Once again it is that time of year where most of us will make the resolve to change something for the New Year. Usually this ends up with failed attempts and frustrations with only some being lucky enough to follow through.

Well - it is coming up to one whole year since I gave up smoking :) I guess this time round I was one of the lucky ones - although I didn't give up on New Years Eve - it was more like mid January. Maybe this is why I was successfull? Who knows? (If I did I would have spent the past year marketing my 'how to give up smoking' book).

But now it's time for me to make some more promises to myself - this year my biggest goal is to get a little fitter (I managed to put a few pounds on in the process of giving up smoking), a hard task for most - hopefully I can apply the same determination to this as I did to giving up smoking last year (In a way I almost feel that now I've managed to give up smoking I can achieve anything).

A much harder task to acheive will be getting DMCMS V0.8 into a state where it is ready to release - this is however one of my New Years Resolutions.

Looking back over the past year a lot of progress was made on the development of DMCMS in the first 6 months - the whole project was made public on Sourceforge (there have been nearly 600 downloads to date from the Sourceforge site), it has been targetted by various hackers exploiting vulnerabilities in the code (which I see almost as an honour - lol), it has been promoted on various websites and it has continued to provide the basis for most of the websites that I create / manage. Unfortunately the latter part of the year provided no further releases due to other commitments.

My commitment for 2008 is to get the Version 0.8 release finished so that it can be made public - The biggest part of the V0.8 release is the user management features. The decision to integrate user management into DMCMS was taken earlier in the year and it has proven to be quite a bit more work than originally anticipated. The current test releases have a functioning user management system that provides user registration and user commenting for registered users. The plan for the final V0.8 release is to also include a permissions system so that access can be restricted to created pages.

Currently the permissions system allows users to be split into three different categories -

  • Users (this category is for registered users)
  • Administrators (these users have access to all site features)
  • Moderators (these users can modify / delete / add content).


These user categories are mostly to deal with the commenting system - moderators can be made to carry out moderation functions but thier access to other admin functions is completely restricted, Administrators obviously have access to do anything and Users have to be logged in to be able to post (therefore they have to be registered).

No Guest posting is allowed as this will most probably just event in a lot of unwanted spam. User registration involves confirmation by email for account activation. I have also added captcha integration using the reCaptcha API for added anti-spam security - this may or may not be bindled with the release - I'm not sure at the moment - I personally think it's great but I also have to consider the added complexity it presents to the user setting up a DMCMS installation.

The [currently] limited user account types will have to be expanded to provide access control to created pages, it is most likely that this will be expanded to customizable user groups. This route is almost a definate as it fits in well with another project that I am currently undertaking where I need to provide a seperate area for each logged in (subscribed) user - the ability to be able to create unique groups will allow me to be able to assign a group to each user. I can then create a page specifically for each user where access is only granted for the group associated with the user. Fully customisable user groups also allows the end user to choose a name for the groups that best suit thier site.

This method of access restriction works well, as a user can be made a member of many groups, meaning that access can be infinately complex. I may also add a timed function so that users can be made a member of a particular group from / until a specific time, this is something that I will need to do for the other project I am working on as paid subscriptions will be required, it seems logical to also include the features develped for my other projects in DMCMS too.

My other New Years Resolutions relate to other projects that I need to finish - I currently have a web based project that is in the initial stages of development, a desktop application that is 25% of the way through, a WM5 application that needs rescuing (it was finished but then a hard drive failure has meant that I lost some files) and an idea for another web based project. All of these projects (with the exception of the last one) need to be finished within the next few months, fortunately the web based project largely depends on DMCMS V0.8 so it is likely that this will cause the next DMCMS release to be pushed along nicely.

Maybe then I will work on my new web idea - but more of that later....

In the mean time - A Happy New Year to everyone, and a big Big BIG thanks to everyone who has supported DMCMS over the past year.