Well I must first apologise to everyone for taking so long to get this next release out, but the last 2 months have been so busy with University finals, but they are all behind me now so as promised a new release. The majority of this release is a few new features which I was planning to incorporate in BeP for a long time. Examples of these are a dashboard for the control panel, conditional CSS files (for IE), features to use CSSTidy to optimise CSS code and many more.

Additions

• Added a dashboard to the control panel front page.
• Added cancel buttons to forms.
• Added new CSS styles to create buttons.Added icon() to Page library.
• Added a generate password feature to the member administration area
• Added CSS caching using CSS Tidy in the Page library.
• Added output_variables() to Page library.
• Added conditional CSS files in the Page library.
• Added meta tag creation into the Page library.

Modifications

• Added a value option to <button> elements so the form can submit.
• Updated some of the documentation so its simpler to navigate around.
• Updated getUsers() in User_model.php to also fetch user profile columns.
• Changed the version control system from including a date to release candidate, purely to be shorter.
• Updated Nested_sets_model.php to remove the public attribute from the constructor

So head over to the BackendPro Development home and download it. Please as usual if you find any problems raise a ticket or post on the forum thread. As always if you want the latest updates keep an eye on the SVN repository.

Its been a while since I have posted anything on BackendPro, mainly due to me having such a hectic last 2 weeks. But hopefully things will pick up from here.

I know quite a lot of people have downloaded BackendPro so far (400+) so I hope some of you are finding it helpful. Hopefully it will with this new bit of news get a little bit better. Currently I am developing it all locally, now the issue with this is any changes I make aren’t released until I upload a new version. I have wanted to make the SVN commits more public but never found a simple way which worked, I tried Google Code but that just failed in so many ways. Now with Assembla I think I have it sorted.

So from now on BackendPro’s development home will be here. So whats differen’t? Well you will be able to get the full project source out of SVN at any time. There is also a full issue tracking system to make sure bugs are reported and fixed.

I also hope to have a new version coming out soon which should implement some new features I have been meaning to put in. So take a gander and I hope you find the new development features helpful.

A new build has been released to fix some minor problems and also some PHP4 compatibility issues.

• Replaced the use of static $_container in MY_Controller.php to use var $_container. This was due to static only being available in PHP5. Please run a replace command on all your user created files to replace Site_Controller::$_container with $this->_container to use the new variable naming.
• Deprecated _generate_random_string() in Userlib.php to use CodeIgniters string helper function random_string()
• Updated the admin menu view file so the System item would have language support
• Added language support to the application/controllers/admin/settings.php file for defining preference groups
• Removed passing $obj by reference to passing by argument due to issue if allow_call_time_pass_reference is false in INI file, in modules/auth/models/access_control_model.php
• Moved the modules folder into the root dir

Please check out the BackendPro project home page for details.

The first public release is now available. Please see Projects > BackendPro for more details.

Download Now

Yes its nearly ready, not long now. BackendPro alpha release should be available for download as soon as I finish off a few last bits. Its been quite a while but I have only been able to work on it about once a week for the past few months, so progress has been slow. It has also undergone many redesigns, trying to make the interface simpler but still very usable. I think I have the final version now, its not my own but it was so good I had to use parts of the original. Many thanks to Steve Smith for the ideas and his Tiger Wordpress theme.

What is BackendPro?

BackendPro is a control panel for developers. This means it includes a load of useful things which a developer would fine useful. Its not a CMS, its not built so all the work is done for you but so it can be used to speed up development. It has many features which I feel are lacking from other authentication libraries.

Features

• User Authentication using ACL
• Site preferences (allows you to create your own site preferences and use the built in form creation to update them, instead of using config files)
• Simple breadcrumb creation
• Asset library (set default assets, load assets on the fly, server asset caching)
• PHP to javascript variable conversion
• Default styles for forms and other useful HTML elements
• Status messages (create success/info/warning/error messages to display to the user in a pretty form)
• ReCAPTCHA
• Language detection

Over the next weeks ill try to polish off the rest of the control panel and get some documentation written up for it. There’s no point releasing it and no-one knowing how on earth it works. I suppose you could look at it. So that’s it for now, but check back for news on the alpha, ill try and get it out soon.