fahad19

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am releasing a new theme for Croogo. It is very simple and minimalist in design, so I named it Minimal. It is the same theme that I am using for my blog, here is a screenshot:

Download

Download the theme as a zip file here: http://github.com/fahad19/themes/downloads.

Using the theme is very easy. Log in to your Croogo admin panel, upload the zip file from Extensions > Themes page and activate it. Full instructions for themes are available in the wiki.

After 101 commits, 40 tickets, and many sleepless nights, I am happy to announce the release of Croogo 1.3! This version is surely more secure, usable, faster and sucks less! Migrating to CakePHP 1.3 didn't take that long, but I wanted to take care of a few more things before releasing another beta version.

Download

All downloads have been moved from Google Code to GitHub. Download latest version of Croogo here: http://github.com/croogo/croogo/downloads

The changes

• CakePHP 1.3: The CMS now runs on latest CakePHP 1.3 taking advantage of some cool new features.
• Theming: Previously, themes had to be placed under two different directories. Now all your theme related files are found under a single directory, much more easier to maintain and distribute.
• Plugins and Hooks: Plugin development is more powerful now. The hook system has been improved more so your plugins can integrate with the core more easily. Plugins can have their own bootstraps and routes too.
• YAML: Themes and plugins now use YAML file for their basic description/info instead of XML files.
• Admin UI: the navigation menu has been moved to top to make more room for content, and it is also more usable.
• Security: Now ships with SecurityComponent enabled. Takes care of XSS vulnerabilities and CSRF attacks.
• Installer: Replaces security salt and cipher seed with new values when installing (thanks to @AD7six).
• Bug fixes: v1.2.1 had bugs with query caching and a few other things, they are fixed now.

Compare v1.2.1 with v1.3 on GitHub. If you find any bugs, you can submit tickets here: http://croogo.lighthouseapp.com.

Community contributed plugins and themes

Now that designing themes and developing plugins is so easy, I expect some contribution in the Croogo community. Let the flow of themes and plugins begin! Need help? Join the mailing list.

Croogo.org

I am not a designer, thats the reason you still don't see Croogo.org set up with a nice design and a beautiful logo. I will try to get that done as soon as possible. As long as it is not done, keep reading the wiki on github as I update it frequently.

Watch this space, I will be releasing a new theme for Croogo (the one currently active on my blog) within a week.

And Happy Easter to everyone reading this post! :)

After a month of releasing Croogo 1.2, I have decided to start migrating the project to CakePHP 1.3. I wanted to wait for a good coverage of unit tests before migrating, but the new features introduced by the framework are just too good (and useful) for a project like this.

New repository address

I have moved the repository to http://github.com/croogo/croogo. This is a fork of the repository I had under my personal account. As you may have already noticed, I have recently created another repository localized locale that currently contains locales of three different languages. There will be more sub-repos like this in future, and having all repositories under a single github account made sense to me.

New issue tracker: Lighthouse

Github is great for hosting repositores but I don't like their issue tracker, so I will be using Lighthouse from now on.
Join, help find bugs, submit tickets, or request new features here: http://croogo.lighthouseapp.com

1.2.x series ends here

I have tagged a new release 1.2.1, and is available for download here. New features include caching, optimizing code to make it slightly faster, and a few bug fixes.

When to expect Croogo 1.3?

As soon as the migration is complete, probably by the end of February (or by next week depending how much free time I have). Don't expect any new features since the milestone is focused on migration only.

And oh, if you like my current theme then you have to wait till Croogo 1.3 is available, because theme packaging will be a lot easier then ;)