Current mood:	content
Current music:	Best of Billy Joel
Entry tags:	cmxpress

CMXpress Progress Report
Okay, so here's what we're up to. The official CMXpress homepage is always reliable for the latest statistics, but as of midnight, November 1, 2007, this is what we're up to. These are the completion levels of the code, more-or-less:

• Core page renderer (100%)
• Core admin system (100%)
• Database subsystem (100%)
• Security subsystem (100%)
• Template subsystem (100%)
• Plugin subsystem (100%)
• Standard plugins (85%)
• News archives (100%)
• Comic archives (70%)
• Custom page renderer (95%)
• Search system (20%)
• Admin: Comic mgt. (90%)
• Admin: News (100%)
• Admin: Artist cmts. (10%)
• Admin: Search (10%)
• Admin: Custom pages (10%)
• Admin: Site (75%)
• Admin: Users (80%)
• Installer (0%)

And this is how much code there is in this thing. (If you're thinking of writing your own Web 2.0 content-management engine, this ought to give you an idea of the kind of work that's involved.)

563 kb : 15,753 lines : PHP
 87 kb :  2,501 lines : Javascript (custom for CMXpress)
 80 kb :  3,652 lines : CSS
 21 kb :    592 lines : HTML templates
 32 kb :    645 lines : CMXpress documentation (very minimal at present)
 35 kb :                GIF, JPEG, PNG images (custom for CMXpress)

 89 kb :  3,504 lines : BB code string parser 0.3.1 (PHP library)
333 kb :  9,982 lines : Smarty 2.6.0 (PHP library)
 96 kb :  3,276 lines : Prototype 1.5.1.1 (Javascript library)
140 kb :  4,030 lines : script.aculo.us 1.7.1-b3 (Javascript library)
 64 kb :  1,850 lines : Window 1.3 (Javascript library)
 11 kb :    308 lines : Misc. Javascript libraries (sprintf, Tab control)
  8 kb :    395 lines : Window CSS
 23 kb :                Window GIF and PNG images

Yep, that's a lot of code, with more yet to come. I'd estimate the overall completion level of the project at around 75%, give or take a bit.

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Okay, numbers are nice, but new screenshots are more fun! :D

Here we have the newly-completed news-management module, in two different configurations. Most of the administrative stuff in CMXpress is designed so that you can look at your data from a variety of different angles, and "News" is no exception. In the first screenshot, we have each posting in short form, and in the second screenshot, we're correlating news postings to whichever comic was posted closest to the same date. Cool, huh?



Note that the "Delete" button you see there is safer than it looks: Both news postings and comics don't simply vanish when you delete them; they simply get moved to the trash can. At any time, you can empty the trash and destroy them for real, or pull them back out, just like managing files on your desktop. CMXpress is designed from the perspective that its average user isn't likely to be a computer guru, and to that end, is designed to be safe and comprehensible for anybody who's even a little web-saavy.

The third screenshot is from the arc-management module, which lets you organize your comics into larger sets. Yes, we're in the process of using drag-and-drop to rearrange the arcs in this screenshot. Drag-and-drop is cool and easy to use :D

The fourth screenshot shows the user-management module. CMXpress is a fully secure multiuser system, since many comics are managed by two or three people, and allows each user to be assigned different rights and access levels. You can even grant limited comic-management rights by story arc, which is useful if you're going to have a guest artist provide filler: The guest artist can be allowed to post their comics directly, but can still be prohibited from altering any of the comics you've posted.

What's next? Artist comments have to be finalized, and some of the menu-management stuff has to be added, and the initial template has to be finished off. Once that's done, we can roll this out on the Wotch site and see how well it works under a heavy load of visitors (I expect it'll perform well).

After the Wotch, assuming there are no major glitches, I need to build a simple installer, and then we'll be rolling it out on Crossworlds, and after Crossworlds, Cheer!. If everything goes well with those three sites, then I'll open up a limited beta-testing program (a couple dozen people or so) to try to crush any remaining bugs in it and get some initial site templates built so that it can come prepackaged with a few so that true newbies can get a new webcomic up-and-rolling in a matter of minutes, no coding necessary. Sometime around early 2008, CMXpress should be available to the public, and as I said before, it'll be 100% free to use and abuse as you see fit.