The second blog of AdaptCMS 2.0 and just 4 months after the first one! Progress was zero for several months and just in the past month has some work been done.
2.0 still has a long ways to go, but some resemblance of an admin panel should be somewhat finished by the end of the month. A skin for the front and backend will be purchased soon afterwards and from there the rest of the admin panel, frontend, more advanced features and the new IV/AdaptCMS.com!
With that said there are more features I want to talk about since last time. Onto the blog!
ACP in the Frontend?
That’s the idea. While a majority of ACP features will be done in the ACP, more simple actions will be in the frontend or linked to. The idea is an ACP bar on the top of the page in the frontend area. Depending on where you are, say an article page – you might see things such as important details (# of views and specifics like top searches), latest comments preview, any flagged comments and any related data such as polls.
The homepage will be the most important as it may show things such as flagged comments, users requiring activation/last sign-ups, top articles/media/etc. of the day and a lot of other possibilities. Sometimes you may just want to pop in on your site and see the latest content staff has added and see just some basic stats and important info – that’s the point of this feature.
Themes
It may be the biggest feature that we push – Themes. It’s a simple idea, but very flexible for the future. The basic idea is this – you go to the IV DL area in your ACP and look at a list of themes, under the “Officially Released” you see “Gaming Website”. After downloading it right through the ACP and also installing it from there as well, you will see some additions – sections are setup automatically (say Cheats, Games, Reviews, News) and fields for each of those (System, Publisher, etc.) as well as a skin with some gaming templates. All that is setup within seconds right from the ACP.
Some might call it lazy (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but it helps users not only see some of the potential with the CMS but also get easily setup without having to manually add sections, fields and templates – likely only requiring some fine tuning on the skin.
Conclusion
I’m not one to talk too much about features that aren’t even done at all, that’s why some of the major ones haven’t been mentioned – you will see these features and they are not being over-hyped.
Expect to see another blog soon going after some feature ideas you will see in AdaptCMS 2.0 and possibly a few already in!
