Jan
26
At the end of May of 2009, I prematurely announced that SkyBlueCanvas version 2.0 was nearly ready for an alpha release. It was a little embarrassing to have to redact that announcement but SkyBlueCanvas is an one-man outfit supported by my day job, so it can be difficult at times to find the time and [...]
May
30
A New Milestone for SkyBlueCanvas
Filed Under SkyBlueCanvas CMS, Uncategorized | 1 Comment
I have just completed the coding for SkyBlueCanvas version 1.2. The new version is an important milestone for the lightweight CMS because it is the first version to fully implement i18n (internationalization) support, the MVC (model view controller) design pattern and a lightweight ACL (access control list) to support multiple users and access permissions.
Mar
7
SkyBlueCanvas in the Media
Filed Under SkyBlueCanvas CMS | 3 Comments
SkyBlueCanvas has received some nice media attention in recent weeks. So I thought I would write a quick post to link to the sites that have been kind enough to give us some attention. All of these sites as well as the entire open source community are funded in large part by donations and sponsor ads and affiliate programs. Please support their sites and their sponsors.
Mar
7
Fragmentor Plugin for SkyBlueCanvas
Filed Under Extensions, Fragments, Plugins | Leave a Comment
Fragmentor is a plugin to be used instead of or alongside the default Fragment Plugin in SkyBlueCanvas. Fragmentor provides template and fragment developers an alternative and much more flexible syntax for loading dynamic content views (fragments) into SkyBlueCanvas web pages. Since the plugin uses a different syntax from the default fragment plugin, it will not conflict with it. With Fragmentor, you can pass an arbitrary number of key=< value pairs of data from your article text or template file.
Mar
7
Editable Sidebar Content Hack
Filed Under Extensions, Fragments, Plugins, SkyBlueCanvas CMS | 3 Comments
A few nights ago, Steve Fister, one of the SkyblueCanvas Development Team Members posed the question again and offered a few ideas on how to pull it off. After thinking about Steve’s suggetions, I realized that this is actually quite easy to do. In fact, with Steve’s idea, you can add an editable text block anywhere on a web page. What’s more, with a little SkyBlueCanvas Skin Magic, you can build page-specific text blocks, so if you want a different block of text to appear on different pages, you can do it with this trick.
Feb
22
MyVars String Replacement Extension
Filed Under Extensions, Plugins | Leave a Comment
The new MyVars extension allows you to create custom search variables/tokens that will be replaced with the values you specify
when your web page is rendered in the browser. This feature can be helpful when you want to be able to easily change
bits of informatin such as phone numbers, emails, web page URLs or image paths. You set the value once, and it is displayed
anywhere in your site you choose. If the value changes, you only make the change in one place.
Nov
30
One of the most common questions we are asked is how to convert existing or stock HTML templates to work with
SkyBlueCanvas. In this article I will guide you, step-by-step, through the process of adapting
any existing skin to work with SkyBlueCanvas. This process, once you understand the fundamentals,
usually takes about an hour – sometimes even less. In fact, the skin we will use in this tutorial
took only 30 minutes.
Nov
29
When I first built SkyBlueCanvas, I was a freelance web designer and developer. For seven years I struggled to make ends meet working on small projects that were not very profitable. I knew there had to be a way for me, and the thousands of other independent web professionals, to make a living working on the limitless number of small projects out there. If you are a freelance designer or developer, you know what I mean.
Nov
27
Creating Menus in SkyBlueCanvas v1.1
Filed Under Extensions, Fragments, SkyBlueCanvas CMS | 4 Comments
When you create a new page in SkyBlueCanvas, a menu item is already created for you. In fact, there is not really a menu item to create because the system assumes, by default, that if you have created a page, there should be a menu link for. I mean, how else would anyone find your page if there is not link, right?
Nov
27
Upgrading SkyBlueCanvas is simple because all of the files that are editable are contained in a single directory: /skyblue/data/
When you upgrade to a new version of SkyBlueCanvas, you simply need to make a copy of this directory, install the new version following the instructions on the Installation page, then copy your data file back into /skyblue/data/.