Integration of WebYep CMS in Xway

Hi,

So following the sudden demise of a certain other Mac-based web publishing app, it looks like my time as an addon developer and support assistant for these past 17 years may be drawing to a close.

As a distraction, I’ve been working with Max Fancourt on updating WebYep CMS. Version 3 is just about ready and brings several improvements; like improved documentation and PHP 8 support.

A couple of WebYep users told me about something called “actions” that used to be available for Freeway. Supposedly a way of getting WebYep CMS into Freeway really easily. Regretfully I never used Freeway, so I’ve not seen this for myself, to know precisely how the WebYep actions looked or worked.

Over the past several months I’ve been having a play with the Xway Betas and have been absolutely loving it. I’m definitely going to be using it for smaller brochure / portfolio style websites I build freelance.

I’ve been able to get some of my own components working perfectly in Xway. However I was wondering whether there are plans for a more feature-rich API that developers might be able to use?

So as an example, when you add a video to a page in Xway, currently the settings in the Box Inspector change to present options like autoplay, controls, loop, muted, plays inline etc.

What I’m envisioning would be the possibility of a user being able to add a WebYep Component to a page, to denote a part of the page that can be edited remotely using WebYep. They would see a select menu (in the Inspector) to choose what type of CMS element to use (e.g. short text, long text, file link or image). A box to set the field name. Maybe a few other parameters too. With these settings being written into the code.

Do you think something like this might be possible in Xway one day? Or something that is feasible already, but I’ve overlooked?

I’d certainly be really happy to work with the Xway community in porting WebYep CMS over and making it available in Xway as a free component or action.

I’ve already been able to build a site in Xway that could be published and edited remotely using WebYep CMS. But it exposes the user to quite a lot of code. Hence my thoughts on whether there was a way to make the configuration more user-friendly. It seems like WebYep CMS + Xway could be a brilliant combination.

Kind regards,
Will.

(Plymouth, England)

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Hi Will,

Thanks for your comments and questions!

Freeway had two types of Actions: standalone Actions, which were similar to Xway components but provided some UI via an Actions palette, and non-standalone Actions that could be applied to items and other objects (also with UI in the Actions palette)

We are planning to add support for something similar in a future version of Xway, and one step towards getting there could be to provide a way to add UI for Components (in the Box Inspector). Xway Components could then be a replacement for Freeway “Action Items” (standalone Actions).

We would then do something separately for non-standalone Actions (“Item Actions”) and our plan is to refer to these as “Actions” rather than “Components” (avoiding Freeway’s confusing distinction between “Action Items” and “Item Actions”).

It will take us a little while to get there, but it’s something we’re thinking about!

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Hello William,

This sounds very promising. Your proposal would certainly be a significant addition to the tool set available in Xway.

I have used the webyep for a number of years for some projects and its always been really useful.
Is the version 3 for XWay or for Freeway 7? I’ve been using v2.1.1 though had an issue with it loading.

I am very interested to see what is achievable with Xway being pushed to its limit as it is in beta form. Is there anywhere online that I could see whats possible? I have tried a few simple things but am not yet fully engaged with xway.

I must have missed something regards the “sudden demise of a certain other Mac-based web publishing app,” What one was that?

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I used WebYep on several pages on my Freeway site – so useful to allow other users to edit the pages, and a sad loss now I’ve moved to Xway (along with other actions that made Freeway so easy to use).
Geoff

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I suspect this was a wee joke reference to Freeway…

Ah yes humour! Must remember that!

Freeway is maybe reached an end regards its development but its still a useful tool which I still manage sites with. So in that regard its still a live thing for me. So long as it works within the operating system of course…

Why the long face says man to horse…

Thanks for your detailed reply. Your plans sound exciting. I’ve been amazed at the progress made on Xway during these past 2 years I’ve been following the Beta releases. Both the quality of the app and the resulting websites it generates set a new standard. The added support for Flexbox in Beta 7 is brilliant and beautifully well integrated.

In the meantime, I probably will spend more time on these forums and freely share some of the components I’ve already made. If or when the API grows to become more feature-rich, I’ll certainly look at porting WebYep CMS and some other goodies over to Xway.

The ‘init’ code (the code that goes above the DOCTYPE tag in a page) and all the elements like short text, long text, login, image and rich work in both WebYep 2 and WebYep 3. They are unchanged and can be used interchangably between both versions.

Most of the work these past couple of years has been towards supporting PHP 8. Some parts (like loops) demanded a huge rewrite to get them working again. I’ve redone the documentation for WebYep 3. There’s been a couple of other additions like the Markup element now supporting an on/off toggle for encoding. Various bug fixes too.

It’s possible that if a website (built using WebYep 2) has stopped working, the hosting company may have upgraded you to PHP 8. Because PHP 7.4 goes ‘end of life’ in 10 days time:

https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php

So unless your hosting is LTS (long term support) I imagine hosts will be eager to switch their customers over to PHP 8. A colleague informs me that both Ubuntu and CloudLinux have LTS offerings for PHP.

Certainly if you want to ZIP your website and send it to me via Dropbox or another free file sharing service, I’m happy to take a look and see why it may have ceased working. Or if you want me to login via FTP and check the error logs, I can take a look.

Back in May, I setup a small website promoting WebYep and sharing some useful resources:

It is still a work in progress. Audio and video snippets still to publish, along with more almanac articles. But it’s a fun little hobby project I do on the side.

What I like about WebYep is that it gives you a finer granularity control over what clients can and can’t edit. I like platforms like Concrete CMS, but have found they perhaps allow clients too much creative freedom, unless you go to a lot of effort with permissions and start locking everything down. You leave a client to edit a site for a few days on their own and comeback to find something reminiscent of the gas station scene from Zoolander! Styling, blocks and pages all over the place, like a bomb has gone off…

Whereas WebYep lets you just set individual page elements to be editable and hide the extra styling controls that clients can sometimes become dangerous with.

Also no MySQL database means websites that include WebYep are easier to backup and move around between localhost and servers. Fewer moving parts and less to go wrong.

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