Archive for April, 2010
Surprise! There could be a dev release soon!
Posted by Ian in News and updates on April 17th, 2010
I have finally got the updating system operational 
Which means we are very close to having a dev release of SnowCMS available for public download.
Why will it only be a dev release? Anyone will be able to download it, of course, however, the plugin manager won’t work. You can still develop and install plugins, but it has to be done via phpMyAdmin (or whatever you use). Why? Because the SnowCMS site will provide plugin services, and as of yet, I don’t know how it will be setup until I make it.
As long as I have the time, there could be a dev release coming next week! However, here is what still needs doing:
- Installer
- Admin account approval (it can be done, however, the members don’t receive emails saying they can now log in)
- Maybe get most of the filed issues done or at least started.
Just incase you were wondering, it is more than likely updates will be available via the update system, as long as it works (as I said, I tested it, such as making new files, new folders, editing files and even executing a PHP file for anything else that needs doing, but you never know! There could be issues!).
Anyways, I myself am getting pretty excited, as SnowCMS finally becomes a reality 
SnowCMS not to be distributed with plugins
Posted by Ian in News and updates on April 3rd, 2010
Yesterday as I was listening to a podcast (Windows Weekly, if I remember right), they were talking about how some browsers are distributed with certain plugins built in and ready to go, such as Flash. We all know how many issues Flash has, right? 
So I began thinking, hold on… If any plugins in the default SnowCMS package have any vulnerabilities, an entirely new version of SnowCMS would have to be released because that installation package would need updating (I don’t want to update it without a version change…), but all existing installations would merely get the plugins update through the plugin manager, and their SnowCMS version would be different, and a fake update would need to be sent out to change it.
To me, that is quite pointless. So the idea of distributing SnowCMS with plugins is out. The plugins folder will be completely empty when you download the installation package 
. Plus, this allows other plugins which aren’t first party to have just as much chance to be picked as ours.
But of course! When you setup SnowCMS the very last step will mention the fact that SnowCMS, by default, comes with very little functionality, and there will likely be a list of plugins (such as link managers, page managers, stuff most people would intend to use SnowCMS for) with the most popular ones.
Just thought I would let you know
If you are wondering what’s currently going on, right now I am working on member management, which will require a new tool (the Table class, but more on that later), once the new tool and member management are done, I will start on an error log viewer (completely slipped my mind!!!). After that, work on the SnowCMS site will begin! So soon enough, SnowCMS.com will actually be powered by SnowCMS Why you may ask..? Because! Until the site is setup, I won’t know exactly how the plugin site will be setup, which is quite important to do before plugin management can be done
Till next time, cya!