Another installment of my where posts. This time it’s about the short and middle term future of ZenMagick.

As some might have noticed, there is a certain concentration on jquery and plugins at the moment. This is no coincidence. The storefront is working fine (as far as I know) and apart from the occasional update due to API changes not a lot has changed for quite some time.

For me, plugins are the way to go. They are quite powerful, simple to install/uninstall (in contrast to mods using a merge tool…) and allow you to do almost anything. In that respect, working on*real* stores is quite helpful as it makes you more aware of what is actually needed.

In the medium term the plan hasn’t changed a lot. There are still a few things left to do before moving to a 0.9.0 release. Right now the focus is on three main areas, with moving priorities:

• Improving the admin pages
  This is something I have put off a few times, but now with the decision to use jquery, things are starting to move again.
• API improvements
  With more activity on admin related tasks, it becomes more obvious that the API is lacking a lot in terms of creating/updating database content. In that context it’s probably more a side effect of the admin work rather than something of it’s own.
• Plugins
  Since some of the new admin features are based on plugins (surprise!) there will be even more plugins. Also, I am constantly on the lookout for new features that could be implemented as plugins.
  This is where suggestions are most welcome.

I have also started thinking about some separate code to handle installation/upgrade. This is perhaps overkill, but on the other hand the only way I can see right now to make sure that old code is not crashing the installation procedure. However, this is in the early planning stages, so don’t expect anything soon.

There is also my pet project – creating some more themes. I think that is something that would make ZenMagick a lot more attractive, in particular if the designs are OpenSource and well tested!