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.
After a slightly longer wait than foreseen, the ImpressCMS project has released the second Alpha of the upcoming 1.2 version into the wild. This is the next step towards a beta release, which will be coming if no major problems are found in the next few weeks with this alpha.
The ImpressCMS 1.2 branch is particularly interesting, as it marks the end of Xoops compatibility. That doesn’t mean the developers are trying to break as much of the Xoops functionality just for the heck of it of course. It does mean that ImpressCMS can choose its own path to greatness, Read more…
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…
I have been working on a Xoops module to take care of the most important part of the site : the publishing and retrieval of 3d models. It’s rather crude at the moment, and I also have another fear: while Xoops is rather easy to get a working module for, the community is severely lacking some of the more polished modules/plugins one can find in more complex CMS platforms, such as Joomla or Drupal.
There is much work to be done to get the loose modules working together and the Xoops platform has lost much of its momentum last year during the period of infighting that spawned forks like ImpressCMS, chasing many talented developers away.
I seem to be coping at the moment, but it just seems more work to get to a point where other systems can take you with a standard install.
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…