With AdaptCMS 3.0.1 out for a little over a month now, we felt it was time to reveal the big undertaking that is going on for the next version. Initially thought of as a small version with bug fixes and minor features, due to someone joining a team (we will release the details on that shortly before or after launch of 3.0.2) and getting a lot of feedback, 3.0.2 is going to be much more like a major version. A new Template system, Named Routes and a lot more to make AdaptCMS more user-friendly will be in the next version – read on for the full details.

New Template Engine

Inspired from twig and blade, the AdaptCMS Template Engine is a very simple engine that allows those not familiar with PHP use a language similar to PHP – but easier to read/understand. This new engine is implemented on all frontend/plugin/element templates as well as themes in 3.0.2. With the release of 3.0.2 will also come full documentation on the template system inside the CMS, as well as at the documentation website.

We initially looked at twig and a few other – the main issues were performance and integration with cakePHP. The house-built template engine is not as complex, we have a lot of plans on expanding functionality. Global variables are one of the early big features for the template engine – being able to manage in the admin a tag to enter (such as – {{ sitename }}) and it displays – AdaptCMS.com

Named Routes

Another brand new addition, named routes has been introducted to make linking to dynamic content easier than the normal framework way. Traditionally, you would have to pass what is called a “controller”, “action” and then a few other parameters, depending on what you are linking to. With named routes, you simply call the url helper like so:

{{ url('category_view', array('news')) }}

{{ url('media_index') }}

{{ url('article_view', $article) }}

The first one would output a full URL to the category listing page for the News category, the main media page and a more complicated looking one. The third example would be used in a loop of article data – so for example, on a category list, you would be linking to articles and could simple pass the article array and the helper will provide a full http URL to use.

Permission Overrides/New Search

Not as exciting, but to ensure total control of your website – we are adding permission overrides and template overrides. For permissions, this means being able to set specific role permissions for categories and articles. So you can have a staff role that can only add/edit reviews and another one that manages news. For articles, you can adjust if specific roles can or can’t access them on the frontend.

Yet another new feature is a rewritten search. The new search uses angular and is much faster, much better looking and smoother overall.

Conclusion

There is more to come and possibly a new plugin or two along the way. We also have plans to add some features to existing plugins such as AdaptBB and Polls. Stay tuned for another blog in the coming month.

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