Support for Partials Implemented in Flexy

The latest release of Flexy templates includes support for partial templates, an idea introduced (AFAIK) in RoR.  Thanks to Anil for the implementation.

 

[Continue reading "Support for Partials Implemented in Flexy"]

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Introducing Bounties

Thanks to the recent introduction of the Seagull Developer Network 
(SDN) and our svn/trac hosting service[1] I'm happy to announce we 
have managed to build up some funds for the project.

Part of the original intent of SDN was to be able to encourage 
contributions to the Seagull project through a bounty program.  If 
you are unfamiliar with the term bounty, it's a long and well-
established tradition in open source circles where developers are 
paid cash to fix bugs and contribute new features to a codebase.  One 
example quite close to home is Horde's bounty project[2], though you 

 

[Continue reading "Introducing Bounties"]

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Improvements to Comment module

Checkout the bugfix svn branch for some exciting improvements committed today to the comment module by Steve Stremciuc, including Akismet integration.  New features include admin screens to moderate comments and test your Akismet key.

These features will be available for general release in the next Seagull version, 0.6.1, expected shortly. 

 

[Continue reading "Improvements to Comment module"]

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Use Seagull and save $4.3M on your next project

And 79 man-years development time.  So say the stats at the ohloh site ;-)

This week the planet PHP folks have been submitting their projects to ohloh so I thought I'd better keep with the trends.  Some interesting and perhaps hard-to-believe details in there.  Other sites that we appear to compare quite favourably against:

• ez components
• cake PHP

 

[Continue reading "Use Seagull and save $4.3M on your next project"]

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Mailing Lists Moved from SF to Google

Have just moved the ML to Google Groups:

• http://groups.google.com/group/seagull_general
• http://groups.google.com/group/seagull_dev

All members were migrated across but you have to accept the Google invite to be able to post.

 

[Continue reading "Mailing Lists Moved from SF to Google"]

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New Seagull Presentation Available

Here's the slides from a recent talk I gave:

http://seagullfiles.phpkitchen.com/talks/WorkingWithTheSeagullFramework.ppt . 

If anyone else has given any talks on Seagull let me know and we can upload them to talks section . 

 

[Continue reading "New Seagull Presentation Available"]

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PHP Coding Standards - Laying Down the Law

There was a fantastic CS helper package released at PEAR this week, PHP_CodeSniffer. The package, which requires PHP5 and is nicely coded, puts a phpcs script in your path so you can pass files or directories to it to get your CS validated.

The results are detailed and processing is surprisingly fast considering how many tokens are being parsed.

[demian@localhost lib]$ phpcs -v SGL.php
Registering sniffs... DONE

 

[Continue reading "PHP Coding Standards - Laying Down the Law"]

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New Commercial Support Packages available from Seagull Systems

Unknown to many there are a range of commercial support options available to Seagull users and developers. Checkout the services page of the Seagull Systems site, recently added were:

• Seagull hosting
• Svn / Trac hosting
  

There is also a section for Seagull installation and upgrades, and a technical support package will shortly be announced.

 

[Continue reading "New Commercial Support Packages available from Seagull Systems"]

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Improved Debugging Features

In the bugfix branch i just added the ability to display a debug block which lets admins run rebuilds with a single click, see changeset #2467 and the relevant update in the wiki for details.

Granted we still need some docs on what the rebuild functionality does and how best to use it, that will come shortly. In short it's a great feature as long as you're on a reasonably powered Linux machine, used to reset your entire Seagull environment to a fresh state that, amongst other things, drops and rebuilds your database. On a decent machine it takes 1 second to run, on a windows machine it can take around 20 ..

 

[Continue reading "Improved Debugging Features"]

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New Comment Module available in svn

I put together the beginnings of a comment module over the last few days, it's available in svn in the bugfix branch if you want to be an early tester ;-)

So far it seems to work well, but still needs an administration manager to be complete. See the wiki for details on how to include it in your projects. With the current design you should be able to associate comments with any module in your Seagull installation.

And .. this means we finally have comments on the http://seagullproject.org site ;-)

 

[Continue reading "New Comment Module available in svn"]

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Rant on the state of PHP libs

I was getting a little frustrated with hearing the same old comments with respect to the state of PHP frameworks so decided it was time for a rant. What I didn't know is that searching for 'php framework' on SF currently returns 637 results !!

That is obscene - I always use a number like ~30 for 'php framework' conversations - time to update :-)

 

[Continue reading "Rant on the state of PHP libs"]

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Seagull 0.6.0 stable released

Last night a release went out for the long-anticipated Seagull 0.6.0
stable, details on packages and download info available here:

http://seagullproject.org/download/

There will eventually be additional packages added to the release for
the pearball and GPL modules.

