V3 Planning

[mloberg]

This issue for v3 discussion and planning.

[stevemcquaid]

My comments will mainly be around focusing on user-onboarding as project is a Launch-Page and should be easy to get users up and running.

Ideas:

• Example/live site (if not just screenshots in repo) to show the working site
• Dockerized for quick boilerplate code
• Ansible scripts to provision base Centos, Ubuntu, etc. VMs.
• Ansible scripts to send updated code to these hosts.
• Templates/modules for supporting multiple and/or new designs (allow community to add more templates, users can select from many example designs via integeror string in config file) (separate content from layout)

[mloberg]

@stevemcquaid Definitely agree with point one. The last point is very interesting and I will look at how to do this. I was thinking about using Twig, so I think it will be fairly easy to do. The other points I'm not sure if I see value in especially for how small this project it is. Are there other projects out there that do this stuff that you can provide examples of? Maybe I'm not seeing all the benefits that they could provide.

As far as more technical details for v3:

• Use a framework. Probably going to go with Silex or Lumen as a full framework would be too bulky for this
• Use Twig for templates
• Require PHP 5.4 or greater
• Use composer. I'm not sure how I went this long without using it on this project
• Tests and CI integration

One question is about email storage. Right now they are just being sent to MailChimp. Do we want to continue just using MailChimp, switch to another system, or store emails in a database?

[stevemcquaid]

In terms of the middle points, I was just thinking in terms of allowing someone to be able to go live with a site as easily as possible. (Get a VPS/VM for $5/mo and get a site live within 20 minutes from git clone) (As I know it's why I chose to use this project for my personal business.) But I agree we have higher priority features to finish before getting to that point.

Tech details look great. I'm not a huge front-end guy, so my only point with regards to the frameworks is to try and keep as few dependencies as possible.

I'm good with mailchimp. I think that requiring a database might be a lot of configuration for the use case of wanting to get a site live within 20 minutes. Plus mailchimp is easy to use, scales well, and can be managed outside of the project. I'd be in favor of scripting out the registration and setup of mailchimp, but am not sure how feasible that would actually be. (Perhaps down the line we allow the mailchimp module to be switch to a database at the user's choice.)

[mloberg]

@stevemcquaid Ok. Makes sense. One of the goals of the project was ease of setup, so I'm glad to hear that was achieved. I will definitely keep that in mind while developing and think about ways to easily get up and running.

For the email storage, I think I'm going to make that pluggable, but just start with MailChimp.

[stevemcquaid]

@mloberg sounds good! Would it make sense to let you setup the overall structure, then break everything out into separate features/issues for parallel dev-ing?

[mloberg]

@stevemcquaid Yes. Once I decide the framework, I'll get a develop branch setup and then create issues for each one of the technical features.

[stevemcquaid]

@mloberg how are things?

[mloberg]

@stevemcquaid I got a develop branch set up, but then realized the framework I had chosen (Lumen) is only 5.5 or greater. I want to support 5.4 as well since it's the old stable release yet. So I'm working on getting another framework in place

[mloberg]

@stevemcquaid I guess 5.4 has reached EOL (http://php.net/supported-versions.php), so I may go back to Lumen. I should have some time this weekend to work on it

[stevemcquaid]

Awesome! Sorry I've been so busy with holidays and all :) lmk how I can help

[mloberg]

@stevemcquaid haha. I've been really busy too. I've just been digging into this again. I've decided to go with a full Laravel install. I think the biggest part of this will be the theming system. I'm throwing around some ideas in my head and I'm hoping to get a concept done by next week.

One thing that would be useful is getting input on how other people would want to develop themes. So if you've got any input on it, that would be really helpful.

[stevemcquaid]

Awesome! Like I mentioned earlier I'm not a big front end guy so my suggestion from the birds eye view would be to either a major framework.

Or something dead simple and easily pluggable. Like new themes go in their own folder within the themes directory.