August 2008 - Summary
Hi there, with the standard development posts, I will be providing you with the summary of our development progress to keep you updated with the information about how new version of Kentico CMS is developed. Here is the first one ...
At the end of the July we finished developing the version 3.1a of Kentico CMS and while the release candidate was tested, we started to developing the features of new version.
What market and you (our Customers) wanted were the Community features. Current internet is all about connecting people with each other and the community features are used more and more, even on corporate web sites. Some of you also want to implement some community webs and you are forced to implement some features by your own so we want to provide you a complete solution for this to save your time for more pleasant things than just development.
As you probably know, our roadmap contains the list of features which will be probably in the new version. We are very busy implementing it so we will probably need to move some of them into the next version.
Currently, we are working on following things:
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New link management - In the previous versions, you were limited by using only one URL for the document (AliasPath) and one extra URL for each language version of the document (URLPath). In the new version we are introducing the document aliases which will allow you to use multiple aliases for the documents, including support for specific document extensions for better SEO. You will also be able to use wildcard URLs to place some of the query parameters to the path instead of the query string. This is already implemented.
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Tags - The ability to mark documents with tags as the key words (or key phrases), including the tag clouds and grouping of the tags. This way you can connect documents by their key words. This feature is already developed and reviewed.
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Categories (Taxonomy) - While tag is just a simple word, category is something predefined and you can use the categories to create taxonomy over you content. Each document can have multiple categories. Also already developed and in the phase of review.
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Message boards - Similar to the blog comments as you know it, but available for all documents. This feature will allow you to create simple one-level forums (message boards) for your visitor's comments. We are about to finish it soon.
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Alternative forms - You will be able to define multiple forms for the document / biz form / etc. and use different forms in different contexts. It is about to be finished.
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New membership management - Current membership management is not built for large amount of users, for this reason we are rebuilding the administration interface so it can handle large amount of users. We are still developing it.
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Groups - Groups will allow the web site visitors to create their own communities in a single web site and manage their content and members. This is by far the most important feature of social networking solution and we are still developing it.
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E-mail engine - We are introducing new e-mail engine with e-mail queue and better Newsletter handling. We are currently developing it.
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Custom tables - Some of you are probably using BizForms to create list of objects or store the data in a table which can be exported with our package. For this reason, we are implementing feature between Documents and BizForms, which will allow you to store your data in a lists, outside of the document tree. Again, we are currently implementing it.
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Session management - Each social network platform needs the ability to display the online users, or at least their number, so we will provide you with simple session management. We are about to start developing it right after one of the subteams finishes their work on their current module.
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Friends - To extend the possibilities of users, we will allow them to be friends with each other, just to connect them somehow. Also to be implemented in the nearest future.
Other things are either in the phase of analysis or ready for implementation. For the things above, you can be sure that they will be implemented in the new version, the other things will depend on the time we will have.
We have also successfully trained all our staff for all the modules and details of our Solution so now they all know all parts of the solution and we are developing much faster and better than before.
During the next month, we will be implementing and closing the features and if everything goes right, we will announce new version at the end of the October.
I don't like to go to the details, I better check our status to see if everything goes as it should and you get the solution as soon as possible. See you later.
P.S.: Please don't ask me about details or screenshots, just wait for the new version to see how the features look like and what they offer. It will give me more time to keep an eye on everything ;-)
M.H.