This one was a long time coming, breaking our 3 year pattern of a

 

[Continue reading "Seagull 0.6.0 stable released"]

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Interesting Flexy DataGrid Integration Submitted to PEAR

Check out this great extension to the Structures_DataGrid package that's being proposed to PEAR .

The PEPr page has a lot of interesting examples including the proposed format for calling datasets in your templates:

<flexy:DataGrid ID="TheDGClass" DataSourceID="TheDGDataSource"/>

 

[Continue reading "Interesting Flexy DataGrid Integration Submitted to PEAR"]

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Improved Block Tutorial

Thanks to regular forum user, ashwoods , who recently updated the blocks section in the wiki.  Check out the improved tutorial if you need some extra insight into working with blocks.

 

[Continue reading "Improved Block Tutorial"]

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Dev Tip: Seagull with multiple browser instances

Sometimes it can be quite handy to run two Seagull browser sessions simultaneously, say an admin session for doing rebuilds and a member session to test out theme changes.

One way to achieve this is:

• ensure in Config  -> Session : "Allow session in URL" is enabled (it is by default)
• modify your browser preferences to disable cookies

 

[Continue reading "Dev Tip: Seagull with multiple browser instances"]

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AJ's Eclipse Article gets Cover in this month's php|architect

Congrats to our very own AJ Tarachanowicz , long time Seagull developer, whose love for Eclipse is almost as well known as his friendly and helpful manner in #seagull IRC.

Although his Eclipse article was submitted some time ago, it was a pleasant surprise to see that it made cover in this month's php|architect .

So if you need a detailed account about getting the most of out of this popular integrated development environment, be sure to pick up this month's issue. Covered are things like setting up the sub-eclipse plugin and getting debugging working, two essential features for Seagull developers.

 

[Continue reading "AJ's Eclipse Article gets Cover in this month's php|architect"]

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Seagull Systems launched

Due to increased commercial demands, Seagull Systems has been launched to provide software products and services relating to the Seagull project. A number of developers from the project will be offering their services, a brief list of which you can find here .

For more information or for a free quote on your Seagull-based project, please get in contact.

 

[Continue reading "Seagull Systems launched"]

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Seagull used for Shoreditch Digital Bridge EPG and CMS

We used Seagull 0.5.5 as the backend on a project for Shoreditch Trust . The Shoreditch Digital Bridge project is a government funded pilot program delivering IPTV and community focused interactive television channels over Homechoice to select housing estates in Hackney Council, London.

Seagull and PHP 5 are used to parse and import XML content pushed from ITN into a custom CMS module that allows versioning and

 

[Continue reading "Seagull used for Shoreditch Digital Bridge EPG and CMS"]

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Seagull Featured in .NET Magazine

.NET magazine , the UK's most popular web mag, is running a feature on Seagull this month. The boxout, entitled Getting started with Seagull PHP Framework, accompanies Gareth Knight 's article on Professional Tips for Site Builders.

From the article:

If you're interested in developing sites or applications with a PHP framework, then you should consider evaluating Seagull (seagullproject.org). Seagull is intended for rapid application development, giving you the tools and modules you need out of the box. The project's excellent documentation is also a big help.

 

[Continue reading "Seagull Featured in .NET Magazine"]

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Seagull 0.6.0RC3 Released - Including Urgent Security Fix

RC3 is out! This will be the last release candidate before the stable 0.6.0 release. But first an urgent security notice:

Tobias Schlemmer wrote in earlier last week to report a compromise he'd discovered that allowed registered members of a Seagull installation to increase their privileges to admin user level. His hack was quite creative and I don't think your average member is going to come up with

 

[Continue reading "Seagull 0.6.0RC3 Released - Including Urgent Security Fix"]

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Varico's DataGrid Component Integrated

Hats off to Krzysztof Kempinski and the Varico team for all their work on the DataGrid component, now integrated in the latest Seagull distro.

For more info on the package see the DataGrid RFC , or to get right into it try the demo.

To use the DataGrid you'll need to install the 2 required PEAR libs, SQL_Parser and Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer. Use the pear commandline tool, first set your php_dir to your Seagull install:

 

[Continue reading "Varico's DataGrid Component Integrated"]

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Contributed Modules Repo Setup

There were an increasing number of modules sitting around in Trac awaiting review, cleanup and a general doses of TLC before making it into the main trunk repository.

Rather than stall the potential development, I've setup a dedicated repo for these modules, so users can try them out easily and commit changes without having to deal with Trac or submit patches.

