3.0 Beta & Contest Reminder
We just released the first 3.0 beta release of gpEasy! There are a lot of improvements along with some bug fixes we found along the way. Most notable is the redesigned layout editing area and the ability to enter html in a page's label. Complete Version History (docs.gpeasy.com).
Contest Reminder
And don't forget to submit your themes to our design contest. It could be selected as gpEasy's default theme and every time gpEasy 3.0 is installed giving it the potential to be used on thousands of websites.
Theme Contest
Attention Web Designers!
It's time for some spring cleaning and for gpEasy, that means we're in need of a bright shiny new default theme. However, instead of designing another theme ourselves, we'd like to use one of yours. So, before the release of gpEasy 3.0, we will select one of your designs as our new default theme which will then be installed, seen and used on thousands of websites around the world.
How to Enter Your Theme
To enter, upload your theme to gpEasy.com before the deadline (to be announced) along with a minimum of three screenshots. You may enter as many themes as you like as long as each theme is unique and meets the entry requirements (see below).
This contest is limited to the first 50 entrants.
Entry Requirements
To qualify, your theme must meet these simple requirements:
- Compatible with gpEasy.
- All files and content must be your original work and eligible for release under version 2 of the GPL.
- The theme should be suitable for use by small business and personal websites.
- Your theme can have one link pointing to your personal or business website.
- If you submit multiple themes, each theme should be unique. For example, two themes that only differ in their colors should just be one theme with two variations.
How Themes Will be Judged
Themes will be judged primarily on their aesthetic appeal but designers should also consider these suggestions.
Judges: Paulo Nunes and Josh Schmidt
Getting Started
If you haven't built a theme for gpEasy before, it's extremely easy. All you need is an installation of gpEasy and a little html and css knowledge. Here are some links to get you started
The Right Tool
Would you use a tractor to till your garden? You certainly could, and you'd probably want to if you have a farm for a garden, but the chances are a tractor would be more trouble than it's worth. So what does a tractor have to do with gpEasy? Well, would you use Wordpress to build a small website?
Now don't get me wrong, if we're going to compare Wordpress to a tractor, then it would be the finest piece of dirt moving machinery ever built! The problem is that Wordpress has been built to handle very large websites and might not be the best CMS for a small project.
gpEasy and Wordpress are in fact such different applications that it would probably be easier to contrast them than to compare them. To illustrate the difference, I'd like to look at the memory usage of each CMS when sending a single page to the client. The amount of memory required is a direct representation of how much code and processing is used by the application. Naturally, more memory is indicative of more behind the scenes processing and a more complex system.
Memory: gpEasy vs Wordpress
If you're already rolling your eyes and saying to yourself, "of course gpEasy is going to use less memory", what would you expect? Would it be reasonable for gpEasy to use 30% less memory than Wordpress? Or maybe even 50% less? Would you believe over 80% less?
My tests were made using PHP's memory_get_peak_usage() function on an Apache server running PHP 5.3 on Linux with the latest releases of both gpEasy and Wordpress. Comparing similar sized pages (the page in gpEasy was actually bigger), Wordpress consistently used over 21,100,000 bytes of memory where gpEasy used less than 2,900,000 bytes.
That's less than 1/7th as much memory, which is actually a difference of over 85%!
Why is Memory So Important?
When I first ran the tests, I was fairly certain what the results would show, but I didn't expect such a significant difference. To put these numbers in some perspective, let's look at the newest version of PHP. One of the most talked about improvements in PHP 5.4 has been the removal of deprecated features and the subsequent improvements in performance. Since it's release, tech blogs and forums have been buzzing about the improvements with headlines like:
"PHP 5.4 Will Make the Web Faster"
"PHP 5.4 is Really Fast"
"Is Anyone else thoroughly impressed with PHP 5.4 Performance?"
The improvements we're looking at with PHP 5.4 are at most in the 30% range, which are, don't get me wrong, exceptional improvements. Now consider the over 85% difference in memory usage between gpEasy and Wordpress.
The fact that Wordpress and gpEasy use different amounts of memory shouldn't be too much of a surprise. After all, in terms of content management systems, they are at opposite ends of the spectrum—one is great for large elaborate websites while the other is optimized for smaller projects. The size of the difference, however, should be significant enough to encourage you to use gpEasy the next time you're building a website that doesn't require thousands of pages.
gpEasy 2.4
Today, after months of design and development, we are proud to announce the immediate availability of gpEasy 2.4. Our latest and greatest version is chock full of new features and usability improvements, all polished up to give us the best ever gpEasy CMS release.
