Concrete The Studio

by Franz

SchoolPulse.com launched on time. We’re cleaning up a lot of details around it, but we’ve also got a lot of c5 work to do. We need your help:

1) We’re building a marketplace/community so if you’re building blocks, making themes, or building sites with c5, tell us about yourself or your shop. There’s a lot of exciting details around how this site will work, but we don’t want to spill the beans. Suffice to say, you’ll be able to sell stuff you’ve already made that works with c5, and you’ll be able to find new work for hire as well. We’d like to launch this store with some real content, so contact us through the c5 site.

2) We’re looking for solid hourly PHP contractors from around the world. We work online using a combination of IRC, IM, and a task management system - if you write great code we don’t really care where you do it from. If that sounds like your cup of tea, we’ll want to see a resume and an example of something you’ve written to work with c5. You can reach us in #concrete5 on efNet, or through the forms on concrete5.org

3) Hosting providers? We’re rolling out another server to deal with the requests we’re getting through concrete5.org, but in the picture - we’d love to have a partnership with an existing company for hosting. If you’re part of a well established hosting company that’s interesting in partnering, we’d love to hear from you too!

So exciting times folks! Just a couple of dashboard improvements left to do before we upload another build and drop the “beta” from the version number.

by Franz

We’ve gone a little dark new builds of c5 since osCon because we’ve been fully dedicated to this rebuild of SchoolPulse.com. We’re making it all out of c5 and it’s gonna be sexy, easy to use, and provide a lot of great blocks back to the project. It’s consumed every waking hour from everyone I know for the last two weeks and weekends. It’s launching next week.

In the meantime, here’s an email thread I had recently with a new c5 fan where I lay down some of the ideas and plans we’ve been putting together as we watch our baby take off here:

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by Franz

Well no one on our end posted to you, because you’re quite clear that Beta projects shouldn’t be posted in your rules… and yes.. we read rules.. sometimes.

However, someone from your end must of been at osCon because we appeared on your site a few days ago. Here’s a snapshot of our google analytics for the last month:

Gotta say, we were gonna wait till we had a release we were calling final before posting to you, OpenSourceCMS.com. The fact that we just magically showed up is great! We’ll just take that as a pat on the back that what we consider Beta is pretty damn stable, and we’d like to say thanks.

(ps: hey reader, wanna help? vote for us on their site. when they first added us they linked to our demo in such a way that it wouldn’t work so we got some low votes that are messing up our average.)

by Franz

Just a quickie video I put together over the weekend of our experience at OsCon this year. Thanks o’Reilly!

by kate

So we’re all home relaxing after two grueling days at OSCON. Maybe “grueling” is the wrong word; we had a great time and met a lot of really interesting people, and we got to talk our jaws off about Concrete5. (The phrase “PHP-based content management system” becomes kind of a tongue-twister after a while.) I didn’t get much of a chance to check out the other exhibitors’ booths, because we had a constant stream of people checking out our stuff and I felt compelled to verbally inundate them all with how great Concrete5 is. I did, however, get a chance to utterly destroy Franz at a two-foot-high game of chess, met and Facebook-friended Facebook, and gave a whole lot of people screwdrivers. If any of you OSCON attendees find your way over here, thanks for giving Concrete5 such a warm reception. We’re worn out, but we had a blast.

by kate

We’re at osCon this week! Come check us out!

by Franz

looks like some of the emerging c5 community is starting to talk about what we’re doing on their own blogs.. here’s a couple of the posts we’ve found, by all means comment if we missed ya:

http://www.codeblog.ch/2008/07/cms-concrete5/

http://jaipandya.com/2008/07/concrete5-a-nextgen-open-source-cms/

thanks!

by Franz

I’m reading Ray Kurzweil who says the the Singularity is Near. While nay-sayers claim his science is questionable, I say he sounds pretty bright to me. The basic gist is because of exponential growth in technology (ie Moore’s law) we’re on the cusp of revolutionary changes in what it means to be human. We will transcend our bodies through technologies ranging from advanced medical DNA engineering to nano technology and the internet itself. We will become immortal within 20 years. (…says Ray)
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by Andrew Embler

No, not for us. We already have a new logo. No, the logo I’m talking about is for Wal-Mart:

It’s interesting they ditched the hyphen - makes sense though, since I could never remember if Walmart was spelled with one or not. The iconic Walmart star is present, but they’ve moved it from the middle. Upon seeing this logo with the star at the end, the first thing I thought of was an asterisk, meant to denote some bit of trivia or impart a cautionary reminder about the company in question.

Walmart*

(* - May prove hazardous to liberals, leftists, protectionists and yuppies.)

(* - Prolonged exposure may lead to nerve damage.)

(* - Watch for falling prices…or reap the whirlwind.)

(* - Surgeon General Recommends a Lifestyle Free of Excessive Bargains.)

And so on… Any you want to add?

by Andrew Embler

…For editing, at least. Sites built with Concrete5 will work in any browser, if they’re coded for it. But the editing interface and the dashboard, both of which feature some pretty complex interface work, are only supported in:

• Safari 2+
• Internet Explorer 7+
• Firefox 2

Other browsers, like Camino and Opera, will likely support Concrete5 just fine. But IE 6 will not. Not even close. As I was mulling over this blog post I caught another one on the same topic. It seems that Apple is doing exactly the same thing with their forthcoming suite of web applications, MobileMe. 

Not bad company to be in, and necessary. The sheer amount of time that goes into debugging things for one specific, eight-year-old browser is mind-boggling. However, dropping IE 6 support is not without its pitfalls: the sheer amount of time saved might overwhelm the typical developer, as she finds herself with much less to do and much less stress about the web in general. The key is to fill this time with something productive. Try tending a garden; read a lengthy Russian novel; teach yourself Spanish; take a cooking class.

(Oh, and install that IE 8 beta in some of your free time - it’ll be released before you know it. And Firefox 3 just came out, so you’d better download that. And Opera 9.5. And Safari 4 is on the horizon.)

Maybe you’d better read a shorter novel after all.

by Franz

one week later, we’re ranked 800 out of 179,523 projects on sourceforge, with over 150 downloads. We’ve got handful of people helping in various countries, we’re hard at work on our hosting and marketing materials… Our booth for osCon2008 is purchased, we’re hoping to leave that event with 30 active developers contributing their time… we’ve basically got 6 weeks to get ready… very exciting…

by Franz

Just had our 100th download of concrete5 on sourceforge. We’ve been talking to several developers who are helping us further refine the install process. Some guy from Brazil is even pitching in!

open source is neat.

by kate

Okay, who the hell turns their speaker volume up so loud that you can hear “YOU’VE GOT MAIL!” from their AOL account through their floor (our ceiling)? Our upstairs neighbors have received four pieces of mail today. We need to figure out a way to strike back. I’m thinking ceiling-mounted speakers and Ahnold.

by Franz

NetDisaster …you are so clever, so nice.

by Andrew Embler

From the beginning, Concrete has been designed as a system that makes the creation of pages easy, with a flexible “block” system available for placing items of content within these pages. As Concrete has matured, new data types have been created for different types of tasks. In Concrete5, for example, we have all sorts of these: single pages, page types, themes, blocks, elements, user attributes, page attributes, email templates, and more.

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