Well let me tell you, this is all coming and soon, I have heard so many rumors, spread around our community, so much bashing around good people like MagicX who has been instrumental in creating the "New Era" of PostNuke.
I wish to further clarify some issues, this rumors have no bases, first of all, when the first 0.72 package was released, it introduced major incompatibilities by using the lowercase modules convention, this release was a potential hell for modules / blocks and even themes developers, and not only that but it would literally break your site and force you to make manual conversions of case in all places, or start fresh, so the package represented a turning point, where all your hard work and personalization of your site would have been lost or cost many, many hours to rebuild.
Thus we decided to act swiftly and revert the case issue and restore sanity to it all, if and when is decided to go or not with the lowercase idea, a migration tool will have to be provided in order to cause as little damage or down time as possible to potential users, as well for existing ones.
Another rumor is, that the current development team has no intention of following the initial goals set to the 0.8 branch and wishes to work instead with the 0.7x branch.
This is totally false, we have the following goals.
1.- Make the 0.7X branch the most stable and secure yet.
2.- Evolve it as it should and even sooner that what 0.8 would have done including all the set goals for 0.7 and 0.8 until 1.0 and beyond.
3.- Build a strong community portal that caters tools and solutions for all, users and developers a like.
Among the many new features to be found are:
1.- Template Rendering Engine
(fast, extensible, easy to use and friendly to editors such as DreamWeaver, HomeSite or even FrontPage)
All Elements of the portal will use templates, full abstraction of logic and html will be done.
Modules, Blocks and themes will be totally based on templates, previous non templated objects (modules/blocks or even themes) will remain compatible and a migration tool will be there to easy the upgrade.
This migration tool will be capable of assisting in importing templates from any source (BL/Encompass/Envolution/Smarty) you name it.
Total control of site colors fonts, etc, will be handled by the css or the themes properties which will be automatically installed when the theme is initially setup at the portal
Themes will now have is own installer and will provide enormous new possibilities, and benefit from a new configuration and administration area.
Templates will have many levels of use from the basic HTML one with full freedom, to the advanced and sophisticated template language which will allow you to do unthinkable things in an easy to understand and logical approach.
Free block positioning, yes finally you will be able to place any block or group of blocks in any place in your page and even render them with different looks by just selecting different templates for each one.
The main goal of this is transfer all the power of the content layer transparently into designers and devs a like without stepping into each others toes.
This will also bring forth new exiting possibilities as all elements of the CMS will now be flexible and capable of taking any shape or form you imagination desires.
2..- Intelligent data caching mechanisms, both for queries and dynamic content
3.- Enhanced server optimizations for lightning fast responses, that benefit from tools like, compression, mod_gzip or php-accellerator.
4.- Enhanced Block/Themes and module system, under a new site wide category system.
5.- New Multi-Lingual interface fully ISO compliant, intelligent and flexible.
6.- Support for Short Urls
7.- The pnAPI, is not only to remain but to be greatly extended and evolve in order to fully provide a real powerful Applications Programming Interface, that will allow modules/blocks/themes devs and users a like to build and extend to reach anything they aspire to do with PN.
8.- The Embedded PN initiative will allow us all to leverage all the amazing pieces of php code out there in a fast and reliable way, by allowing client applications to work under PostNuke seemingly. This will hopefully become the PN applications server framework. :)
9.- CVS is being revamped and will bring forth a new era of collaboration and development, by also providing new and exiting tools for devs and users a like.
10.- We will adopt the Linux Kernet style of developing this means we will now have 2 main branches stable and development this will streamline development, solidify releases, and allow shorter development cycles.
11.- New developers resources are being prepared as we speak and will have full support both in tools and in opportunities to express and participate, getting involved is the right move now!
There is more, and this is not by any means a teaser, its a reality that will soon see the light of day.
As you can see, we are right on track, and the PostNuke vision is moving on as strong as ever.
The goals remain, and every effort is being made in order to create the tools and the technology to make all of this happen in a record time, make no mistake about it our resolve to fully support our community both the users and the mod/blocks/themes devs. is absolute, and will be carried on relentlessly until all goals are met and beyond.
We do need your support and commitment, and we appreciate the countless faces that help each other at the forums and build a marvelous community this is what it is all about!.
So I take this chance to ask of you paraphrasing Kennedy "Ask not what Posnuke can do for you, but what can you do for Postnuke NOW!"
This are exciting times lets rise to the challenge..
Cheers! ;)
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