G2 Publish Journal

OK, so here it is. It’s still pretty rough and ready, and should very much be treated as a proof of concept still, rather than anything near the point of general public use. Original I wanted this to represent the first beta 1 release, but I don’t feel it would myself or Publish any favours claiming this. However, you can get a good sense of where the concept is heading, certainly in the Simple user view, which I encourage you to try.

There’s no documentation, no help, so the aim is that a user should be able to use the system without these. That said, obviously, there will eventually be help and documentation, but time has not permitted this yet. The other significant issue I should make you aware of, if you aren’t already, is that this product will only work properly in Firefox at the moment (or any Firefox branch). Safari isn’t far being, but TinyMCE (the WYSIWYG text editor) doesn’t work in Safari at all, and thus causes a few problems.

The HTML code is buggy, the features are incomplete, and there’s quite a way to go, but first and foremost this has to be treated for what it really is….. a University dissertation project, and so in order just to get it out there and get some feedback, here it is people. Enjoy.

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So what are some of the things to consider when looking at Publish in it’s current state? Well, firstly, it’s CMS, not a blogging tool, which is why, at the moment, you don’t see support for stuff like comments, trackbacks and pings. These will come in the future, but it’s primary market target is that of small business CMS.

Yes, I perhaps should have used a better example template, which is currently that of a blog, but at the moment, I don’t have the time to put together a small business website that I’d be happy with. I will hopefully change this in the next few weeks, but the first few of you to look at this will get the blogger feel to start with.

What you need to bare in mind is that while it’s currently running a blog, the data it’s output can obviously be applied to any HTML documents, and easily integrated into them, so, my advice would be to focus more on the interface for inputting the data, rather than the interface that it currently is showing to output that data.

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And finally, you can actually get your hands on it at the address below. This address will take you straight to the admin interface. Feel free to sign up for an account and see how the system works. My advice would be to start with an account that uses the SIMPLE interface, and see what you think. Anyway, I look forward to your comments.

FIREFOX REQUIRED FOR PROPER FUNCTIONALITY

http://mail.jdhorizons.com:3000

Thanks to the joy of other pressing work, I’ve delayed the public release by a week or so. Didn’t want to release it in it’s current state, as there are still a few big bugs to be worked out. But it’s coming soon, I promise.

So, today I spent some time working on a few logo options for Publish.

This is the result of the first play about with it. Will likely change and be refined, but you get an idea of the direction I’m heading. Nothing fancy, just simple and attractive. Not particularly creative, I know, but logo design has never been my strong point. Nonetheless, I like it, and that’s what matters the most

Well, it’s taken a long time to get here, several months of hard work, but soon enough the beta testing process will begin, and we’ll be on the final path to a 1.0 release. While i’ve always intended the 1.0 release to coincide with the final submission date of the project, this may or may not happen based on how things in the Real World have been going. Certain parts of the system aren’t required for my University submission, and so if time gets tight, I may just leave the unimportant bits for a later date.

That said, I refuse to put my name to a 1.0 public release without these features being finished, and myself being satisfied with the system, so the beta period may be an extend one, depending on how things go. However, I’m happy to make it available for people to play with during the beta period. The one thing I’m unsure on is how exactly to do that. Rails is a great framework, but I hope to make some form of money out of this, or some other system in the future, and so giving away the source during the beta period probably isn’t the best solution. I’ll need to look into ways of distributing the Rails code without essentially making it open source. I’ll see how things go. I might change my mind, but we’ll see.

Anyway, the main point is that the development process is on track for the beta release at the end of March, and at the very least, a fully functioning, hosted demo will be available for people to play with. As to what else I can setup, I’ll see how things go

So, things have been a bit quiet over the last few weeks, and unfortunately the Alpha deadlines sorta went out the window for a bit. However, over the last two weeks, it’s been a mega coding push, which has seen some of the biggest progress made on the project so far. As a result of this, the system is now ready to begin real-world field tests, and the first site to be put to the slaughter will be a private version of JDHorizons.com. I’ve spent the last day or so preparing the site for the system, which has now more-or-less been completed.

So, what’s the plan from this point on? Well, basically, the system is feature complete now, no major features or additions are left to be implemented, and from this point on it’s all fine tuning, bug fixing, and code cleanup. Which is fantastic news from my point of view, because this essentially puts me about a week ahead of schedule, something I would never have expected at the beginning of January. A new version of the site will be online on Friday this week, complete with a fully functioning template system that will actually let users see the direct impact the system has on a public website. It’ll be fully editable, configurable, etc. There are still some areas lacking, such as detailed system configuration options, an initial setup wizard, etc, but these will be coming over the next few months. For now, it’s bug hunting and fine tuning based on user feedback!

After two weeks off, I’ve finally been able to turn my attentions back to Publish and try and make some major headway again this week. Have already made major progress on the user management systems, as well as finally integrated TinyMCE into the system for WYSIWYG editting functionality. Awesome little script TinyMCE. Highly recommended.

Anyway, the alpha 6 release has been scrapped and instead all the features will be rolled into alpha 7, due out at the end of this week. Alpha 7 will hopefully represent a much more complete, stable, bug free implementation of the backend, administration part of the system, which means after this, focus will shift heavily to the front end template generation…. no small task.

More news later in the week.

Thanks to real life getting in the way, there’s been a bit of delay on any of the newer alpha releases, and in all honesty, there has been little in the way of progress over the last two weeks unfortunately. This does put the project a few weeks behind schedule, but work is resuming and I’m hoping to make back some of the lost time over the next week or two. More info as it comes.

**PASTED FROM INTERNAL MEMO**
The Alpha 5 milestone build has now been released, and is available for testing. The build see’s a lot of changes, including a login/user system that is, for the most part, fully functional. As well, there has been extensive development on the “Expert” user interface side. Plenty of bug fixes too. If you viewed the site before, be sure to reload your browser if you experience any problems.

**LINK REMOVED**

New in this version:

- Expert article creation interface
- Expert article editing and management interface
- Login and signup system in place
- Refinement of Media Management section
- Removal of User Management section temporarily, to avoid conflict with login system
- Bug fixes on wizard interface (hidden in current build - focus currently on Expert interface)
- Misc wizard bug fixes

For a full list of changes, the “developer changelog”: **LINK REMOVED**

It’s encouraging to be able to say that I actually feel the system is approaching a point at which I could quite happily run my own site from it. Things are progressing nicely

Today G2 Software is pleased to announce the release of Publish Alpha 4 preview. The alpha 4 preview features numerous major feature additions, including a myriad of bug fixes, and major interface enhancements. It also marks a major step on the road the first public preview of the software, still scheduled for the end of March.

New in this version:

- Revamped interface design
- Initial version of expert interface

- Feature completion for Simple Mode Wizard (Some features not fully
functional yet - Image Upload specifically)
- Misc wizard bug fixes
- Initial welcome screen

- Inclusion of Media Management section (not fully functional)
- Inclusion of User Management section (not fully functional)

The preview is now being hosted on a dedicated server, which will further aid in getting the public preview out as soon as humanly possible. Find attached a few screenshots to give you an idea of how things are progressing.

OK, so things didn’t go quite as planned on Friday. Instead of rushing things out the door half finished, I decided to push all the milestones back a week, to give me some time to catch up after exams, and make sure the job is done properly. So come this Friday, the next big release will be ready, and maybe even the new hosting server for people to give it a shot on!