project road map - reinventing the wheel
I was asked today if I have a roadmap for what I plan to do with staticDimension.
Great question!
The thing I like about staticDimension is its simplicity, it does everything that I need it to do and not a lot more, feature-wise I probably won’t be adding a huge amount.
The whole reason I wrote it in the first place though, bearing in mind that there are other static publishing systems, is that other options didn’t do quite what I wanted. I think this is a healthy state of affairs; I’ve always been put off building things in the past because there are already a whole load of options and everyone always says “don’t re-invent the wheel” and then you kind of feel like Bad Programmer! Naughty! Stop Reinventing That Wheel when you try.
The thing about wheels is: every application of one needs a slightly differently specified wheel. You don’t put a bicycle wheel on the family saloon.
I’m under no illusions that staticDimension is finished yet, so here are the things that I’ll be working on over the next few weeks:
- Archive system is bare-minimum functional, needs to be a little prettier and to clean up after itself when articles are deleted from a folder (empty folders are left behind).
- User & Settings management needs an interface in the control panel, editing php files is nasty.
- File manager interface needs a little bit of polish - directory breadcrumbs don’t really look like anything, file info could be more descriptive.
- Article list in control panel gets a bit unwieldy when there are lots of articles in it (maybe even just a scroll bar would be nicer? needs thought).
I’m also open to ideas too - this project wasn’t my idea in the first place! What’s your killer feature?