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Summary of the Contao team meeting 2012

– Current issues

On the 3rd and 4th of February 2012, the Contao team met in Wiesbaden, Germany, to discuss current issues about Contao and to adopt a strategy for the upcoming months.

The decisions made are based on both suggestions from the Contao community as well as the general requirements for a modern CMS. Also, we want to focus even more on the specific needs of our main target group - agencies that work with Contao.

The results can be divided into four categories:

  • New features in Contao 3
  • Pooling of information on the project website
  • Thoughts on a possible framework change
  • Founding of a Contao association

New features in Contao 3

For the upcoming Contao version 3 this year, we have decided the following new features:

  • Better support of mobile website development
  • jQuery as an alternative JavaScript framework in the front end
  • Implementation of a database-aided file system
  • Improvement of the handling of image metadata
  • Integration of an HTML5 video player into the core
  • Integration of a content slider into the core
  • Various features to enhance the usability

The first beta version will be presented at the official Contao conference in May 2012, the final release will be published by the end of the year.

Pooling of information on the project website

In order to pool all the information about Contao and thus facilitate the access to it, the Contao team will restructure the project website and try to gather as much of the information that is scattered around as possible.

In addition, we plan to generate new content which stresses the power and capability of Contao, to convince agencies and deciders with comprehensive information. For this purpose, we hope for active support from the community.

Thoughts on a possible framework change

On the last Contao camp in November 2011, a change of the underlying PHP framework that Contao is built on was subject to discussion. Such a change is however not decided.

The focus of the development team for the next two years will be the development of the existing framework with particular consideration of its backward compatibility. The existing framework is being extended in Contao 3 but it will not fundamentally be changed.

In parallel, the team evaluates whether switching to a different framework will be useful and profitable for Contao. Hereto we have set an evaluation period of one year, so there will be no decision before the second quarter of 2013.

If the team should decide a framework change, we would schedule enough lead time to ensure a smooth transition and we would also try to provide a script to import the existing contents. Furthermore, the developer team would support the latest Contao version based on the old framework for at least three years.

So there will be no "hard cut" as feared by some.

Founding of a Contao association

In order to promote the entire project, we plan to found a non-profit organization by mid-2012. The club rules are currently being worked out in collaboration with a lawyer, so the founding can take place during the Contao conference in May 2012.

The purpose of the association is to support the project financially, not being limited to the development of the core. Further details will be published in the upcoming weeks.

With this information we want to give all the people involved some planning security and we are looking forward to the help of the community. Thanks a lot to Yanick Witschi for translating this news article.

Your Contao team

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