I'm working on a portal system, much like PostNuke, and Xaraya, but I plan to make it a lot better.
I have been working on this for a few weeks, and another developer has contributed a a bit towards this project.
Basically, I am looking for other coders who have a bit of time to spare, and a good PHP knowledge. The CMS I am coding is not something I plan to write, I have already coding bits of it. However, this is a big project, and I don't have time to do everything myself on my own, or with just one other programmer.
The system I am coded in very much like PostNuke in what I plan for a end result. It will focus on something that is sectorised into code&logic, content, layout and templates. I realise there are lots of projects out there, like PostNuke, Xaaraya, XOOPS, Tiki. However I'm unhappy with current systems. Many are badly coded, except Xaraya and XOOPS. All of them are pretty slow and are too demanding on the RDBMS systems they use as a backend.
Also, Postnuke is very limited to the publication type that are built into it, and because it's badly coded, it's hard to extend the system using existing code.
I have something that is partly coded that will be faster and more flexible. I have used OO a lot, which not only makes code more reusable, but does seem to help keep code clean. The finished project will have a lot to offer. I plan to make something where admins can create different publication types (unlike PostNuke where you are limited to the things like News, Sections, etc and other hardcoded modules). Xaraya does get round this to some extent, however, their solution is not graceful.
On top of this, I plan to code an integrated forum, and shopping cart system, along with some extra modules like a calendar. My plan is to make something that is flexible enough to do almost anything without having to write addtional modules/code. If new code is needed, that plan is that developers will be able to reuse existing classes and code to keep developement cycles down. This is something that Xaraya has partly addressed with a Hooks system. However their solutuon is limited.
If you have fairly strong PHP and MySQL skills and would like to take part in a project, developing a state of the art portal system, please email me at Jason@hybd.net.
This CMS is something I have started coding. I am not making this as a light hearted attempt to waste spare time. This is a something I am taking seriously and I am determinined to make something that will be as popular as PostNuke and PHPNuke come mid 2004.
Unlike PostNuke this system will be TOTALLY customisable, it will be template driven to allow every site to have it's own individual look. I'm fed up with the number of badly put together PostNuke sites that look so generic. Even the most inventive PostNuke themes do not hide it's very generic look and layout.
As I say I have already coded about 50% of the 'core' of this CMS. I believe in taking time to plan out code and code things properly, this is not something that will be put together by a bunch of 'hackers' like PostNuke. I haven spent severaly days along working on one class to make a somethng that holds trees in databases using a a hybrid system based on the preordered tree tree transversal algorithm and a the adjacency list system, to provide a both speed and relieiblity. This is something I've never seen in other open source PHP projects. Things like Xaraya have often opted for the short cut of using the adjacentcy list system.
Anyway, I can't write too much here really. If your interested, email me, and maybe point me to some of the stuff you've done in PHP and I'll reply back with a copy of the work I've done so far and take things from there. I don't wanna let people use the code openly at the moment, not until I've got it to a beta stage.
Jason
