Hi,
It’s been a while since i posted here, but this now post comes with some new good information.
Previously i wasn’t sure on which framework i might gonna use or use parts of and which template system i might gonna use. Recent developments (of other people) did gave me a clue of what to use.
The template system
Well there are quite a few out there. New ones.. Old ones just name it and it’s probably out there on the internet. But in the beginning of 2008 someone started with a new template system which should be about as felxible as Smarty only fully written in PHP 5(.2.0+) to take advantage of PHP 5. That template system is named: Dwoo and it looks and works nice. Is about as fast or faster then smarty and way smaller.
Dwoo is gonna be the template engine that will be used in MageDB.
Framework for the database and other things
In here is a lot of choice as well. Most are heavy and bad but there are a few left over ones that are really worth to take a look at. Zend Framework and CakePHP. I find CakePHP interesting but kinda lacks clear documentation and the parts that i want to use are not stable yet. So the framework that’s gonna be in MageDB is Zend Framework. Now most of the things that are in that framework are useless for me and for that i will throw them out. Parts that i will certainly use are:
- Cache
- Config
- Db
- Log
and probably a few others as well.
Now that thats cleared up.
Now for the internal structure of MageDB. When i started MageDB to long ago i had the idea of making everything module based. Back then it was impossible for me to do just that. Right now it’s hard but possible. Everything i’ve made up until now for MageDB will simply be thrown away and will be made again in a modular way. The idea is that you can plugin modules that could change the full ineer workings of MageDB. You can actually change everyhing that i make with the modules. The core of MageDB will exist of a solid (i hope) plugin structure. The MageDB that i will release will just have a few default modules installed. For example there will be a module for:
- Category’s
- Files
- Viewall
- Download
- Rating
- Comments
and so on. Every single MageDB feature besides it’s absolute core will be coded in modules.
Now where is the benifit for you?
Imagine you want to have a verry light MageDB version and only want to have:
- Category’s
- Files
- Download
Now you can simply disable the other modules and they won’t be in the php code thus making your code faster for apache because it’s smaller. It’s not something you switch on/off with a if/else statement. You completely disable all the code that is providing the feature. You could (to save space) remove all unneeded module files if you want (wouldn’t recomment that). Another major benefit is the modding of MageDB. If you make a module of your own you can make it a lot simpler then to dig through the code, find what needs to be changed and change it. There is another big improvement for the one that wants to install the module. NO code changes at all! simply upload the module files, enable the module, perhaps set some settings in the admin panel and your done without seeing one line of code.
Talking about easy for the user ^_^ You users get way to spoiled with this MageDB once it’s done.
Yet another thing that’s gonna be different then from my previous development of MageDB. back then i required you to use Firefox and it could work under IE7. In the meantime of the last update and this one i’ve learned a hell lot more about css and can now make designs that work fine under IE5 and up and all other browsers. I intend to let the default MageDB theme be the same as you all have seen before only then rebuild from scratch and to support IE5+ and as little images as possible to keep it as light as possible.
By default there will also be support for extensive Captcha’s (reCaptcha) for registration purposes and there will be detault support for Askimet for anti spam purposes. Down side of those 2 is that the both require you to register at there site to get your own personal keys to use on your site. Luckaly it’s all free.
And ofcause default friendly url’s using mod_rewrite ^_^
Now the biggest disadvantage:
Required PHP 5.2.0 or higher
along with a few other requirements.
That is the biggest issue with MageDB. There are still so many PHP 4.x.x servers out there. I will ignore them all! This script simply needs PHP 5 and nothing less. Don’t worry about the technical details for this.. it will all be taken care for you when you install MageDB.
And for a estemated release date.. This time i do promiss that it’s gona be this year! And i make that promiss because i really want MageDB to be released now.
I will also try to post atleast once a week here with new updates for MageDB.
I hope my next post can have images to show the progress of MageDB..
That’s enough info for now.
Till next blog
