CMS Progress Update

I know I had a few more things that were in the “almost-ready” to post stage, but I figured that they can wait a little bit as this update should hold a few people over for a while (or so I hope), and I assume most of you only come to my blog to read these types of posts anyways.

The Pre-Planning Stages

After taking a short break from coding in general to just get stuff together and plan out other things, I eventually got everything to a point where it is manageable. Time and time again I kept getting discouraged while coding; I would think of something new, and realize that the class I am modifying was in no way extendable (at least properly), and that meant that a plugin/modification author would have just as tough of a time (if not worse) trying to easily author/maintain something. Or I would just get generally frustrated and scrap what little bit I did have. But, I eventually got the idea to use my dormant Google Docs to help me plan things out a little easier (and it was).

The Planning Stages

Not too long after getting the idea of using Google Docs, I eventually logged into my account to see if maybe I had already “drawn” some plans and forgot about them. Well, I had no documents – at all. So, I uploaded all the old planning files I had on my laptop, renamed them, and looked over them. After some thought, I decided that even then that my plans were poorly laid out for a “fresh start” for a project. Thinking that it was a good idea, I simply created a new document and typed out the main points of focus. Once I had that done, I then went and branched-out on those points and began listing the features for each “point”.

The Development Stage(s)

When I finally felt that the feature list was complete, I decided to move on to actually starting to code things. But upon debating to start, I realized that I also needed to map out a list of tables for the database, field names, etc. So once again, I returned to good ‘ole Google Docs and began to simply type out the tables I thought I would need; and then type in each field that I thought would be valuable, the type/length, null/not null, etc. Once I had that done, I again realized I needed to do more planning – but this time, it had to be the classes and functions (as well as the parameters for each function). I’m not sure how necessary that was, but so far it has definitely helped me not reach any hiccups along the road (besides PHP errors).

With all of that being said, I am definitely excited to post more updates about my progress as so far things seem to definitely be going in my favor. Also, I’m sorry if the update is boring with me explaining the process and all, but I definitely think it could help out other developers, even a little bit. But that’s all for now, look forward to more updates/other posts being posted in the coming weeks :)