CMS Made Simple Forums

Yup... you've heard correctly..... Yet another release of the 1.x series of CMS Made Simple is coming soon to a website near you.  This new version will be faster, leaner, and smarter.... we'll be tackling a bunch of the biggest, longest standing issues, and feature requests and snuffing them out.  This release should have a little bit in it for everybody.

Here's what is new and/or fixed in the new version
- Fixes several bugs:
  - #2786 Bulk page changes don't show messages
  - #2831 Upgrade process continue even if database is empty
  - #3040 no external view after moving pages up and down (and deleting pages) in listcontent
  - #3123 Installer overly restricts account names
  - #3179 Ability to show when news items were last updated
  - #3189 check if udt exists
  - #3190 Error with link rel="canonical"
  - #3257 Non-admin users can create admin users
  - Remove all assign_by_ref in Installer
  - Missing $frontendlang in siteprefs, thanks to jce76350

- Feature Requests:
  - #2605 adding a 'forgot password' submission on the login panel 
  - #3048 News: Only show expiration-date when checkbox is set
 
- Core additions:
  - Ability to set a page as the 404 error page.  Replaces the existing custom 404 stuff to allow for more flexibility.
  - Rework of the 'Add Pages' permission
    - This permission allows that you can only add pages as children of pages you are either owner of, or additional editor of.
  - Rework of the 'Modify Page Structure' permission
    - This permission now indicates that you can modify the fields in the options tab of the content types.
    - Add the ability to specify in global settings which fields should be displayed to users without the 'Modify Page Structure' permission.
  - Rework of the content types
    - Faster, leaner, smarter
    - {content} block is now just a shortcut for {content block='content_en'}
      and there is no special handling
  - Complete rewrite of site preferences
  - Page Preview now works for templates with multiple content blocks
  - Add the ability to specify ip addresses to exclude from the sitedown
    message.
  - More!!!

- News
  - #2620 Extra fields are not displayed in the print template
  - #3163 Typo in News module
  - #3277 Drafts are not saved properly in News 2.9.3

- Libraries
  - xAjax 0.5
  - script.aculo.us 1.8.2 (included  Update to Prototype 1.6.0.3)

Here's the (slightly optimistic?) schedule.
Real Soon Now - Start gathering a list of users for the closed beta process (yes, you read correctly, stay tuned for more information).
May 11/2009 - Feature cutoff
May 15 or 16/2009 - Beta released
Approx June 15 - General Release of CMS Made Simple 1.6

I'll be writing an announcement "Real Soon Now" about how the beta process will work (we're gonna do it slightly differently than we've done before)... but I have a few more things to setup first.

Stay tuned, and start to get excided

oh yeah, and I forgot.

-- A complete revamp of the default templates, there'll be two brand new web 2.0 like themes with CMS 1.6
-- Were still working on (but may abandon) an complete rewrite of the default content.
-- We may (time permitting) attack the printing stuff so that you can print a detail page of a module, or a page with multiple content blocks
-- We are considering a new smarty plugin (though this really doesn't have to come out with 1.6) that will allow sorting arrays of arrays
    or arrays of objects dynamically, so that you can instantaneously re-sort summary displays from any module without having to
    have the module enhanced.

calguy1000 wrote:   - Rework of the 'Add Pages' permission
    - This permission allows that you can only add pages as children of pages you are either owner of, or additional editor of.

had this idea long long ago already... didn't i add it to the forge as feature request?

i found it: [#1856] Add new sub pages only to pages where you have edit permission

SimonSchaufi wrote:

calguy1000 wrote:   - Rework of the 'Add Pages' permission
    - This permission allows that you can only add pages as children of pages you are either owner of, or additional editor of.

had this idea long long ago already... didn't i add it to the forge as feature request?

calguy1000 wrote: we'll be tackling a bunch of the biggest, longest standing issues, and feature requests and snuffing them out. 

Back on track: I'd like to thank the many devs that have put a lot of time into working on this release and will continue to do so. A lot of these items have been out there for awhile and it should make many people happy.

SimonSchaufi wrote: had this idea long long ago already... didn't i add it to the forge as feature request?

Yup... and we're finally getting to it.  I had a burst of energy, or an epiphany (don't know which)... and decided to take this one on.

Calguy your bursts of energy are very much appreciated!! There are so many little but great improvements in your list - some of which I didn't even know I wanted (like the ip addresses for the site down) until I saw them. Great work as always and I can't wait to install..

calguy1000 wrote:

SimonSchaufi wrote: had this idea long long ago already... didn't i add it to the forge as feature request?

Yup... and we're finally getting to it.   I had a burst of energy, or an epiphany (don't know which)... and decided to take this one on.

Robert, you are a great person!
Thank you for all your time that you put into this project! I also try to help as much as I can but at the moment my studies are more important

I just thought I'd add this...

it has been officially decided that CMS Made Simple version 1.6 will be the last version that officially supports PHP 4.x. I can't recall what version of PHP 4.x we  currently require... but this will be the last one.  From this point on we will probably require PHP 5+  and most likely PHP 5.2 or greater.