 

[Continue reading "Contributed Modules Repo Setup"]

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Oracle Support Reinstated

In preparation for the upcoming RC3 release , Oracle support has been reinstated after a number of months spent in the wilderness.

Thanks to Ben who did all the hard work, this feature was requested a number of times on the list, let's hear some feedback from OCI users.

Update: And a big thanks to Marco Patania who did a lot more work on the Oracle data to ensure a smooth install. 

 

[Continue reading "Oracle Support Reinstated"]

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Forums launched

After a non-trivial amount of hacking FUDforum, I'm pleased to announce we now have forums integrated into the Seagull project. All existing registered users need only login to seagullproject.org and hit the 'forum' tab. New users will need to register to be able to post, however anonymous read access is available at http://seagullproject.org/forum/ .

If you have any problems with your account, permissions or passwords let me know demian@seagullproject.org.

 

[Continue reading "Forums launched"]

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Gallery2 Integration Updated in svn

Neil Mather has sent in a patch which brings Seagull's gallery module up to date with the latest version of Gallery2 , 2.1.1. These changes take into account Gallery2's new embedding API, and are a result of this discussion .

Thanks Neil!

 

[Continue reading "Gallery2 Integration Updated in svn"]

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Seagull Available in Japanese

Thanks to the hard work of Dozo Yousan and his team, Seagull now has  Japanese translation available in two encodings, EUC-JP and UTF-8.  Dozo translated all the modules so Japanese support is comprehensive.

As you can see by our Frapp map , Seagull takeup is slowly spreading through Asia,  which is reflected in our increasing translation count.  If you haven't yet

 

[Continue reading "Seagull Available in Japanese"]

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Seagull 0.6.0RC2 Released

Thanks for all the feedback from users who downloaded the first release in the 0.6 series, Release Candidate 2 is finally out and includes some important bugfixes and improvements.

RC1 was hugely popular and had around 10 times the usual downloads, so thank you all for your enthusiasm. Three of the most important improvements in RC2 are:

 

[Continue reading "Seagull 0.6.0RC2 Released"]

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New Tutorials Published for Beginners

Okay, one new one, the classic Hello World tutorial , and the existing Create A Simple Site has been updated.

The Hello World tutorial is recommended reading for all new Seagull users, it shows you how in just a few lines of code, you can get your first custom module up and running in about 5 mins.

 

[Continue reading "New Tutorials Published for Beginners"]

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API Docs cleaned up

The previous version of the Seagull API docs suffered the problem that the Task and Install related classes were mixed up with the main libraries.  These have now been separated out and the result is a much cleaner list . 

 

[Continue reading "API Docs cleaned up"]

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Documentation Overhauled

The wiki documentation for the project has been completely overhauled, as promised, you should now be able to find what you're looking for with much greater ease.

Basically 3 passes were made on the ~500 documents in the wiki:

• The contents of homepage were reduced and simplified, key categories are now Main Concepts and the HOWTO sections. For advanced users be sure to check out the new Pragmatic Patterns section.

 

[Continue reading "Documentation Overhauled"]

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Latest SimpleTest Available as a PEAR Package

For all you keen unit testers out there, good news as you can now use the latest (CVS) SimpleTest code to drive Seagull's test runner application.

Grab it from the Seagull channel server, directions for newbies on the wiki.

As one good turn deserves another you'll also be glad to hear, as of

 

[Continue reading "Latest SimpleTest Available as a PEAR Package"]

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Seagull Gets Top Marks in Recent Framework Comparison

Thanks to Daniel Pallet over at http://www.phpit.net/ for his recent article comparing 10 PHP frameworks. It's a pleasant surprise that based on the checkmarks for features marking scheme, Seagull came out with the top score. A lot of complaints from the other contestants "you didn't give me credit for this" - I guess visibility of features is an important feature in itself.

Now that most of the work has been done for the 0.6 stable release, a new round of effort is scheduled to bring the docs up to date and improve the overall documentation format. My goal would be to get a few tutorials out to the same level of quality as the renowned Askeet series.

 

[Continue reading "Seagull Gets Top Marks in Recent Framework Comparison"]

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Seagull 0.6.0RC1 Released

After a 2 week sprint to the finish line, I'm pleased to announce the first release candidate for the 0.6 series of Seagull framework project is now available for download .

There's been a lot of improvements implemented under the hood, but the most noticeable change is the completely redesigned admin user interface by Julien Casanova. Curious to try before you 'buy', checkout the demo at http://demo.seagullproject.org (config edits disabled).

Although we have maintained our 1 release per month policy for most of the project's life, the last stable release was back in November 2005, and that was from the 0.4 series which started way back in the beginning of 2005 . Get more info on our release policy .

