So, somewhat belatedly we have launched Coaster CMS version 5.5, which is now based on Laravel v5.5 (LTS) and mostly includes a major “under the hood” update that will make Coaster more stable and also more tolerant to future changes (basically this means, tests!).
So, Coaster CMS v5.4 has arrived and I’m just going to give you an overview of the new features. We think this update will really help people grasp the concepts around Coaster and give you ideas on how you can use the blocks in Coaster to extend functionality.
Blocks
As of Coaster CMS v5.4, all blocks can now have multiple views in the themes/[theme_name]/blocks/[block_type]/ folder – this adds consistency to the block behaviour and greatly enhances the flexibility the block system. Basic string blocks won’t need a view to display them but you can now pass a ‘view’ key through in the $options array that will look in the appropriate folder for the view. So, say you wanted to wrap a string in certain tags or content each time you could add a view that you pass through when you need the string block in that format.
2016 was a pretty big year. We started with a CMS built and used internally for our client websites and by the end of the year, we had hoodies with the Coaster CMS logo on, over 100 stars on github, an honourable mention on Laravel News and well over 1,000 installs of Coaster through composer and packagist not to mention the 100 + followers on twitter and positive reviews beginning to pop up on the web. It’s been pretty exciting and we’re really encouraged by the feedback we’re getting on Coaster and its features, but we’re not done yet! I wanted to write this post to give you an idea of new Coaster CMS features that we will be adding in 2017 and beyond, so, here goes…
Firstly, we’d like to say that we’re ecstatic to have been given an 8.2 (out of 10) on cmscritic.com. For a relatively small team to produce something that stands up to scrutiny alongside so many other systems is a huge achievement. Read the review here, if you haven’t already…
We’ve been working in the background on getting Coaster CMS version 5.3 ready for release in line with the release of Laravel 5.3 – announced here. We have made a number of very exciting additions to the features that now come with Coaster because that’s always a good thing! These include the ability to create forms for repeater block content (this gives rise to an easy way to create a comments section for a blog for example), and also a simple theme editor that allows you to edit your themes (not add files / blocks yet) from the admin (if you so wish).
One of the main features of Coaster CMS is its ability to interact with The Physical Web. This was in part in anticipation of the latest release of Chrome (v49) which will now ask if you want to interact with The Physical Web when it detects the presence of beacons with associated Physical Web URLs. Through the Coaster CMS (and some beacons) you are able to create pages that are specific to locations within your store/restaurant/any physical space. When someone walks near these beacons, their Chrome browser on Android will show a notification asking if they want to be made aware of Physical Web objects around them, when they click “enable” then the notification bar in their phone will display summaries of URLs associated with the beacons. When they tap the notification, they will be taken to your page where you could have a newsletter signup form, an offer or anything else you can build with Coaster CMS.
To find out more, download Coaster CMS, go to the Google page about the physical web or grab your phone and be on the look out for the notifications.
We are proud to announce the launch of Coaster CMS. Coaster has been under active development for three years at Web-Feet.co.uk, and will continue to be actively developed far into the future. We are always looking for new ideas and concepts that can be added to make Coaster even better.
