In a recent forum post about DMCMS, i promised that at some point the current version would be spruced up a little and released as version 1. This is something that I actually started on late last year, but the work was lost when our house was burgled and my laptop (and also the backup drive) was stolen. This happened last September, and it's taken this long to renew the enthusiasm in DMCMS. This is probably spurned in the most part, by the new direction that the site has recently taken, with more time being spent putting web based code mods together, I've began to start thinking about getting DMCMS finished off again.

With more visitors coming for code tutorials and to buy modifications from the store, DMCMS is a bit of a show-case - not in the respect that it is anything worth looking at (it's 6 years old now, and very basic by today's standards) but in the respect that it may be used as some kind of yard stick for my work. So it needs to be tidied to the point where it is at least presentable.

My ideal goal would be to take it and completely re-write it using the jquery framework, smarty template's and maybe a few other Web 2 goodies. Probably the most important aspect would be making it a multi-user version, to allow commenting and third party participation, and using object based code to allow for extensibility.

So with this in mind - I've taken the first steps to getting the current version up to a version 1 release standard. The main changes that I previously carried out were mostly a simple code restructure. The administration interface was completely split away from the main code so that it functioned as a stand alone interface - and some of the other functions that were crammed into the main code were also parred away.

Not only this. But I've also decided to publish the releases as they happen - as 'snapshots. The idea is that I can have a little discussion in the forums about what changes I've made and hopefully invite some interest in what's going on. The new 'beta builds' are available from the downloads link in the DMCMS menu, and will be updated as they happen. As with any development project - these builds may or may not work. They are simply a snapshot of the work that is happening at the moment. That said - I will endeavor to keep a stable version available in addition to the snapshots. The first stable version is simply the unreleased 077 version that I have had kicking around since last October, and the snapshot is halfway through the administration interface split.

For the time being the files will simply be zipped and available as a download. A Subversion repository is planned in the coming weeks, as another change i will make with the new versions is a break away from Sourceforge for my download and CVS handling.

Don't forget to check the forums for build discussions.

/DM