Hello!
We're excited to introduce the first of our annual 'State of the Project' updates. Whilst of course we'll continue to update you regularly throughout the year on the day-to-day plans and considerations of CMS Made Simple, the annual State of the Project will inform you of the underlying commitments that drive all our decisions for the next twelve months.
After that, you'll also be able to read a statement we wanted to put out addressing the concern that some in the community have had regarding certain modules and their updates. We are delighted with the way the Dev Team and community has come together to solve this moving forward.
First Annual "State of the Project" Update
I think the term "tumultuous" can be used to describe the past year both in the world, and in regard to the CMS Made Simple project. I wanted to take this time to address some concerns about the project, as well as highlight what awaits us.
Firstly, we are very much active and excited about the future of CMSMS. We have successfully restructured the Dev Team to a more democratic model, which has resulted in much more participation from more members and a professional, enjoyable team environment. With this newfound functionality, we've established a few priorities:
1) Develop the core as per the roadmap at https://www.cmsmadesimple.org/roadmap. This link also includes an important announcement about the cancellation of the 2.3 beta.
2) Grow the Dev Team. We need a few more people, especially coders. We've made the team fun to be a part of, and have added benefits such as client matching, hardware allowances and/or discounts, free or discounted commercial software, and much more. If you are interested, please reach out to me personally - the best place is in our Slack chat or matt@cmsmadesimple.org.
3) Address third-party modules. Please see the statement below regarding Calguy's suite of modules.
4) Improve the Forge. This legacy software is undergoing a full rebuild and is high on our priority list.
All of us on the Dev Team use CMSMS for our own projects, and most of us use it to make a living. We use the modules you use and fight the battles you fight. It is in our own interest to keep the project strong and growing. The CMS Made Simple Foundation has the sole mandate of maintaining access to the project in perpetuity.
Thanks for your time, and feel free to drop in to Slack for a chat! [link]
Matt Hornsby
Project Manager
CMS Made Simple
Modules Statement
As many of you will remember, we had some necessary changes in the Dev Team last year. One of these was that, due to his other commitments, our lead developer at the time Robert Campbell stepped back after years of service. As well as his contributions to the core, Robert created, inherited and maintained a suite of modules. Those modules have been a staple of many developers’ website builds.
It has become clear that Robert is unable to maintain his back catalogue. Plus, CMSMS has continued to develop, meaning there are more modern, leaner ways to achieve site solutions. With the roadmap for our next major version laid out, we have decided it’s a good time to address the future of modules that were considered, for a time, to be ‘must have’ additions to the core.
There’s already been a huge commitment to fork those modules that need to continue evolving. As you will see from the list below, a number of new forks are at release stage. There are, additionally, modules we believe it would be useful to fork. We also present those below with a call out to the community for volunteers to join us in spreading the load.
There are also those modules that have outlived their usefulness, and that the more experienced site developers in the community have found better solutions within the CMSMS ecosystem. For those of you who are interested in best-practice ways to spring clean your sites and implement new solutions, we have a number of Frequently Asked Questions that will give you the information you need.
We’re looking forward to working with and for our community, continuing the tradition of robust 3rd party modules that keep CMSMS the fantastic web solution it has always been.
You can see the progress that is being made with the modules we deemed of most interest at the new web page: www.cmsmadesimple.org/module-forking-project as well as being able to jump straight through to each module’s project page in the Forge. And of course, those available to use straight away are installable straight from the module manager within your CMSMS install.
You can also find details of how to contact us regarding modules, whether that is to let us know you are forking a module or point us at any stale project that you feel would really benefit the system to be forked and made current once more.
As always, you’ll find many of the Dev Team on the Slack channel, where we are always delighted to have a conversation with you about any aspect of CMSMS
Until next time!
Your CMS Made Simple Development Team
https://www.cmsmadesimple.org/about/team/
