Zero CMS Development Blog

Ok not a lot of content to post here other than a few fixes and updates to the system:

• Anti-flood on forum posts and topics.  Users are unable to post duplicate posts by clicking the submit button multiple times.
• A new theme has been developed and is being coded at the moment.  When the theme is finished I will get a few screenshots of it in use on the current system
• Guests are now also able to successfully post on the forum system, there is however one minor bug which I shall fix shortly.

This is why I should really post everyday, because I forget which parts of the system have been developed since I last posted.  Anyways.  Thanks to those still keeping interested.

Adios for now

Today, a new block has been developed.  It allows for you to display a single team in a block.  The team name becomes the block title and a list of the members in the team ( using their current photo or avatar ).  This can be displayed as many times as chosen, with as many different teams (even multiple blocks of the same team).  A screenshot of this block in use will be uploaded once it has been styled and fully laid out.

This only one of the planned team blocks planned for the new system.  Others include a tree list of all members in different teams and a javascript powered block which will change the teams based on an icon hover event.

In other areas of the system, I developed a new way to confirm match availability and written the basic code behind it.  This needs to be implemented to the system.

A rather short post today, guaranteed.  But all the same I feel obliged to keep followers updated on the system progress, to confirm that it is still active.

Ok, since I haven’t posted here since last week - I bet you’re all assuming no work has been carried out on the system. When in fact I have done a fair bit (mostly yesterday but yeah). Work on the calendar, results commenting system and an effective caching system ( this last feature has been started, not finished yet).

I know it sounds a little - and when you visit the site itself, it doesn’t look much - but thats 2 sections off the to do list down and only a few more to go.

I’m still keeping myself to the ‘do one thing a day’ routine - and hopefully i can get the system, effectively finished far quicker than work on the old system.

I will provide some screenshots on the next blog update.

It really is a shame that I have to revise intensively over the next 2 days. Meaning no work on Zero CMS from me. I’m hoping that something does get done however. If not then the next time you hear from this blog will be wednesday ( tuesday being the day that I start back work on the system ).

Anyway - Work on the user CP was started today. With the attempt to make a neat layout which would suitably cater for users of your sites, whilst looking slightly different from the version 1 control panel. I think this was accomplished well. (If I do say so myself)

As you may notice from the screenshot ‘Custom’ - this is your custom profile set by the administrators. Including category sets and fields. Your profile could be as minimalistic or as informative as you’d like it to be. I’ll post more details on this feature upon completion of the admin control panel module.

Stay with us - be back soon!

Ok so yesterday, I began to develop the team listing page more.  This has been created so that administrators can customise it and display team pages in as much detail as they wish.  Teams have been designed with the whole ‘customisability’ idea in mind.  No two sites will be quite the same if I have my way!

Teams now support a team ordering system, so you can prioritise the order in which they appear.  This is an advantage over Zero CMS v1 in itself.  Teams also support ‘ranks’ or ‘positions’ ( example naming what kind of player some one is as an Awper ) with the ability to pick a captain for each team.

Doesn’t sound like a long post today, but at least we’re doing something!

Oh and one last thing!  Profile pages will be far more customisable, in that adding new categories for profile fields, new profile fields.  And hopefully reordering of the categories.  I also like to say that the profile layout will be changed. ( When I get to it ;P )

Cheers to Sparx yesterday for providing some useful feedback on the teams layout and coming up with the idea of choosing a team captain.

*Please also note that the roster page has changed slightly since this blog post. And it will be completely customisable in the final release

Well, we’re sticking to it folks! Here’s a little update as to whats going on with Zero CMS again.

Yesterday wasn’t much of a full on ‘get this module done’ kind of day. It was a more, spend time cleaning up the code, and making sure HTML outputs are nice and tidy.

A lot of the day also consisted of me putting various outputs into templates which weren’t in templates before, mostly to aid in future theme development.

Language files were also made accessible through the theme templates and for example typing {lang[_ALREADY_LOGGED_IN_]} into a template would output the corresponding phrase specified by the users language, in most case’s, “You are already logged in!”.

Pagination was also added to the news page. Simple enough - but it makes the whole system nicer if theres not too much content added to the page.

More next time.

Not only have we added the functionality to create polls on your site, (yesterday) the functionality to attach polls to topics was added with a maximum limit of 7 voting options. Voting is restricted to only people who can view the topic and are logged in. Unfortunately these polls cannot be attached just yet, and it’s one of my tasks for later today. I also plan to allow moderators to delete polls from topics.

Rob has been working on some of the block features for Zero CMS, mostly the ones to display matches and results. We will keep you posted on the development progress for this.

Other features also being developed at the moment include the Admin Control panel to function with some of the current working modules and features ( ie. Editing a member, or adding a member to a team etc) Again we will inform you when such features are fully functioning.

Doesn’t seem like a large post but yesterday we were working on setting up the blog and various other minor tasks for Zero CMS.

Until Next time!

Many of you may be wondering - “When is Zero CMS going to be available to the public?”  I know this through the countless Xfire Messages or similar asking this very question.   I keep giving the same answer - “I don’t Know”.  One thing is for certain though, that Zero CMS v2.0 is moving far quicker in it’s progress than v1 ever did and with that I can announce that the wait may not be for much longer.  Now our ‘to do list’ is massive, but doing at least one thing a day cuts it down massively in such a short space of time.

With the introduction of this blog we intend to show you exactly what’s happening ‘behind the scenes’, what’s really happening with Zero CMS.  We intend to keep this blog up to date with the most recent coded features.

My first announcement is the forum development.  Over the past few days this has been dramatically worked on improving quality and generally adding new features.  The latest feature added to the forums is the ability to create subforums.  Yes thats right! Subforums.  This is all economically designed and uses as little resources as possible.

As you can see from the screenshot - forum topics also support ratings! Users can rate topics based upon their usefullness.
We hope to keep you informed with more features soon!