Progress Report - eeSiteKit for EE 2.0

 
Feb 21, 2010 04:54pm
Kurt Deutscher
Total Posts: 321

The first few weeks of this year were both professionally and personally challenging for me and I was unable to make much progress on eeSiteKit.

This week however things have calmed down a bit and I’m back to what I hope will be a regular development schedule.

The new kit for EE 2.0 will do a few things differently and will raise the bar a bit as far as site performance. It uses a half-dozen or so Snippets, a few custom queries and a slightly different template group set up than the current kits do. The payoff for these changes is a faster website and multilingual capabilities that will scale better for large sites.

There are no anticipated changes in the structure of eeSiteKit’s URL/URIs or 404 error checking, so sites transitioning to the new kit should work just about the same for site visitors. Where things will change is in how template groups are set up and how a some of the templates work with each other.

eeSiteKit has many features and systems that will have to be recoded to work with the changes of EE 2.0 and for the improvements we’re making to the next kit. Here’s a list of what’s now coded and some of what we’ll be working on next:

Things that are done:
- Proper 404 errors (and response headers) when segment 1, 2 or 3 is not a match with an actual site page.
- Option of combining landing and category display templates for site designs that don’t have a separate layout for the landing page. This will be the new default.
- Top-level “landing” pages are now created by naming a category the same as the channel it’s assigned to.
- Dynamic main navigation row with dropdown menus that properly handles optional landing pages.
- Dynamic sub-navigation that properly handles optional landing pages.
- Default navigation query caching that saves approximately 2 queries per page load without sticking when new categories are added.
- Dynamic read-more links.
- Dynamic Sitemap that properly handles optional landing pages. Also removes empty categories from the map.
- Dynamic <title>tags</title>
- engine_template_wrapper (new way of streamlining the creation and management of custom templates by reducing redundant code in display templates)
- Multilingual content, navigation and URL/URL systems.

Things to do still:
- Update display templates to YAML 3.2.1
- Bread crumbs
- Pre-coded forms
- Quick edit link engine
- Printable Page
- Share with a Friend / Tell a Friend
- Pages Module integration
- Blog Comments
- Pagination Solution
- Search Results with correct links back to content.
- Channel Heading
- Dynamic Meta Data (for self-set keyword and description tags)

As I get some of these things checked off my list, I’ll report back here. I know there are a few of you who are itching to get move your eeSiteKit 2.0 install over from EE 1.6.8 to EE 2.0 Public Beta. Please understand that I am as eager as you to start using the kit in EE 2.0 and will be coding on the new kit as much as my schedule allows over the weeks ahead.

Thank you for using eeSitekit!

     
Feb 23, 2010 06:11pm
nethymnal
Total Posts: 13

Kurt,

Thanks so much for the update, it is good to hear that progress is being made in the right direction!  Looking forward to trying out the new release when it’s available.

=Dave

     
Apr 05, 2010 09:57am
nethymnal
Total Posts: 13

BUMP!  Any update on the 2.0 progress?  Thanks!

=Dave

     
Apr 07, 2010 09:56am
Kurt Deutscher
Total Posts: 321

Here’s an update:

We are currently building a half-dozen sites with EE 2.0 Public Beta. This is giving us a chance to test out some of our coding and sort of forcing me to finish up the rest of the features. Our first site built in EE 2.0 running on the new re-worked eeSiteKit should launch within 7 days.

The new sites are nearly all built with YAML 3.2.1 and we’ve got a few more features coded now since this post was started including:

- Bread crumbs
- Quick edit link engine
- Printable Page
- Pages Module integration
- Channel Heading

We’re using 7 Snippets (that new feature in EE’s template area), and we’re looking for every way possible to keep the kit speedy and flexible.

EE made a functionality change a few months ago and it no longer allows us to have custom category fields with the same short_name. That was how we got the nice multilingual URL/content system to work so well. This change in EE’s functionality is a bit of a “deal-breaker” for our current way of building multilingual sites, and while I’m exploring ways to work around the situation, it’s highly likely that the initial beta release of eeSiteKit for EE 2.0 won’t be fully multilingual ready. Its a big puzzle, and I’m going to need more time to solve it. For single language sites we’ll be in good shape.

Page-load speeds for the new sites are coming in under a half second and frequently under a third of a second. We’ve reduced the amount of code in many of the engines by nearly half and even did away with three temples all together.

I hope to have a private beta version of eeSitKit 2.0.1 (compatable with EE 2.0 Public Bete) out around the first of the month. I may not have all the features coded by then, but there should be enough in there that you can start “playing with it”.

The only thing holding me back at this point is my workload at NetRaising. We took on a bunch of new clients over the winter and all their sites are in production right now. We’ll be launching a custom designed site every 5 business days this month if I stay on schedule.

I’ll update here again in the future.

     
Apr 08, 2010 02:04pm
R.BIRD
Total Posts: 11

Thanks so much, Kurt, for the update. I must admit, that I’ve been holding back on launch of our own site hoping for eeSiteKit for 2.0.

Anyway, glad to hear you continue to have much real business. There are many who are not so lucky!

     
Jul 12, 2010 06:55pm
nethymnal
Total Posts: 13

Now that Expression Engine 2.1 is out of Beta and stabilized, can we expect eeSiteKit 2.0 to be ready to go in the next few weeks (months)?  A timeline would really help us out here.

Thanks, and keep up the good work!

=Dave