Even Easier
User experience is everything, and we are constantly looking at how we can make our signature "edit in place" design of gpEasy even better. Veteran users will notice existing functionality is more accessible and more intuitive. From minor tweaks for the admin toolbar to a completely revamped theme and plugin browsing interface, we've managed to make some big improvements.
For Your Websites
Your website should be what you want it to be, and nothing less. And it's never been easier to do just that with our growing community, expanding library of add-ons, and always improving technology. Thanks to community feedback and support, we've been able to make hierarchical linking and dynamic page renaming possible for the first time. We've also included the latest versions of jQuery, CKEditor and other incredible open source projects.
Impossible Without Our Community
Many of our most active community members are also gpEasy service providers who also participate in the forums, develop add-ons and help develop the gpEasy core. Without them, none of this would be possible.
Second 2.4 Release Candidate
The second release candidate of gpEasy 2.4 is now available: Zip Archive
It's exciting how close we are to a stable 2.4 release!
2.4 Release Candidate
Our first release candidate for gpEasy 2.4 is now available!
Since the last beta release, we've improved a few features and fixed a number of bugs. Moving into the release candidate stage and closer to a final 2.4 release, we'll be focusing our efforts on finding and fixing any remaining bugs.
If you'd like to help or just try out the release candidate, you can download it from sourceforge: gpEasy 2.4RC1 Zip. You can also find a list of changes in our documentation.
gpEasy.com Update: Addon Support
We've been making some changes to gpEasy.com and wanted to start filling everyone in on the developments. The topic in this post: Addon Support.
Like most things, supporting third party addons has been a learning process and our new approach will be significantly better than its predecessor. That may be a strong statement, but until now, our "system" for supporting addons has been both lacking and broken. We did little more to facilitate addon support than to occasionally display a link on addon pages if an addon developer had the time and/or resources to provide one. After that, the burden of actually providing support was put entirely on the shoulders of addon developers.
Considering the hurdles and gpEasy's lack of involvement, the user support for gpEasy addons has been great. gpEasy's addon developers are extremely knowledgeable, helpful and responsive to requests and feedback. I am personally very appreciative of everything they've done. We just want to make everyone's life easier.
From here on out, every addon will have a dedicated forum hosted by and easily found on gpEasy.com. Out of all the benefits of this approach, the overwhelming favorite is how much easier it will be for users to find support for the addons they're using. Links to each forum are placed prominently at the top of every addon page making them visible to anyone downloading, installing, or even thinking of using the addon. Additionally, because the forums are implemented uniformly, we can easily integrate links into our CMS so users can quickly find help when they're not on gpEasy.com.
I'm very enthusiastic about these improvements and hope our community finds them useful. We're aware that nothing is ever perfect and we're always searching for ways to make the services available on gpEasy.com even better.
gpEasy 2.4b4 Released
A few more changes and a few more bug fixes make up the fourth beta release of gpEasy 2.4.
Thanks to everyone who continues to test and find the bugs in our development releases!
Overdue Beta Release
Admittedly, there has been a bit of a delay since the last beta release but there was a fair amount of work to do and we wanted to get it right.
The newest beta release unveils an overhauled add-on interface. We wanted to make it easier and more intuitive to find themes and plugins that are hosted on gpEasy.com. So, instead of the somewhat cumbersome popup window that was previously used to display remote add-ons, we have a new integrated add-on browser that will give users more relevant information in an easier to use format.
As always, your feedback is extremely important to us, especially as we develop and release new features. To help facilitate this type of feedback, we've added a new forum.
We are getting much closer to the next stable release of gpEasy and some more exciting announcements including some incentives that we hope will promote the development of even more plugins and themes.
One Day Later - One More Beta
First, I knew the first beta release of gpEasy 2.4 was special, but I didn't expect the response it got. Thanks everyone for the incredible response and feedback.
Now, there haven't been many changes to the code since yesterday, but there was one rather annoying bug that I wanted to get fixed and out to anyone running tests. I don't plan on releasing a beta release each day, but it seemed like a good idea to do it this time.
