Future of Family Connections

[ryanhowdy]

I wanted to take some time and update everyone on what is happening with Family Connections.

Not Dead

Although the project has been pretty dead for a while, the project is not dead, and I will be focusing much more time on it over the Holidays.

Version 4.0.0

The next version is going to change almost everything. The code base is being completely rewritten. This will include a new look and feel as well as changing how some of the features work. Currently the plan is to make sure all existing features are still present, but might function slightly different (hopefully better), but it is possible that some things change or get removed. I also plan on making it possible to upgrade from previous versions just like before.

Changes to the Website

I will also be moving most of the functionality from familycms.com to GitHub. So this will be the new place to find out what is new, as well as to request features or discuss bugs, etc.

Why?

The changes to the project code base are because the current code is simply too old and outdated to maintain anymore. I will be moving onto Laravel, which will make development much faster and enjoyable for me.

The changes to the website are just because I no longer want to deal with running a website, and GitHub now has all or most of the features that I need anyway.

Potential Problems

All of these changes may unfortunately cause some problems to users of Family Connections. The first potential problem is that setting up a Laravel project is going to be a little more difficult for some users than a plan old PHP project. Most noticeably that Laravel is difficult to install on most standard shared hosting platforms. At some point, I hope to create some tutorials on how to do this for each of the major hosting sites.

[ryanhowdy]

You can checkout the progress of 4.0.0 here.