Today the first ZenMagick 0.9.13 release candidate has been published.

Right now only the mod version is available. Themes, plugins and the full-release version might be added later this week.

This version is labelled release candidate  despite the fact that there are still a few issues open that might include further code changes. The rationale behind this is that the code is quite stable and the remaining issues won’t affect this. There is also a chance that some or all will be moved over to 0.9.14 should they not be ready for the final release.

The build has been tested on top of the current german zencart version.

Right now there aren’t any release/update notes available. People interested in trying the new code are encouraged to check out the issue documenting required changes.

Christmas is approaching fast and it is time to prepare for the (traditional) ZenMagick Christmas release. We’ haven’t always managed, but always aimed for having one.
This year is no difference and things are looking promising.

I am sure we will have to push a few tasks into the next release, but that is more a matter of organizing issues. Some surely should be ‘meta’ issues and have subtasks. Alternatively, we could probably have an ‘ongoing’ target that never expires.

Regression fixing is well under way and there is even a store online that uses a RC version of 0.9.13. All good signs that the code is ready to be released.

Today ZenMagick 0.9.12.1 was finally released!

It’s been a long time coming and I am really happy with the result. Its the first release with input and contributions from more than 2 developers and I really appreciate all the time and thoughts people have put into this release. (Of course, developing a live site on trunk kind of makes you really interested in getting things done …

So, grab it, upgrade, start from scratch and let us know what you think.

I am pleased to announce the availability of ZenMagick 0.9.12 RC1.

In comparison to the previous snapshot, there have been fixes to the coupon code and all missing packed libraries are now back again.

Download: 0.9.12-RC1

Upgrade Instructions

• Uninstall all file patches via the ZenMagick Installation page
• Delete the zenmagick/lib folder (this is to avoid having old files sticking around)
• Delete all local.php files (apps/admin/lib, apps/store/lib, themes/demo/extra) – zenmagick/local.php is still supported, but deprecated
• Update/upload new version
• Re-apply all file patches except the one about replacing zen_date_raw (there should also be a message about that)

ZenMagick 0.9.11 is released – finally!

It’s been a long release cycle with lots of interesting changes and I am very happy to finally have pushed this release into the wild. One thing I think I might have not mentioned before (it’s in the release notes, though) is that ZenMagick 0.9.11 (and all future releases) will require PHP5.3.

Of the changes the one I like most is definitely the integration of the zencart admin pages into the ZenMagick admin UI. it all started from a chat in the zenmagick chat room (xmpp) and some playing around with code. After that things were surprisingly easy and perhaps will be a good example of doing the same with storefront code (using ZM exclusively and loading zencart only where required).

Please be aware that there is a new bug tracker and more that we now use to coordinate development. There is, of course, also the forum for all questions that you may want to ask.

Another “unscheduled” update since it seems I can’t manage a weekly update right now. Things are ticking along nicely, although there haven’t been any major developments.

Main focus (again) was on improving the existing code to make live easier for plugins. Also, a few gaps in the API have been filled, most notably the new ZMTaxClass.

Main code changes:

• Templates now have a new widget() method at their disposal to display/render widgets or widget definitions. This is mostly aimed at making custom plugin pages easier, but templates can use this too.
• Upgraded jquery to 1.4.3 and 1.8.6 (UI)
• all email content generation code is now using the new ZMEMails service – this makes a lot of email related code obsolete and a lot cleaner
• all bean definitions can now be customized via individual settings; for example this line of code would tell ZenMagick to use a custom FooBarclass to be used (with caching disabled) as product service instance: ZMSettings::set('zenmagick.core.beans.definitions.Products', 'FooBar#cache=false');
• address checking for guest checkout (and checkouts generally) has been improved and does not rely on a zencart event any more
• The checkout_payment page controller is now capable to handle basic payment types; this is still disabled since some logic and checks are still missing – still some major progress
• streamlined some ZMShoppingCart methods and further removed dependencies on zencart
• url encoded payment module error messages are now handled by the messages service, so no custom code needed any more (payment_error/error)
• more progress on making $languageId mandatory for all API code
• the product finder ZMProductFinder now supports a new flag to search active only / all products – this is disabled for storefront searches, bu means the searcher code is really useful for new admin functions

There has also been some more testing (and fixes) to integrate the current zencart admin pages seamlessly in the ZenMagick admin UI.

As far as a new release is concerned: there hasn’t been done any planning yet, but I am aiming for a new release for middle of December, so not a lot more work will be added. On the one hand that is a shame as the next release will contain less genuine admin improvements than I was hoping for. OTOH, the zencart admin integration is certainly a big step forward to making ZenMagick admin the place to go to to manage your store

It appears that the full version of ZenMagick 0.9.10 includes zen cart 1.3.8a rather the intended zen cart 1.3.9f.

This is rather embarrassing and I’d like to apologize for this.

I’ve removed the full download package to avoid further people downloading it.

An updated version should be available later today or tomorrow.

With the relase of ZenMagick 0.9.10 I hope there is no real need to explain what I did the last week, so I’ll skip this weeks update post.

However, there is a tiny bit of work left on the release and that is to open up the new admin demo. Yes, that’s right! The new ZenMagick admin UI does have support for a demo mode, just like zen-cart, although I am not sure how safe the ZenCart part it.

So, hopefully by the end of the week (or, more likely, after the weekend) there should be a link to the admin demo site. It’s something that has been requested (and searched for) a few times, so hopefully it will help people understand what ZenMagick and the ZenMagick admin app are.

I am very happy (and also rather tired) to finally having released ZenMagick 0.9.10.

The main focus for this release has been to get the new admin UI up and running. RubikIntegration have been generous with help on the design and part of the implementation and I’d like to say ‘Thank you’ for that.

Of course that is not all, but instead of repeating things over and over again, just a couple useful links:

Official Release Notes

Details about upgrading

Other than that there isn’t a lot to add, except for a link to the ZenMagick 0.9.11 roadmap. It’s already filled with all sorts of things. It will be interesting to see what we can mange to get done. If there is anything missing let me know.

mano

I just realized that it is time for my weekly update, so here it is.

Not much happening in the last 7 days. Lots of cleanup, helping out with a couple sites, fixing a few things, re-shuffling of roadmaps and some last minute changes. Things are down to three items on my todo list; I am afraid the remaining items on the 0.9.10 roadmap will most likely move forward to 0.9.11. [Incidentally, that is where most of the left-over items of the dev/admin todo list ended up ]

So, there are three things left, plus some minor tweaking of the full release install pages:

• Emails
  For some reason emails are defaulting to the zen-cart email templates – I swear it worked a couple days ago!
• The remainder of the languageId cleanup, although that might actually also move to 0.9.11 as it will require some bigger changes [something that just ocurred to me writing this!]
• sync the database mapping file between admin and store

I’ve added some steps to the build process that allow to enable/disable locale for a release build, so, seeing that the German translation is not yet ready the admin UI will most likely ship with en_NZ only.