PostNuke

Progression of PostNuke .8 CVS
As can be seen at http://cvsnotices.postnuke.com the PostNuke .8 CVS is moving along daily. If you are interested in seeing the progression of the .8 release, we encourage you to grab a copy of the CVS, for details on doing this please see the CVS Guide.


Quality Assurance – Xanthia Templating Environment and pnRender
Following the testing period with the pnCorps an RC2 version of the Templating Environment and pnRender has now been packaged and is available for public testing from the
download page. The public testing period should eliminate the last remaining bugs, hopefully allowing for a release of Xanthia and pnRender before Christmas. For the full release announcement, please see the XTE: RC2 Release article.


New Forums Established at pnForums

Those that visit the forums regularly may have noticed the addition of two new forums athttp://forums.postnuke.com. We have added a forum dedicated to permissions issues, and a pnCommunity forum that specifically deals with education issues with PostNuke. This forum was established due to a substantial interest in the area, and we felt it would be useful to establish a single point for discussions on the issues surrounding PostNuke in education.


Documentation Project

Recently there have been a number of questions in the pnForums regarding the state of the documentation project. Although the pnGuide is no longer available, we are actively pursuing a number of solutions to the current lack of a user guide, including translating the German user guide at www.post-nuke.net and writing an up to date guide for the .8 version of PostNuke. We understand that the lack of a user guide may cause problems for newer users of PostNuke, and we encourage users to search the pnForums for solutions, and ask for support with any issues you may have. Your patience is appreciated while the situation is resolved.


Developer Documentation.

One of the major changes for PN .8 will be a complete overhaul of the developer’s documentation. Using existing tools such as phpdoc (phpdocu.sourceforge.net) and phpxref (phpxref.sourceforge.net) full code documentation can be generated directly out of the codebase itself. This documentation will provide significant help to the PN development community.

There are some working examples of the documentation available as PostNuke develops. These can be found at http://docs.markwest.me.uk. This consists of:

A- PHPDOC
1) Xanthia Templating Environment - Includes .726 Version. Downloadable PDF

2) ADODB

3) PostNuke .8 Core

4) PostNuke .8 System Modules

B - PHPXREF

1) PostNuke .8 Core and System Modules

The goal of IndyDisc.com is to help independant musicians prosper in a world where increasingly only major record labels have the time to learn and play by the rules of music industry success. The site features a bulletin board, Neilsen Soundscan tracking (Billboard) for indy CD sales, weekly feature articles on significant independant music events, and more.

Footnote: 1

Footnote: 1

Introduction
This is the first of a series of summaries the PostNuke project is
publishing to keep you, the community, better informed about what is
happening with PostNuke both in development and other areas like site
improvements.

Development News
Recently, Mark West has spent a large amount of time getting the
templating environment based on SMARTY ready for PostNuke .726. This
consists of the pnRender module, and the Xanthia themes module.

Xanthia is the .8 module for the templating of theme elements, and
should make building themes much easier than the traditional
‘hand-coded’ theme building method. Xanthia also brings many new
features and more functionality to PostNuke themes, gving the site
administrator more control over the site and it’s appearance.

By the end of the week Xanthia will be ready for the quality assurance
and beta testing stage, and will be released to the pnCorps. It then
will undergo a period of testing and bug-fixing ready for a rough
release date of early December.

As a part of the templating environment package, pnRender for the
templating of module output will be released. It's hoped by the release
of .8 there will be a substantial number of modules and themes that will
take advantage of the new features available to change the appearance of
a PostNuke website.

Weblinks/Downloads Streamlined
We've recently consolidated and streamlined the weblinks and downloads
sections for the PostNuke site to make it easier for users to locate
modules, themes, and related websites. We encourage everyone with
something to contribute to submit their links to the approporiate
categories.

Feature Requests, Patch Submissions and Bugs
We encourage everyone using PostNuke to get involved and the easiest and
quickest way for you to contribute back to the community is to submit
feature requests, bugs, and patches. We have set up a sophitiscated
system we call the "pnNOC" that stands for "PostNuke Network Operations
Center" as a centralized place to maintain this project information.
Also, if you are a developer we encourage to use the NOC to host your
module, so just submit a project request to get started.

pnNOC Links:
Feature Requests:
http://noc.postnuke.com/tracker/?atid=104&group_id=5&func=browse
Report Bugs:
http://noc.postnuke.com/tracker/?atid=101&group_id=5&func=browse
Submit Patches:
http://noc.postnuke.com/tracker/?atid=103&group_id=5&func=browse

Footnote: 1

Also, please stop in our forums to download (or upload...) language packs for 3rd party modules.

If there are people who want to help out on our site on regular basis contact me through the site.

Greetings DTT Team:
bravecobra
tries
ursel
frans
moremojo

<a href="http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php"target="_blank">Some of the more major changes include:

PHP 5 features the Zend Engine 2. For a list of Zend Engine 2 changes, please <a href="http://www.php.net/zend-engine-2.php"target="_blank">visit this webpage;

XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions are now focused around the <a href="http://www.xmlsoft.org/"target="_blank"> excellent libxml2 library (see xmlsoft.org);

SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on <a href="http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/"target="_blank"> SQLite, please visit their website. ;

Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access low-level socket operations on streams.

