Roadmap

• Milestone: 8.0 alpha 1

  11 months late (03/01/11)

  First public alpha release of the new ExiteCMS version 8 framework.

  Targets for this release:

  • Fully functional framework, including the theming engine, the module and plugin system, and RBAC, including pluggable authentication
  • Authentication plugin for local database
  • Default ExiteCMS theme
  • i18n support for the framework finished (English only)
  • Administration modules for:
    • Application Content
    • User Management
    • Role based administration
    • Link Management
    • Theme installation
    • Module installation
  • End user modules for:
    • Login
    • Static HTML content
    • Menu's
    • others when ready for release

• Milestone: 8.0 alpha 2

  10 months late (04/01/11)

  Second public alpha release of the new ExiteCMS version 8 framework.

  Targets for this release:

  • Core modules:
    • Workflow engine

• Milestone: 8.0 alpha 3

  9 months late (05/01/11)

  Third public alpha release of the new ExiteCMS version 8 framework.

  Targets for this release:

  • End user modules for:
    • Member lists
    • Member profiles
    • Profile view
    • News
    • Blog
    • Articles
    • others when ready for release

• Milestone: 8.0 beta 1

  7 months late (07/01/11)

  First public beta release of the new ExiteCMS version 8 framework.

  Targets for this release:

  • End user modules for:
    • Forums
    • Messaging system
    • Album Gallery
    • others when ready for release

• Milestone: 8.0 beta 2

  5 months late (09/01/11)

  Second public beta release.

  We intend this release to be a bug fix and a feature finish release, which will act as the Release Candidate for the official release of version 8.0.

  By this time we will be migrating our support site to version 8 as well, to see if all functionality is where we want it, and to finetime the installation and migration scripts. This is also the time to update and finalize the documentation, especially with respect to installation and upgrade procedures.

• Milestone: 8.0 release

  4 months late (10/01/11)

  Version 8 will be a Web Application Framework.

  Some highlights in the architecture of version 8:

  • Build on top of the  FuelPHP framework
  • Completely modular, no user functionality will be present in the core code
  • UI designed on "web 2.0" principles, tableless themes
  • Support for several template parsers

  Version 8 will contain all required back end components to quickly develop web based applications:

  • User management, Authentication and Authorisation
  • Role-based and Group-based security model
  • UI theming and templating
  • Forms generation and validation
  • Database and file I/O
  • Logging and Error handling
  • Multi-view output handling (browser, printer, PDF, json, ...)

  Version 8 will introduce the concept of plugins and modules. Modules are visual elements that can be 'plugged' into a predefined location in a template. You can compare that to the current v7 idea of panels, but with complete freedom as to where they are placed on the page, and how they are styled. Plugins work 'under the hood', and interact with the framework using predefined hooks, to capture events. Plugins alter existing functionality, add new functionality, or create bridges with other applications.

  Also new is also the concept of a "application content tree".

  Instead of a direct mapping between the URL requested and the corresponding PHP code on the web server, the URL will map to an entry in the content tree structure, stored in the database. Every entry is a definition of a webpage, and includes a theme template, and module panels displayed on the page. Subpages inherit the layout of their parent page, but you can override that, meaning you can hide modules, or rearrange the layout for a specific page. The content tree will also support multiple sites with one installation, sharing the same authentication system. Using the RBAC engine provided you can define who has access to what.