I first wrote Fizl back in May of 2011 because I was interested in trying out the concept of a flat-file CMS that allowed you to create simple sites in a filesystem. Fizl was the product of some weekend fun coding, and since then it has been sitting on GitHub not doing much.
Lately, though, I've started to find more and more uses for it - mainly for documentation. It's really well suited to writing up docs, because you can have a complex documentation structure, and still keep everything versioned and very simple. Not database is required, so people can easily fork it and keep/reference a local copy. The docs here on Parse19 run off a special port of Fizl. The upcoming PyroCMS 2.1 docs are running on Fizl. It just seems to work well and make sense.
In that process of starting to use Fizl, I've made a lot of changes to it, and we're now calling those changes 2.0 and putting Fizl officially on the Parse19 site under "Labs" (since it really isn't an add-on. but more of an experiment). The docs have been updated as well.
PyroChunks was the first module I wrote for PyroCMS back in the 1.x days. It was mainly an exercise in trying things out, and I had largely forgotten about it until someone asked about it and I realized people were actually using it for their projects! Nice! A few months ago, PyroCMS came out with a page chunks function which caused some confusion, so there was a name change to PyroSnippets and here we are.
What is PyroSnippets you ask? The idea is simple - you can create different pieces of content and insert them into your layouts.
Today we're releasing PyroStreams 2.1 RC (release candidate 1) on the heels of PyroCMS releasing RC1 for PyroCMS 2.0. It's available via your parse19.com account or your pyrocms.com downloads account.
A lot has happened with PyroCMS over the last few months. A complete redesign of the control panel, a complete overhaul of the tag system, and PyroStreams being including in the 2.0 Pro core. Because of this, it's important to make sure you are using PyroStreams 2.1 RC1 with PyroCMS 2.0 RC1 to ensure all the compatibility with Lex parser changes have been included.
So, what's on deck for 2.1, and what does the future hold? Let's check it out!
We're happy to announce that we've worked out a deal with PyroCMS to include PyroStreams in the core version of PyroCMS Pro 2.0 and beyond. Simply speaking, when you buy PyroCMS Pro 2.0, PyroStreams will already be in there and will act as a core part of the system. PyroStreams will still be available for purchase as a standalone module as well.
So, now that you know, you might be wondering - why?
Everyone loves a good Steve story. So, shortly after Steve Jobs passed away, I grabbed the Wired special edition on Jobs, which basically a compilation of their interviews with him over the years. It was great to read some of the old interviews, but one in particular caught my eye.
In a 1996 interview, Steve Jobs is still at NeXT, and as usual he is going nuts about a new technology or direction that he believes will be the future. Interestingly enough, 1996 Steve Jobs is all about the web, and specifically a project that NeXT was developing called WebObjects. Check out a presentation by Jobs at Microsoft's Professional Development Conference where he lays out the current state of the web and how WebObjects works.
If you ship websites and web apps, you probably spend an untold amount of time working with content management systems. CMSs inform so much of what we do on the web as developers and designers. We make them do great things, and we value them for fitting in with our workflows and getting what we need done quicker and easier. They really are the backbone of the web.
Today, I'm launching a new little venture called Parse19. Parse19 is all about content management and developing tools+ideas about how to make CMSs fit in better with the way we work and visualize experiences on the web. I'm really excited about it.