Works is progressing well on the next version of our blogging software. A lot has already been completed and I wanted to take a moment to share some of the improvements.
Efficiency and Extensibility
I've put a lot of effort into refactoring a few core classes to make them more useful and extensible. The ultimate aim is to remove function duplication and consolidate common actions into single functions or classes.
I've also introduced more caching to lower the query count and remove some of the more intensive queries. This has seen a reduction of nearly 60% of SQL work on a few page views alone.
Categories Return
During the development for IP.Blog we converted the categories system into tags. We felt that being able to apply several tags to a single blog entry was more useful than putting it into a category. This worked well but I felt there was still a need for 'fixed' categories. I've added categories back in and you can select multiple categories to file an entry in as well as as create new ones on the fly.
The following screen capture shows the new interface when making an entry:
This screen capture shows the blog list with the new "Categories" widget showing available categories with the number of posted entries in each.
UserCP Improvements
I've put a lot of work into making the UserCP more functional for the blog. Currently, you can create a new blog and edit its settings.
The new version allows you to do that as well as quickly mass-moderate comments and entries.
This screen capture shows the new UserCP Blog dashboard:
This screen capture shows the new UserCP Manage Comments screen:
These are just a few of the features already completed. We'll follow up with some more next week.