There have been many changes since Beta 1, some of them documented in the NEWS file and most language changes are documented in <a href="http://www.php.net/ZEND_CHANGES_PHP_5_0_0b2.txt"target="_blank">ZEND_CHANGES

Tell me about your postnuke "career".

I was looking for something a bit different to run a website for myself and a group of friends to orngaise our social lives - going to the pub, events, photo galleries etc. This was late in 2001. I installed postnuke, php-nuke and a few other dynamic website engines/content management solutions. At the time PN was on v.70x. Although I wasn't entirely happy with PN at this stage I read much about the direction of the project and the totally modular style proposed by the API and the general nature of where PN was heading. This fitted in with views on the required architecture for a site engine like PN hence I chose to wait for the .71 release and begin my work here.

.71 was released and many of the aims of my (little) project could now start to be realised. One necesssary feature was missing from my requirements. The core polling solution didn't fufill all of my requirements so I began coding. As with any new technology it was slow going at first - the API was brand new at this stage so the amount of people able to aisist wasn't as high as it is now. But I stuck at it and by june 2002 had the first version of my advanced polls module. At this stage I began to think about releasing
the code for the community. This was going to be my first ever code release and contribution to the open source community so it took a few weeks thinking to make sure that I had the time and commitment to support the module once released.

Hindsight says it was a good decision. The code was well recieved (despite some initial early bugs) and no public site. At this time I was asked if I would be interested in joining the core team. Unfortunately events of that summer meant that I never got to accept that offer - envolution and xaraya were born with PN continuing as well. At this stage I took at step back and concentrated on my own code and a full analysis (almost function by function) of the core code.

The new phpbb based forums came up and were a signifcant improvement on the old cyboards based forums, as has been shown by the success of these over the last 15 months. I began helping people out on the forums and with my analysis of the code on going began helping answer development questions. A few hours here and there became a lot more. By late january of this year i'd
reached a point whereby I felt I had a lot the offer the project and the community as a whole as well as having the time and commitment so stepped up again and volunteered to join the core team.

Since then i've been working more hours than i'd like to count helping shape what will be .8. The amount of work involved in the step that is .8 is something that I underestimated when joining the team. Taking that many modules to API compliance and fully templating the output has an proved to be a huge task.

What is your task in within pnCore?

My primary role is that of looking after the modules development. However I help anywhere where I feel I have something to offer. The main areas this doesn't involve are theming and anything requiring anything remotely graphical. I can write entire modules but get stuck with the admin icon ;)

What is your development like?

I'd probably descibe my development style as professional (due to the requirements of my job). Having taught programming; techniques, data strcutures and algorithms to first year undergrads at Kingston I would also say that I have a very strict style of programming - heavy on layout, consistency and style. Those that have taken a look at the .8 CVS should see a level of consistency of approach across all of the code I have written. I believe that the benefits of this strict, consistent and academic approach
to coding is a stronger, more stable and bug free end product.

The modular nature of PN has meant that even in the core team there hasn't been that much need to work very closely on individual code. Generally things revolve around a lot of discussion around the approach, style and form of a problem or solution before a line of code has been written and then one person goes away and produces that bit of code.

Community has a siginificant impact - I wouldn't be here doing this and spending the time I do if it wasn't for the community. I've made many friends across the world during my time on PN. I make a specific effort to be as prominent as I can on the forums. As coders we can often loose focus while our heads are in the code but time on the forums quickly re-focuses the mind. If people can't use or don't understand the product being produced then the development effort has been wasted. Much of the work I have done
has been centered around solving specific problems that i've encountered while helping others.

What is the biggest difficulty in your development?

The biggest difficulty I find is keeping the requirements of PN light due to my experiences with corporate style computing. PN has and always will work with some basic web hosting but this inherently limits the approach that a developer can take to a solution. For example there is always much talk about integrating product x with product y. If asked this question at work I would recommend directory enabling the product or selecting an alternative that already is. Clearly the average web hosting plan doesn't come with an
LDAP compliant directory.

Which route will Postnuke in your opinion go in the future?

I don't know that's really not up to me (well directly at least). The community will shape the direction based on thier feedback and experiences with the work that myself and others produce. The forums will again play a big part here. I'll soon know if something i've written isn't working as it should :)

What is the weakest/strongest point in PostNuke?

The strongest points are the community and the foundation that this provides. The weak point is documentation but then this is the case with 99% of open source projects and I have to admit that i'm as bad here as every developer that's been interviewed thus far.

Anything else you always wanted to say about Postnuke?

Aside from the name which i've always thought was kinda daft the only thing I can think of for the community to keep the suggestions and comments coming in and if anyone is thinking about wanting to help the team then I can always think of plenty of tasks assistence would be welcome on.

Thank you very much for you time.

No problem - happy to be able to answer a few question. I'll be off to the forums again....... Before I go though - if anyone wants to take a look at the advanced polls module look me up at http://www.markwest.me.uk