Hi Community!
Let me start off with my apologies for not giving you more information about whats going on earlier. I know it was quite around Bigace development in the last months, many exciting things happened (receiving my bachelor, starting off with my own web company
Keleo, moving to my first very own office, visiting interesting conferences like the
International PHP Conference or the
SEO-Campixx) that took my attention.
I had less time to care about new plugins or your feature request and could only release some bugfixes, sorry for that!
But I wasn't to lazy and the time waiting was worth it - as I hope - because a big project of mine made it possible to work on Bigace 3.
With this posting I'd like to give you a short insight of what is going on and where we currently are.
Development progress:-
Progress: Bigace 3 is currently at a level of 90% of all required changes. There are some decissions to be made, which I'd like to discuss with all of you in a later step (e.g. menu administration, default template).
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Codebase: Bigace 3 is a complete rewrite of Bigace 2.7 and I would guess that ~ 60% of the codebase is new or at least hardly changed.
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Zend Framework: Bigace 3 is now based on the Zend Framework, what is a great opportunity, because you can create Bigace extensions even if you don't know Bigace but just the Zend Framework API. It makes the dataflow much more customizable and you have the chance to reuse existing ZF modules.
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Administration: The administration is a complete redesign. You won't recognize it at the first glance. No frameset, no loading screen, a new dashboard, backup mechanism and several improved screens. Simply a brand new Look&Feel - which I hope you like and that helps you to improve your tasks maintaining your website.
I'd like to be honest, there are for some cons/disadvantages for now as well, of which many will be fixed within the next weeks.
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Upgrading: There is yet no way to upgrade an existing Bigace installation. But there will be in the future, promised.
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Compatibility: None of the old extensions/templates/... is currently compatible. Codewise they should still work, because I tried to keep the API consistent and backward-compatible where it was required and removed deprecated code where it was possible. But the complete folder structure changed, so we have to restructure the existing extensions.
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Package size: As Bigace now relies on the Zend Framework, there is a huge amount of source files, that previously did not exist. The download package includes the Zend Framework what brings it up to 9-10 MB zipped and unzipped ~ 25 MB. That might sound much and probably is, but its just the ZF that bloats the package. There will be a package for people already running ZF apps, so you can use it from your own include path. In that case Bigace is almost the same size than the 2.x packages, around ~ 5 MB.
Roadmap:Some of you might know, that I am not the best one in sticking to roadmap items and time promises, so I will not give you concrete deadlines here
I have an idea of most of the open tasks and would say, that it needs another one or two months before we can release a productive version.
The API is there and I don't expect any data loss (but its still a development version) and there are still some usability problems in the administration which needs to be cleared out. Also there is no documentation right now. I will work on that, once I know that the structure will not be changed anymore.
The more people help testing and bugfixing the faster I can release BIGACE! Closed beta testing:This time I will not install a public development version - its too early for that. I want to work together with you - to make it a good software that works the way we all want it to be. Please use this chance and influence the development progress!
I will not publish a public accessible download package. But how can you join anyway?!?
Its an experiment for me, if it doesn't work I will rethink my idea
Download:To receive a download link for Bigace, become a member of the Bigace social network. Show off that you like Bigace, by either
following Bigace on Twitter,
becoming a Bigace fan at Facebook or by
adding Bigace to your software stack at ohloh.
After that, I will send you the download link via Twitter or Facebook. If you use ohloh, please contact me here so I can give you the link!
There are some new/improved extensions (News, Jobs, Downloads) for Bigace 3 as well, which I will release within the next days. I keep you updated by posting replies to this post.
Please feel free to ask any question ... let me know what you think ... I want your feedback
Best wishes
Kevin