If, and when we do a CMS 1.7, we will not be taking any efforts to ensure that CMS works with PHP4.   and there are probably some things we will start to do, knowing we no longer have php4's restrictions.

Just thought I'd give everybody the heads-up.

EDIT:
and for an added note.
To our 'special German friend', who has already been banned numerous times, has copied and hacked the software,  but due to some personality flaw, cannot stop criticizing what we do or what we do not do... go to h.... (wait)... change that... please, get a life and move on.

Fantastic! Can't wait for 1.6, some very good stuff in there.

Your hard work is much appreciated.

I thought I would give everybody a quick note about how permissions are changing in 1.6.
In an attempt to a) solve alot of the problems with the permissions model over the years, and b) answer some of the common requests related to permissions I'm in the process of re-vamping the Edit-content and permissions stuff as follows:

a) "Add Pages" permission will only allow users to create pages underneath pages they already own or have additional-editor access on.
b) "Remove Pages" permission will only allow users to remove pages that they already own or have additional editor access on.
      (in this way you can allow a user to create pages, but not to remove them).
c) "Modify Page Structure" permission will allow changing the hidden/show-in-menu, and other things on all, but not change the content
d) "Modify Any Page" permissio is essentially like being an additional editor on any page.... Users will be able to modify
    but not necessarily add or remove pages (unless they have the Add Pages or Remove Pages permission as well)
--
There is a new control in the global settings which allows administrators to control which fields are editable by users who are allowed to
edit the page.  In this way, you can allow editors to change the template, but not necessarily the extra1 attribute, etc.

I'm still working out the kinks in this stuff, but I would say it's a good 80% done now.

This is great to hear, Calguy.  IMHO, permissions are one of the areas that could also use some improved documentation (both within the software and in the online documentation/wiki).  It would be lovely to be able to click a "help" link and find an explanation of exactly what "modify any page" or "advanced usage of the file manager module" mean.  Obviously some permissions are pretty self-explanatory, but others are a bit vague.  I'd be happy to help write up some documentation, but I myself am not 100% sure of what all the permissions do and do not allow.

Thanks for all your work - looking forward to 1.6!

Hi All.

We are still on track for the beta on or about the 15th of May.  We may even be able to release the beta a bit early (things are going so well). but I thought I'd bring you up to date with some of what has been happening with 1.6 in the last week or so.

Beta testers:
A number of eager beavers have been working with us and testing the hot off the presses stuff, and finding some issues here and there.  With their help, and with the invaluable help of the other dev team members (RonnyK, reneh, Nuno, maksbud, etc)... the package is shaping up quite well.

Code Changes
- In the process of re-vamping the permissions model for managing content, we' have dropped the 'Modify Page Structure' permission, and added a 'Manage All Content' permission.  Users with this permission can do anything to all content.
- We've tweaked the behaviour of the 'pretty url' config variables.
  - Now there's one config variable 'url_rewriting' that supports at least three different values.... This replaces the two confusing config
    variables that existed in the past.  It handles both the internal pretty urls, and mod_rewrite settings.  But internally, everything should
    work just as it did before.
  - 'use_hierarchy' is on by default on new installs now.
- ModuleManager (and it's counterpart ModuleRepository) have been ugpraded to now do dependency checking before you install a module
  and to check for newer versions of installed modules.
- Printing has been enhanced considerably, to support displaying detail views of modules... Because of this, I may get rid of the redundant
  and error prone print stuff out of the news module.
- The upgrade routine will now display release notes.
- More

New themes
Our artistic types have been working hard coming up and testing with some new themes that will be included with CMS 1.6.  These new templates will hopefully be well documented, and alot easier to understand.

Beta testers still welcome
We have had a fair number of people sign up, but in order to cover as many bases as possible, we could still use a few more volunteers.  Just get in touch with us.

Well, there's your update.  Have a good week.

Hi all.

We've been working hard at getting 1.6-beta1 ready for some exhaustive testing.... and now we're just in the final stages of
preparing and testing the installer with the new default content mechanism... and making sure everything is cleaned up.

We are on track, and should have no difficulty releasing the beta on Friday.

Keep your fingers crossed

Hello again,

calguy1000 wrote: it has been officially decided that CMS Made Simple version 1.6 will be the last version that officially supports PHP 4.x. I can't recall what version of PHP 4.x we  currently require... but this will be the last one.  From this point on we will probably require PHP 5+  and most likely PHP 5.2 or greater.

If, and when we do a CMS 1.7, we will not be taking any efforts to ensure that CMS works with PHP4.   and there are probably some things we will start to do, knowing we no longer have php4's restrictions.

(humble opinion) I see this 1.7 as an opportunity to let sqlite support back onboard :
-Ted has "seen it as a PHP5 feature" (bundled with PHP5).
-You are a sqlite fan (as I am).

And may be 1.7 could be an opportunity to join CMSms v2.x on github ?-)
Have fun designing/coding/testing/fixing/deploying/consulting...

Pierre

Pierre M. wrote:
And may be 1.7 could be an opportunity to join CMSms v2.x on github ?-)

Just when I get a hang of SVN, he wants to move it to GitHub