You might have noticed that the landing page on 3mension.com now has a brand new template, currently (still) telling you that we’re under construction. It was also my first attempt at adding jQuery functionality to the 3mension website, and I must say I’m quite impressed by the functionality and the ease of the integration. Given that jQuery is standard included in ImpressCMS, I plan to use it much more often in the future.
I skipped mentioning some ImpressCMS releases, but this one is too important to just pass over it. The ImpressCMS project has released version 1.2 final of their Community Management System (CMS).
This release contains many changes, enhancements and new functionality, with the most important ones listed here:
Read more…
I’ve been working on and off on the first beta incarnation of 3mension, but most of that effort has been invisible in code. That is about to change, as I have started contacting some logo design contractors in order to create a logo for 3mension.com.
This is a significant step, as the logo will be used as the base for the theme created for the website. It will also help with the development of the site, as it is the first really visible part of the site that falls into place.
It seems ImpressCMS 1.2 might come out before the 3mension site goes live. A beta of ImpressCMS 1.2 is forthcoming, and the package should be feature-complete by now. During the wait for answers on the queries for a logo design, I plan to migrate all the work that is done towards that version, in order to have the newly added functionality and enhancements at my disposal.
Contrary to my previous post, development of the impressCMS module is advancing steadily. I’m no seasoned iCMS developer, and neither am I a PHP guru, so it is taking quite some time to achieve functionality some might wrap together in a few hours. Most of the time, I’ve been experimenting with possible approaches to code organisation and finding my way in the iCMS API documentation.
I am happy to announce that Read more…
Since last weekend, I have been working on imRating, an ImpressCMS module that will provide a standardized way for modules to handle voting of content and showing ratings. The module is based upon the structure of the similar imTagging module.
This is what I call Read more…
April has passed, and it’s time to report with an update. At the moment, not much is visible of the progress that has been made thus far, but that’s not a correct view of the situation. I thought I might give an update on where the project is headed, what has been done, and what remains to be done.
My previous post, a long time ago, I elaborated a bit on the difficult choice between ImpressCMS and Xoops. As I read in the ImpressCMS forums, ‘A line is being drawn in the sand’, and these two CMS packages are each going their separate ways, without regard for compatibility between one another. That means one has to make a choice, and recently making that choice became much more difficult due to the evolving nature of the projects. Read more…
The first data model is ready, and I’ve already put it into SQL scripts to generate the database. It’s not that complex as of yet, all I want to store at the first iteration is the published file.
I installed the DAO class generator from the Xoops modules site. It takes an existing database table, and writes a data access Xoops class that should provide the needed functionality to use the database table in your module. It’s rather old (2004), but it seems to do the job just fine. I couldn’t find posts on the forums with warnings about Read more…
Well, I’ve taken the plunge now, there’s no going back. I posted a small announcement in my GarageGames blog about the 3mension project. I already got some positive comments, so this might even be a good idea after all!
Some people are subscribing to the announcement list, which is great. All that is also the best motivation to get a first version of the site online as soon as possible for people to try and break it, and to get feedback on the way things are handled and presented.
I have some fairly good idea about the direction I want to choose theme-wise. A first impression is included here. Feel free to comment.
Very proudly, I present the 3mension blog to the world. Some time ago, as I also mentioned on my personal page, I got the idea that some game art related services might be interesting. I’m a Torque Game Engine licensee, and an avid Blender supporter, and those are at least 2 communities that might benefit from such a service.
Unfortunately, setting up a website the way I imagined it, even in its most austere form, was not easy at all. Then the job got a bit in the way too, just to make things more interesting. I didn’t give up though, and I’m slowly building up the framework to run 3mension.com .
Firstly, I’ll build a Xoops-based version. I have most of my PHP development experience with that framework, and I think it will be a good exercise and a valid testcase for developing something other than a standard community site with news posts and a forum. Based on my experience, the decision will have to be made after the first version of the site whether to continue with Xoops, or if other frameworks provide more of the needed functionalities out of the box.
Right now, all I want is to do two things very well:
- Provide an easy and efficient upload experience to publishers
- Make it easy for non-publishing users to find the files they need.
That seems to be two trivial goals, but don’t let that fool you. The word ‘easy’ is not difficult to write in a post like this, but it is not so easy to write the code for that elusive little word ‘easy’.
Read more…