Some of the improvements you'll find in the current release are:

• workflow and usability vastly improved with the sleek new admin GUI (Julien Casanova)
  
• the Translation2 package is now fully integrated allowing for multi-language content and navigation in addition to the internationalised GUI strings (AJ Tarachanowicz)
  
• navigation management vastly improved (Andrey Podshivalov and Julien)
• • subtrees of navigation for each role of user in the system
    
  • navigation types extended to include external links, direct links to CMS content, links to any controller/action/parameter combination, plus the new addon type which builds custom navigation from a class you specify

 

[Continue reading "Seagull 0.6.0RC1 Released"]

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Bugs Can Now be posted Anonymously

In response to Florian's comment in his review of Seagull, I thought it we would give anonymous tickets a try at our Trac install.  Let's hope the signal-to-noise ratio stays favourable.

 

[Continue reading "Bugs Can Now be posted Anonymously"]

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Seagull 0.5.5 Released

We released development version 0.5.5 of the Seagull framework last week - many thanks for all the devs who contributed to this release, particularly all the regulars on #seagull.

0.5.5 was massive compared to previous releases, 119 tickets dealt with compared with 63 from 0.5.4, and that's just the documented stuff. Click around http://trac.seagullproject.org/roadmap?show=all for details.

The main new features in no particular order are:

• PHP 5.1.x compliance with the exception of Quickform stuff and some block-related issues
• the Translation2 package is fully integrated, multilingual content is now possible (AJ Tarachanowicz)
• new admin GUI 90% complete (Julien Casanova)
• url aliases fully implemented
• integrated pear package manager under 'modules': you get point-and-click upgrades if you install Seagull as a PEAR package
• a minimalist Seagull with only 3 modules can be installed from http://pear.phpkitchen.com/index.php?categories , see http://trac.seagullproject.org/wiki/Installation/UsingThePearPackageManager for details how to use the PEAR package manager to setup.

 

[Continue reading "Seagull 0.5.5 Released"]

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Gallery2 Integrated

Thanks to work done by Matti Tahvonen and Werner Krauss it is now possible to fully integrate the Gallery2 application with Seagull (in trunk).

I cleaned up the wiki page, put install instructions and 'seagullified' the code a bit, results here:

http://trac.seagullproject.org/wiki/Integration/Gallery

Great work guys!

 

[Continue reading "Gallery2 Integrated"]

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Savant2 Template Integration Now Available

Following fast in the footsteps of the Smarty template integration, Andrey Podshivalov has created a renderer for the Savant2 template engine.  Currently only available in svn trunk, the new functionality will appear in the imminent 0.5.5 release.

Savant2 will interest the minimalists out there, the template solution uses PHP itself instead of a template language.  From the Savant site:

Savant is a powerful but lightweight object-oriented template system for PHP.

Unlike other template systems, Savant by default does not compile your templates into PHP; instead, it uses PHP itself as its template language so you don't need to learn a new markup system.

Savant has an object-oriented system of template plugins and output filters so you can add to its behavior quickly and easily.

 

[Continue reading "Savant2 Template Integration Now Available"]

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Seagull 0.5.4 Released

Seagull 0.5.4 from the development branch was released last week, the last release for 2005, and ended up being suprisingly full of new features. Here are some of the highlights:

• implemented an XML-RPC gateway for easy creation of web services
• version checker first feature to take advantage of RPC
• Chinese and Polish translations updated
• Service Locator object added, now trivial to swap in test db at runtime
• Smarty template support integrated (Malaney J. Hill)
• installer now optionally loads default data
• DB2 support added (Tobias Kuckuck)
• Web root path now configurable from installer

 

[Continue reading "Seagull 0.5.4 Released"]

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Community

Seagull is maintained by an active community of developers who are constantly adding new features to the code and maintaining the various development branches, schemas, translations and themes. On the wiki we currently have 141 editors contributing content and 250 users signed up at the mailing lists.

Some other quick facts:

• 100 000+ downloads since the project has been hosted on Sourceforge

 

[Continue reading "Community"]

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Smarty Template Renderer Integrated in trunk (0.5.4)

Thanks to the work of Malaney J. Hill you can now use Smarty as your template engine within Seagull projects. Simply download the latest Smarty package and place it in the seagull/lib/other directory removing the version number. Then use the Configuration screen to select the Smarty renderer.

Malaney has started work on porting the default theme to Smarty syntax, if you want to help out to speed things up please get in touch. Also see the Smarty page on the wiki.

 

[Continue reading "Smarty Template Renderer Integrated in trunk (0.5.4)"]

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