Development Diary

Development of the new client-side editable interface has moved on a big step this week, as a fully working prototype of the new drag’n’drop system reached completion. The prototype only allows for drag’n’drop integration between text, images, lists, and list items; but handles sufficiently complex interactions to prove that the new code base is a both capable and a big improvement.

Unlike the previous editable environment which only supported for the drag’n’drop placement of images and movies, the new environment, which was designed with drag’n’drop support in mind from the outset, allows any element to be dragged and dropped elsewhere on the page. Elements can even be moved into other editable collections (previously known as regions), ideal for web designs with multi-column layouts.

There are other improvements too, alignment of images and movies is now part of the drag’n’drop process, previously to align an image or movie you clicked a button to align it right, then you dragged it to it’s new position. The new environment allows you to determine the alignment based on where you drop the image or movie your dragging, so by dropping it on the right edge of a text element the image or movie will automatically align itself to the right of the text.

Finally, I just want to mention extensibility - it’s now much easier to develop your own editable elements and define how they interact with other elements. A new set of editable functions has been created which allow developers to define the behaviour of any editable element class when it is interacting with other elements. The functions are;

defineConverter(fromClass, toClass, behaviour)
defineDropper(dragClass, dropClass, dragBehaviour, dropBehaviour)
defineMerger(mergeClass, withClass, behaviour)

With these 3 functions it is now possible to implement even the most complex element interactions in a complete safe way.

Leave a Comment? | Tags: deploy, javascript, ui,

Hi, my name is Anthony Blackshaw, I’m a director at Getme Web Solutions Ltd. in the UK, and one of the founding developers of DeployCMS.

My initial involvement in the DeployCMS project arose out of discussions I had with Nick Snell at Orpo (another founding developer) about a CMS framework I was developing early 2009 called Lupin. Nick worked with me on Lupin almost from the start, initially in a consultancy capacity and later on he developed some of the core Python libraries including the caching code.

In August 2009, Getme produced its first commercial website with Lupin. In the same month I attended a conference in Birmingham, UK with Nick. At a lunch break during the conference we went for a drink at a nearby bar, and on returning to the conference we found ourselves locked out with no one in sight of the entrance (not that it gave me a complex or anything). Finding ourselves in this predicament we returned to the bar and the topic of conversation turned to the little CMS framework Nick and myself were working on. We discussed what we liked about Lupin and what we didn’t like; even then it was obvious that Lupin wasn’t a complete system, it had lots of flaws that were inherent in its initial design. In particular it was too tightly coupled to one database wrapper, one template language, one Web server. But still, it was our preference over everything else we had access to, it had a small code base, was lightning fast, and most importantly was friendly to both developers and users.

So over a few drinks we ripped our own project, our 8 months of effort, to shreds in terms of what was wrong with it. When we were done there was still so much we liked about this little CMS framework, and so DeployCMS was born.

We decided to start from scratch; a complete re-write from the ground up, using Lupin as a guide to what needed to be changed and what already worked. Our roles changed a little; Nick became the lead Python developer, and for my sins I am now the lead JavaScript developer, though the roles aren’t strict of course.

So where are we 8 months later… well we’re behind or not quite finished which of course is the same thing, but we are close, and with over 30 commercial clients using the beta version of DeployCMS already we’re very happy with initial feedback. Over the next few weeks as we refine DeployCMS ready for launch we’ll be posting a lot more information about the project, its features, and progress.

Nick’s likely to post about the Deploy framework itself and the new DeployCMS website, as the Python code for DeployCMS is now at the final stages. I’m working on graphics for the default skin of the editor’s user interface and visuals for the DeployCMS website itself, and also currently finishing the page content editor so I’ll be posting some images and videos of the editing environment and discussing some of the cool features it offers.

Leave a Comment? | Tags: deploy, about,

DeployCMS is the simple, easy to use Website builder. Choose your domain and have your own hosted website complete with a state-of-the-art content management system in minutes with no setup fees and all for a low monthly cost.

What you see IS what you get….

The unique Deploy Content Management system (CMS) is unlike traditional WYSIWYG; all content editing is done “in page”, using a familiar word processor like interface, so you can see how your changes look instantly.

Made to Last

The DeployCMS architecture is built to handle everything from the smallest ‘brochure website’ to E-Commerce sites to ‘Blogs’ to large, content-heavy websites. Built on top of Amazon’s AWS Cloud, DeployCMS can grow with your website.

Agencies & Designers

If you’re a web agency or a freelance designer, Deploy offers a “White-label” reseller option with discounts for bulk sales. Design your own DeployCMS theme for your sites and manage all your websites from one central location.

Developers

For those who like to get their hands dirty, Deploy offers an advanced plugin API to create your own features for your websites or extend the CMS to suit your own needs. You also have the option to sell your plugins to other Deploy users via our DeployCMS Marketplace.

Leave a Comment? | Tags: deploy, about,