Future of Pixelpost

[Smartphoner]

The last update of Pixelpost is nearly one year ago. I am wondering about the future. Will come a new and improved version ?

[Trauko]

What can improve something that is perfect?
Allow multiple photoblogs?

Increase the code increases the likelihood of bugs

Anyway look at this (http://trauko.org/documentos/pp19.jpg)

Suerte :)

[Dennis]

The future of Pixelpost is that we completely are going to rewrite it. In the meantime we're keep maintaining the older versions.

Trauko, I like to test new features live before I actually commit them. I have some features on my blog that might make it to 1.9, but first we have to finish 1.8.

[Smartphoner]

Whats new on 1.8 and 1.9 ? Is it possible to be a betatester ? BTW. A lot can be improved: Gravatars, SPAM protection....

[Dennis]

If you make such bold statements then please elaborate them more. You say SPAM protection can be better.

We got good protection out of the box with for instance the TOKEN. We also have various addons: AKISMET, DEFENSIO and the HTTP:BL addon (http://www.schonhose.nl/pixelpost-addons/httpbl/).

I use both the internal SPAM protection of Pixelpost, as well as the HTTP:BL addon and that leaves me with 10 SPAM comments a day which are caught by Defensio. I got logging on my site, there are more than 150 spam comments a day which are stopped by Pixelposts own defences.

Gravatars are not going to be inside pixelpost. Our mission is to keep it clean and fast. If you want gravatar support check out this addon: Custom Comments (http://www.schonhose.nl/pixelpost-addons/comments/). It supports Gravatars and much more. The possibilities with this addon are endless.

[nox]

Pixelpost is a technically mature, highly functional and reliable product, therefore future versions will probably see improvement in small details only.
Two things I would like to see:

- the ability to change colours, fonts and maybe the layout of the backend. It is not really important but would be nice.
- multiple blogs, browse and about pages.

In the past the developers have done a great job in not including too many features and gadgets. That's what plugins can be used for. Pixelpost is a tool for photoblogging and not a swiss army knife.

[EcoSee]

All of these already exist. And there is nothing to stop you from making changes that fit those needs. The css is right there. You can either use the addon that changes the admin or write it yourself. And its very easy to create a multiple blog interface with the platform that already exists. There are no limits to this thing really!

[jaywilliams]

First off, the next major version of pixelpost, aka Pixelpost v2.0, will be a complete rewrite. And I think one of the major selling points for this, will be the fact that it has LESS features than the current version of Pixelpost. Less features you say? No way!

Let me explain, yes, the core Pixelpost product will have less features, but it will have various addons which will add those features back, on an individual basis, if you need them, features such as tags, comments, categories, etc. That way if your photoblog design doesn't use comments, you can literally remove all the comment code, spam filtering code, all the admin panel comment options, etc. So you're photoblog will remain super small, and super fast, and only do what you need it to do, nothing more, nothing less.

That's the idea at least. :)

[Trauko]

Small Is Beautiful (http://www.grc.com/smgassembly.htm)

When we can read that code?

Suerte :)

[jaywilliams]

The code is in very early alpha state, so it's not ready for prime time, that's for sure! But the general concepts and structure are starting to to be laid into place, and it's quite nice, and most of all, super simple. At this point, the code is so simple, anyone, even with very limited PHP knowledge could look at the code an easily understand everything that is going on, and that's great! Well commented, easy to read code is a major plus for developers and end users alike. Simply trying to read, never mind understand some of the code in Pixelpost v1.x is enough to make me barf. Ha ha!

[Dennis]

Like Jay described we got some snippets, but we're still working out the foundations of the program. Logically this takes the most time. You wouldn't build a house on a bad foundation either would you?

Our main effort at this time is to get the foundation solid and after that it is your choice how you want to build the house (site). Since the foundation is solid you can choose for bricks with multiple levels or you can keep it simple by building a one story wooden house with one chamber.

I do hope this analogy makes sense :D

[constant]

Is there a general time frame for the planned release of Pixelpost V2.0? Like the end of the year or maybe sometime next year?

(Not that it matters. Pixelpost 1.7 is fine as it is.)

[Dennis]

General time frame is: ASAP (which can be translated to either next week or next year) ;-)

[kevincrafts]

Is there legacy support for addons or must they all be re-written?

[jaywilliams]

v2 will be a complete rewrite, which will require new addons. There is a plan to possibly offer a legacy template addon, which will allow you to use old-school templates & template tags, rather than the new fancy way. The only similarity between v1 and v2 is the name "Pixelpost", other than that, they are completely different animals. But providing everything goes as planned, addons for v2 should be much easier, and faster for both the users and the developers.

One thing I can tell you about v2 though, it has very sweet mod_rewrite support built in, if I must say so myself. :)

[Dennis]

One thing I can tell you about v2 though, it has very sweet mod_rewrite support built in, if I must say so myself. :)

I second that!

As for the addons (we prefer plugins for V2) there was no way we're going to reuse the code from V1.x as this code is uhmm... not very flexible.

So the pluginsystem will be rewritten with much more possibilities to enhance Pixelpost. This is kind of necessary as we're aiming for a lightweight blog with plugins for functionality like comments, tags, exif etc etc.