A quick reminder that we (well, mainly Carlos) are working on getting the new forum set up and configured.

Current estimates are that a go-live is about a week away.

After the forum is live it would be a good idea to get some ideas together for a logo and some colours to get rid of the default skins/themes of the forum and also the wiki. Eventually, a relaunch of www.zenmagick.org would follow.

I figured that since I haven’t had much time to do actual coding I might as well write my update a couple days early! I certainly have spend much more time writing forum posts and answering emails than ever before (at least in the context of ZenMagikck).

So what happened?

Well, the new forum is on it’s way and things are really looking promising on getting some useful feedback from there.

Right now I am holding back on new stuff a bit. Partly this is due to limited time (I’ll be back in NZ next week), partly due to the fact that I want to wait for initial feedback in the new forum before starting anything new.

In the meantime I might spend a bit more time on testing the Savant3 integration and also some on making more code generic. Somehow I have the feeling that we might need the framework for a new / improved install or admin app sooner than expected.

There are also a few other things happening, though:

• There will soon be more options to donate. This is mostly based on a single request for donation subscriptions, but perhaps it will motivate more to donate [I should point out, though, that there is enough money to pay for hosting right now and since that is the only real expense there is no urgent need to donate. On the other hand I won't reject any donation!]
• I’ve been promised a new default theme. It might come in time for 0.9.8 and should almost be worth a release in it’s own right.
• I’ve upgraded the build process a bit and one result of that is a simpler build script and a new plugin collection zip file that will contain all released plugins for each release.
• There have been a few bug fixes – make sure to check the bug tracker and test your store before going live!

I just noticed a search for the admin account of the demo store. Right now there isn’t any, sorry!

There really isn’t that much to see anyway and it is a lot easier to download and install ZenMagick than you might think and even more so on a local test installation.

Well, this has been a most interesting and exciting week. It looks like finally people are getting fed up with waiting for Zen Cart 2.0. If you haven’t seen them yet, there is an interesting blog post and also a forum thread about the same topic…

As for ZenMagick itself the week was rather mixed. I finally landed the Savant3 code and updated hopefully all plugins and other depending code like views, etc.

On the other hand a few bugs have popped up that are rather annoying. Despite the fact that they are easy to fix (with the exception of #2880154) they really give a bad impression, in particular now with the increased interest. On the plus side the increased interest might result in more exposure and testing to avoid the same happening again.

Just a quick update for all interested that zenmagick.org is up and running again.

Sorry for the trouble this might have caused – really bad timing!

Unrelated to that I’ve created a new subdomain forum.zenmagick.org. In the next week or so we’ll be having a new locally hosted forum that is going to replace the current sourceforge solution. It’s an experiment and it’s going to be interesting to see what comes out of it.

One of the things I hope is that it will allow to start some real discussions about ZenMagick, a manifest, features, etc.

Some might have noticed that the ZenMagick websites are currently all unavailable. Unfortunately, there has been a hiccup with the ISP and renewing the domain name :/

I’ve done what I can to get the sites back up, so all we can do right now is to be patient. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

And now to something completely different: What is happening with ZenMagick? (more…)

Not sure how much out of sync I am right now with my updates, but I think today should be a good time.

Now that 0.9.7 is released it is time [again] to look forward and start planning what should go into ZenMagick 0.9.8.

Beside the usual suspects like:

• more documentation (plugins, general information, perhaps a features page on the main site and also a quck install!)
• bug fixes
• more themes
• new features (which???)

There is again going to be a good measure of restructuring to separate the remainder of the MVC code still mixed up with store code. Part of that is going to be an attempt to integrate Savant3 as the main view API. Most of the base work for that is already done. However it seemed too much to try and push those changes into 0.9.7. Also, I’ll need to refactor most view code (hopefully dropping some chunks of code along the way).

Another things that I found myself thinking about is actually a new default theme. I do not mind the the current blue, but especially after having worked on the other themes I have found a few things that could be improved (side-boxes I am looking at you guys!), so any feedback on that would be appreciated.

I’ve finally released ZenMagick 0.9.7 tonight (German time). There is more testing being done, in particular there are still a couple plugins missing, but overall the code is ready and considering the amount of structural changes it seems about time to get the release out in the wild.

There are several things of interest in this release:

• $request
  As of this release, there is a new object available to all template files: $request. It replaces the static use of ZMRequest::xxx() [although this is currently still possible, albeit slightly changed as ZMRequest::instance()->xxx()]. My hope is that with this change it will be a lot easier to test controller code since it is now easy to provide a custom request object without any side effects.
• lib is the new core
  So far all ZenMagick core code was located in zenmagick/core. ZenMagick 0.9.7 introduces a new layout with currently three main folders:
  • lib/core
    This is the generic core code that doesn’t even know about web applications and can be used in any PHP application
  • lib/mvc
    This, of course, is the generic part of the ZenMagick MVC code. It should be noted that this is the incomplete part as there is still a lot of MVC code (store specific) in the third folder:
  • lib/store
    This contains the store specific code of what is still called ZenMagick. Eventually I hope to morph ZenMagick into a generic MVC framework with the zen-cart storefront being just one application of many using the framework. The admin interface would obviously be a good second candidate…
• plugins
  There has been a lot of changes in a number of plugins and also a few new ones. Among the more interesting news there is:
  • zm_vbulletin
    In the style of the phpBB plugins it allows to automatically create vBulleting accounts for all new registered users
  • zm_token
    Moved into core (lib/store) as a regular service
  • zm_settings
    A new view was added that gives an overview over all lib/core and lib/mvc settings used. With the move to using widgets there are also a lot more data types and form elements available to choose from.
  • zm_subscriptions
    A (not so) new plugin that allows to offer automatic orders in regular intervals. This plugin requires the corn plugin [zm_cron].
  • zm_smarty
    Not yet available.
• widgets
  All plugins have been converted to using widgets for all configuration options. Again, this is a move to using classes rather than functions. As with a lot of other ZenMagick code this is not just for the sake of having more classes but to allow to share code and reuse it.

There are still a few things missing in the grand scheme of things. Some of the plugins need more documentation, the demo site really needs to be upgraded and more. I’ll be back to that ASAP, but right now I do have some private things to sort that will take up most of my spare time.

Either way, I know there are people that have been waiting for this release and it feels good to have this finally out of the way. Getting used to the new sourceforge UI was also not that much fun (why isn’t there an option in the file manager to select multiple files?????)

There is a good chance that there will be a few 0.9.7.x releases soon and also a couple more plugins in the near future, however that shouldn’t stop anyone from giving this release the chance it deserves. Enoy.