Thacmus - CMS / News: Recent posts

I have decided to discontinue Thacmus and move on to a larger-scale and more stable CMS so that I can shift my development focus to game development - once again.
Read more on the main news page: http://deadimp.org/thacsite/ [Will be moved later]

Finally got all of the changes uploaded.

You can see the more detailed spiel on the main site.

I'm approaching the end of my anti-social programming practices. I've been trying to familiarize myself with SVN, learning repository basics and all that, to make Thacmus more 'susceptible' to open collaboration.
Plus, it could make updates a little easier. Maybe.

Learning all of this with Thacmus should help me in with my future projects, soon to be published... If procrastination lets go,

Posting this here to make sure it is known that the project is not dead.
The site is currently down because x10 (the host) is going through some maintainence. Hopefully it will be back up soon.
Also, within the next few weeks development should start to pick back up a little.
I have implemented a few changes to the structure of Thacmus, and I also plan on reworking through the website. Some of the information on there is old, and I think there are better ways I can write a few things - especially the About page.

As I've stated in my posts on the Thacsite, Thacmus is now in beta development. I've added a few more features, refactored the code [alot], and bugfixed a couple of things, including the Media module.
A new release is due soon (it's been overdue for a month now), and I'm going to remove the development status indication from the versioning, so the next one is going to be just 0.2.1.

The main missing features from Thacmus right now is searching, and a robust user system. The user system right now is extremely flaky, though good for single-user sites.
I plan on making Thacmus small, but scalable.

I'm still unsure of how I ought to license Thacmus. For now, I'll keep it on the GPL.
Later, if I decide that I want it included in proprietary projects, I will dual-license it, but I'll most likely do it for profit. If somebody else wants to make money off of it, I do too.
However, the probablity of a 'high demand' for commerically-based Thacmus stuff isn't that high.

Released next sub-major version, v0.2. However, there are many errors that I have to fix, especially getting the Media admin page working again and implementing search fields.
Also, I've now switched to x10hosting.com for hosting.

I'm just adding this news item to make sure that people new to this project page don't see "First Version" at the top of the list, thinking "Hey, it's only so far."
Since 0.1.1a, I've released 0.1.2a. The next version (soon) I will 'graduate' to 0.2a, which will include search and sorting functionality for Editor (and others).

I'm actually unsure whether Thamcus is actually a CMS, or some sort of site framework. If it isn't a CMS, I will keep the name Thacmus despite it.

I've just uploaded the first version of Thacmus, v0.1.1a. The versioning system is just something off the start, and I may change it if I feel that it's not all that appropriate.
This version is the first release, so yes, there are bugs. I plan on fixing them soon, and having another release ready.
Also, I've linked to the Thacmus website, but as of right now, there's not a whole lot of content - something that seems to plague me and this project.
Hopefully, later I will be able to start adding more descriptive details, including tutorials and installation notes to get started.
Just mentioning that, I forgot to include installation notes... Yeah. It's a self-explanatory process - just go to /conf.php and edit your information. Most likely, for the time being, you won't need any external options ($base_dir) turned on, so I wouldn't suggest messing with that just yet, unless you feel the urge. Be sure you create the database as you designated in /conf.php, and execute /db.txt in whatever MySQL interface you have, phpMyAdmin, SQLyog, etc.
After that... There's not much. Just explore. I would suggest that you set this up on a test server, a local one using XAMPP or what not.... read more

Well, I've finally developed the system to a point to where I feel it can 'survive' out there (though, probably not for long). I'm using the free webhost http://www.freeweb7.com/, which so far has been pretty good.
I've set up the site for Thacmus, http://deadimp.freeweb7.com/, and then a demo, http://deadimp.freeweb7.com/thacmus.
That being said, I haven't yet packaged up Thacmus just yet. I'm still revising a couple of peices (a few bugs here and there), but maybe later today I'll release it.
For the demo, I'm sorry that I can't let you preview the admin just yet... I haven't figured out a simple way to manage it so that users looking at it can't change the site (mainly abusers).
As of now, I have three sites running off of Thacmus: the main site and the demo site (both of which are running on the same base files), and my band website on an external host (in which it was started).

Well, it seems as though SFnet doesn't support PHP 5, so I won't be able to run a demo on my SourceForge site...
Maybe in a month or so, I'll be able to find a good host and post the site there. Otherwise, most everything'll be here.
Next on the agenda is figuring out a quick and easy system for new releases and all that, including a versioning system... Need to figure out CVS/SVN.

Here's a more detailed, yet still somewhat brief and general, description of the project. This is what I had submitted in the project approval application.

"Thacmus", derived from "ThaCCMS", psuedo-acronym of "That Compact Content Management System".
Uses PHP 5 and MySQL.
Library to be used for developing a web site or simply a more complex CMS.
Meant to be incredibly compact code-wise, not too verbose, simple to change or modify (namely adding on), with minimum repetition of code and simple-styled OOP (none of that Java/.NET library naming style).
The system in place has the basics: a page that controls the flow of the website, and a simple organization of pages and miscellaneous includes (css, js, etc).
The aim in this project is to achieve optimum functionality and maintain a type of 'beauty' in the coding, not meaning that someone will want to stare at it for hours, but in that it won't take an ungodly amount of time to understand the basic flow without documentation [not meaning that there won't be any, though].
MySQL is used, but is generally confined to the one-file, compact, database interface (DBI). The database interface in this project does not emphasize creating yet another wrapper for just access to MySQL, but rather one in which the user can, per category (for blogs, users, etc), simply define the variables that should be communicated accross the database and the script, which table they belong in, and then leave it to the DBI to handle everything else (formatting, communicating, etc).
This database style is used also to integrate tightly with the editor in the administrative panel, so that nothing much else is needed to be defined, nothing much else is needed to be repeated across files. In fact, all functionality can be defined in the DBI class.
The include structure of the system is designed to be secure, in a 'trickle-down fashion'. The top-level PHP scripts, those meant for actually putting the site together, or the admin panel, have the basic includes grouped together, those for security and those for data communication. The lower files do not include anything else but only their specialized files (such as their corresponding DBI). This is especially important in that a 'hacker' cannot browse the system file-by-file and find some functionality exposed and unprotected.
To end this summary, the project is meant for compact and understandable code, not for immense bulk or over-bloated functionality [not that the latter is always bad].

I don't plan on letting this become another one of those abandonded projects.
The reason why nothing's here yet is because I developed this CMS as part of my band's website. Right now, I'm preparing the site for the next webmaster, and that's partially why I'm taking out my content management and putting it out in the open, so they have some sort of external reference. Plus, I've been wanting to use it for my own site.
Right now, I'm getting the kinks out of the some of the new features, simplifying them, and compacting them. (That doesn't mean putting them on one line!)
Soon, maybe in a month or so, after AP tests and the SAT and some other stuff gets finished, I'll be able to do some more on this. Until then, it's still in development.
It does exists, though, just haven't published it yet. [So for all intent and purposes, it doesn't.]