Right!
After spending quite some time on fixing regressions from my refactoring madness its finally time to get ready for the next release.

Rather than reiterating the things that have been changed/added/fixed/improved I’d like to talk a bit about what is coming next. I am aware that I never much of a roadmap for ZenMagick. One of the reasons being that there was just too much to do and I never had real priorities. With the changes coming in 0.9.1 there isn’t a lot left to be done for the templating side of things until we’ll eventually hit ZenMagick 1.0. The API, on the other hand, still requires some work.

While the API is pretty much complete as far as the storefront functionallity is concered, it lacks quite a bit when it comes to the admin side. What I mean is the ability to create and update data. While there has been some work in that area, there is still a lot left. As a general rule, create/update functionallity is available where it was needed.

With the introduction of the new database code I hope to finally get this big gap filled and make ZenMagick even more attractive for integrators and people interested in extending zen-cart.

There is also going to be some more work in refactoring the core code. While this is not strictly necessary, I have the urge to do that just to make myself happy (I hope that is reason enough

Parallel to all that there are plans for a lot more work around plugins:

• admin – maintenance
  There are a few plugins that I started, but never finished. Those would make the Catalog Manager a lot more useful. However, those will most likely depend on the missing data access features of the API (namely, creating and updating date like products, categories and other)
• facets
  This is something I started as a reaction to some discussion about alternative ways to navigate the catalog. Eventually, I hope this will be good enough to replace and improve the current result list/filter code (not sure about the sorter, though). It should be more performant (using some form of caching) and generally smarter.
• other
  There are a couple other plugins I can feel coming. This might include some more support plugins for zen-cart mods, but also some new features for the storefront side of things.

Finally, there is more need to trim the code and make it perform better. I plan to have a look at what other PHP based apps do for that and see what seems useful. Suggestions welcome.

So, again, not much of a real roadmap, but I think that a version 1.0 is finally (far, far) far away becoming visible. If you feel I have missed anything important, please, please comment or write me an email.

Happy weekend, everyone