PostNuke

Flexible Content Management System

News

.8 Development Summary

Contributed by on Mar 31, 2006 - 05:08 AM

New Theme Module

Recently, the new theme module, which acts as a replacement for Xanthia in the .8 series was committed to CVS. This module corrects many of the established flaws in the .7x Xanthia codebase and also provides new enhancements. New in this module is the ability to assign a custom template to any page on your website, the use of .ini configuration files in themes, the removal of block control in favour of a new Blocks module and the ability for theme authors to provide a 'version.php' file in their theme to provide relevant information to site administrators.

Using .ini configuration files in the new Themes module brings two advantages over the current setup of Xanthia. Firstly, theme generation and display are much faster as no database queries are required to build the layout. This should provide a marked performance increase in .8 websites. Additionally, it is much easier for theme authors to export their themes, as in the new Theme module the details previously contained in xaninit.php in PHP code are now automatically generated by the Theme module.

Due to the sweeping changes in this new module, the user interface has been completely redesigned. While we realise this will take some getting used to, the new interface is more intuitive than previous versions and logically follows the layout of the Modules module when displaying the available themes. Additionally, all theme related settings have been moved from the Settings module to the Theme module, and the user theme switcher is now part of the Theme module display.

Themes used under the .7x Xanthia module will need upgrading to use the new .8 Themes module. This is a relatively simple process which is mostly handled by the Themes module itself, as both systems are based on Smarty the template logic is the same and there are few changes to the tags themselves. These by and large stay the same with one notable expection, block tags are replaced with the plugin call <!--[blockposition name="name"]--> where name is the name of the block zone to display.

The recoded Blocks module has yet to be checked into CVS, however we anticipate this within the next week. Until that time, the Theme module in CVS is nearing completion and is fully functional.

New Themes / Removal of Old Themes

Two new themes designed for the new Theme engine have been added to CVS. These are free templates from Open Source Web Design, and serve as an example of what can be achieved with the new module. The new themes are tableless and HTML compliant, which along with the improvements in compliance in the rest of the codebase serve to ensure PostNuke remains one of the few content management systems to take HTML standards seriously. All output in .8 will be XHTML valid.

To this end, the old themes that have been present throughout the .7x series are no longer in CVS. While they can be easily converted to work with the new Themes module, they use table based layouts which do not conform to the standards PostNuke has set for output. A appearence overhaul is well overdue for the PostNuke codebase and so a set of new themes will be available with the .8 release.

Workflow Engine

The release of .8 will also bring a new statebased XML Workflow engine to PostNuke with simple API implementation. Additional enhancements are planned to include a workflow schedular to process workflows at timed intervals in batches.

Use of the module is simply a case of adding a directory 'pnworkflows' to your module containing a set of workflows with operations, states and actions. The workflow engine also fully supports the PostNuke permissions system. Documentation for the module will be released with the first .8 Milestone.

XML Event Based Forms

GuppyForm allows a developer to describe a form content and layout in XML with an event handler bringing automatic validation. This can drastically reduce the time taken to develop user input forms. Can be combined with pnRender templates or used standalone. For those that like OO, and descriptive coding, this is an interesting option in the framework.

Completion of Users Module and Profile Enhancements

Another recent change to CVS are updates to the Users and Profile modules. These now almost fully functional, with huge improvements to the dynamic data system now in CVS. New field types avaiable for user input are date fields, calendar 'select date' fields and combination fields where a number of seperate input types can be combined. The new users module also allows for the use of SHA-1 or MD5 password encryption, you can store the user's last login date in the database and finally the registration process has been improved to include the option to vaidate user's email addresses through an activation link. All these improvements are optional and can be enabled and disabled through the Users module administration interface.

Template Updates

As part of an overview of usability and update to the 'look and feel' of PostNuke many of the module templates have been enhanced. These range from subtle changes to much more obvious improvements in the location of links and reporting of status messages. As previously mentioned all templates validate to XHTML standards and further improvements will be made before the final release of .8.

Languages Changes and config Directory

pnDefineMachine is now the recommended tool to use for translating PostNuke into other languages. This third party module scans the whole codebase for language defines and provides an easy to use administration form for translators to write new language files. A new version of pnDefineMachine was released recently, and to facilitate its future development a number of internal define changes have been made. These should not, however affect translators themselves.

Another addition which does affect translators and site administrators is a global language file which can be edited by users and is safe from being overwritten on an upgrade. PostNuke now contains a 'config' directory where all PostNuke's configuration details are stored. The files config.php and config-old.php have been moved to this directory, and furthermore the directory can contain both global template overrides (in addition to theme-specific overrides in use in .7x) and also global language defines. While it is not currently possible to override core language defines through this change without generating a PHP Notice, you can store your own language defines for use in, for example, themes. Any changes you make here will then remain intact throughout any upgrades you may carry out.

.8 Milestone Release Date

After the Steering Committee Meeting held this Tuesday, a tentative release period for .8 Milestone 1 has been set. We currently aim to release .8 MS1 in the third or fourth weeks of April, however this may change if the codebase requires further work for the release to be of the required quality. A milestone release is an opportunity for third party module developers to test their modules with the upcoming release. It is not intended for a production environment and user support is not available for this release, however support for developers will be provided through the forums. The milestone will not be feature complete, and may not be stable.

The milestone can be taken as an indication that the codebase is beginning to get to a usable stage from which we can work towards a Release Candidate, though no timeline for this is available at this stage. There is no upgrade path from .7x as this stage as the database structure is still in flux

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