We proudly announce AMS 2.50 Beta 2 yesterday, and now we are waiting feedback from our BETA tester. We also announce that AMS 2.50 Beta 2 is the last BETA for AMS 2.50 generation and in 2 weeks time, we will move to AMS 3.0 SEO development.

We have a few valid bugs reported but it is very minor and we estimate closure in 1-2 days when we start put our hand on the code again. For the mean time, we will focus on non-code stuff that we think is important.

Documentation

AMS seriously lack of documentation. When we inherit this module from it-hq, documentation not exist at all. No SVN, no user guide, no programming guide.. nothing at all. We need to explore ourself and try to understand the code by opening php files one by one. Its takes time and we are never be a XOOPS module developer before and a lot of stuff about XOOPS classes & objects we didn’t know.

Now, we in better position. With experience updating AMS modules and 2 other modules (XM-Membership, XOOPS Mass Email), we kind of understand how XOOPS works and our TPT (throughput time) increased significantly. However, we never write any documentation. We didn’t have time to write programming or coding guide.

But how about user guide ? It is critical an it is a shame when someone download and use our module, but never know how to utilize or some people even not aware some important and “cool” features in AMS. So unfortunate, we didn’t have documentation, and no XOOPSTER/user want to provide the documentation to us. So now is the time to be serious, and we should lead the effort to create “user guide”. If you are aware, we just create a documentation, and give access to everyone to edit it. If you like AMS, please help us to complete it. We, ourself will spend sometime in these 2 weeks time to write asmuch as we can, but we need YOUR help to make it comple and comprehensive.
AMS 3.0 SEO implementation study

Some short news about AMS 3.0 SEO… we evaluate some implementation and we do short code as proof of concept but we didn’t like it. Some implementation have great potential and flexible, but required massive SQL query, and some implementation very fast and didn’t need mysql query at all but it is ugly and not flexible at all. Which one we choose ? we don’t have answer yet.

WordPress For XOOPS 2.11.0

If the reader wonders, why we waste our time to spent time to upgrade “abandon” modules instead of working om AMS 2.50 Beta 2 as fast as possible, here is our answer.

We like WordPress for XOOPS, its stable and surpass all XOOPS blog modules that we try. XPRESS or wordpress 2.05 should be maintain by xoopsforge.com (phppp) and we put a lot of trust the module will be updated by him regularly. Thats the main reason we use this module in our sites (yes, it is sites, not site ). But of course, we not just blindly put our trust to xoopsforge.com to maintain the module (its normal for open source), we did our own study and conclude in case there is no update from xoopsforge.com, we can update it ourself without significant resources.

Unfortunately, what we afraid is occur. After Wordpress 2.05, xoopsforge.com stop updating the modules and left it un-patch for > 1 year. Same as AMS, we only have 2 choice… update it ourself or left it vulnerable. So, our choice is clear, lets patch it. However contra with AMS, we didn’t plan to take over the development.

With our limited knowledge, it take us 15 man-hours to finish the update/patch to Wordpress 2.0.11 including regression testing. Luckily, its work like a charm and its rock solid stable in our server. So, we name it as WordPress For XOOPS 2.11.0 mimick the same numbering as xoopsforge. Whats 15 man-hours mean to us ? With only 1 person working on this modules, its mean 2 weeks of development since our average spent time in XOOPS projects only 1 hour/day per person.

After we publish our work at xoops.org, we got some request to upgrade the module to WordPress 2.6.x, but we politely refuse to do so since it will take significant amount of our time to do so. We need to take our resource from AMS if we did so. Except someout want to pay our effort, I think we don’t want to involve. FYI, the to upgrade the module to be compatible with WordPress 2.6.x, we need to modify and validate 300+ files compared than to update the module to WordPress 2.0.11, we need to touch only 81 files.

AMS 2.50 Beta 2

The beta download almost approach 100 (that our milestone) and thats mean we almost complete to gather our beta feedback. Once the download exceed 100, we will start implement bug patching and small enhancement requested by beta tester that not included in our plan.

In the mean while, we have great progress in enabling spotlight template choice. With this implementation, user can have greater freedom to choose, update and share their spotlight template. User can have unlimited template to choose and to add new template will be hassle free. Just put the new template in template directory + preview image then update the module, its done . New template choice will be available in spotlight block edit page. We hope we can publish our work to public around next week.

With all new features and reported/discovered bugs had been closed, AMS 2.50 Beta 1 will be released in next few days. As a normal procedure before announce to the public, we will try to operate AMS 2.50 Beta 1 in a few environment and make it work. This is environment that we will tested:

PHP:
PHP 5.0
PHP 5.2

MySQL:
MySQL 4.x
MySQL 5.x

Apache:
Apache 1.3.x
Apache 2.0.x
Apache 2.2.x

XOOPS (must 100% compatible):
XOOPS 2.2.x
XOOPS 2.1.X

XOOPS (tested and fix if easy):
XOOPS 2.3.x
XOOPSCUBE legacy
ImpressCMS

Don’t get me wrong whent we not officially support the XOOPS 2.3.x yet. Its in our plan and we try to intercept XOOPS 2.3.x in our Beta 2. In fact, we eagerly waiting for XOOPS 2.3.x to be released as final.

AMS 3.0 SEO

AMS 2.50 actually targeted to add basic modern functionality for article management without scarifying performance. Performance is crucial for AMS and thats what make AMS unique and thats’s the key selling point for AMS.

However, modern article management system will be not complete without SEO optimization and cloneablility. Even it will sacrifice performance a bit, that’s trade-off we need to pay. Better we have a bit slower website with tons of visitor rather than super fast website with little visitor.

Good news for you guys, AMS 3.0 will be SEO optimized (although basic) and we will implement url rewrite capability (aka user friendly url). Thats need major overhaul and need significant effort to do so. Thats why I’ll name it as AMS 3.0. The functionality will be freeze as AMS 2.50 except smaller enhancement in order to put maximum focus on SEO.

Cloneability only will be push on AMS 3.5 or above since to make the AMS cloneable, its sure need to have another major overhaul.