community sites. 2 things kept coming to the top - Performance (Does it work?) and Usability (Does it work for me?). We also committed to Underdoing the competition and Leveraging the extendibility. Now our challenge is to turn those things into reality.

Assembla Subversion upgrade speed gains

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:50:00 -2300

A full Subversion checkout of ImpressCMS is quite big, and can take lots of time when starting from scratch. Even though subversion only sends the minimal amount of bytes, it can take quite a while to get those bytes from the repository to your hard drive. That's all in the past now, thanks to the new Subversion 1.7 release.

Impressmizing

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:44:54 -2300

One of the causes for WordPress or Joomla success is the themes. They have tons of great and impressive themes; you can make a great core engine, but the front-end is that and end-user or visitor see. Look and feel is than important as core engine.

Well, template engines are important for that and we must thinking about Smarty future or alternative template engines. But in the meanwhile the users must to have themes...and good themes are possible new users too.

Impressmizing is one approach for this target. As Drupalizing, the goal is port themes to ImpressCMS. Well, fresh themes would be better, but I am not a professional designer and if I make one theme, I can port then themes in the same time.

What Themes?: Any modern, free, innovative and candy theme from any CMS.

Port and...?: using core ImpressCMS features, mainly Custom Block positions, conditional vars, Symlinks, etc. And of course adding JQuery candy.

At the moment there are two ported themes: elegance and technology. But more is on the way. Stay tuned!

No ImpressCMS Coding Competition in 2011

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:08:37 -2300

Some months ago, we started working out the idea of organising a development competition. There were multiple goals with that :

push the adoption of the new IPF-based way of constructing modules
investigate needed additions to IPF
initiate a much-needed refresh of the existing, ageing, module base.

The initial goal was to have the competition during the months of november and december.

Getting More From Our Development Environment (Assembla)

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:49:33 -2300

As we settle into our new environs on Assembla, it would be good to invest a little time in getting ourselves acquainted with the layout and features, but also to establish some practices that will serve us well, no matter where we manage our code and development.

First of all, we still value everyone's contributions - designes, graphics, news, tutorials, themes, modules, help in the forums, site maintenance and core development. ImpressCMS has long had a strong commitment to open source and to open development. Our development location may have changed, but our philosophy hasn't - jump in where you can and ask, if you have questions on how to get started.

Update from ImpressCMS 1.2.6 to 1.3 is easy!

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 07:50:37 -2300

I get some question about an update from ImpressCMS 1.2.6 to the new 1.3, because somebody believe it is a great act. But it is very easy!

My first steps: Set website offline, switch to the default theme and default templates-set. Check the modules. Doeas your modules are capability for an update? Check for this the German Forum an verify your modules. A download list with 25 verified modules are here.

A sticking point is your used modules, because you have to move the module content from database into another module. In my case, I moved from "smartsection" to the "impression". Since there is no update script right now, you have to create by yourself. And true, this is laborious. But this effort is worthwhile.

Ok, make a full dump of your files and database. If you found a module that you can not upgrade, then go to the "module administration" and set it to "inactive". (Make sure, that you are logged in as administrator in your system and turn on the "debugger mode" in your main prefereces.)

Copy your files from ImpressCMS 1.3 into your System without "mainfile.php" and without the "install" folder, and overwrite all files. Go into the install folder from ImpressCMS 1.3 and copy the files from the "protector" module to your system (root and trust_path).

Empty the "cache" folder without "index.html" and empty the "templates_c" folder without "index.html".

Since you're logged in, it's enough to reload the website from your ACP (administration). ImpressCMS will find out your new update files, follow these steps. Sometimes it is necessary to update the system module several times. Update your "protector" module too and check the security.

Now you should update your modules step by step.

One important think for your theme is to update the following lines in your "theme.html".

from:

<{if $xoops_pagetitle !=''}><{$xoops_pagetitle}> : <{/if}><{$xoops_sitename}>

to:

<{if $icms_pagetitle !=''}><{$icms_pagetitle}> : <{/if}><{$icms_sitename}>

I am really very happy, because I ca use the "banners" module and self-created modules in my website. http://japan.internet-box.info