So - I’m reading of the benefits of a Markdown based CMS in the release notes - and it does appear to make a lot of sense.
However what I’m less clear about - is in it’s use …
Dan and Ben, the RealMac men have devised this amazing and easy tailwind-powered UI for putting together complex websites quickly. The foundations are strong and elegant, and I can see this will scale really well and the (hopefully imminent) addition of more pre-built components will make it infinitely more useful and quicker for less tech / more stupid people like me.
My point here is that the incredible new web-building tools are entirely incompatible with this equally simple and awesome CMS system. You cannot use our amazing new interfacing tools in the CMS.
Whist I don’t believe this to be an oversight - I don’t see it as being strategically congruent going forward.
What I hated about Stacks taking over Classic ‘parasitically’ was that it then had essentially 2 UIs. This is the same thing you find when you use WordPress - use a great theming system to lay on top of WP and it takes over. The UI paradigm changes and everything gets mixed up and moved around - such that you’re now learning and using 2 UI’s. The base system needs to be so good and so ‘on-it’ that overlaying another paradigm on top is pointless.
So - back to Mark-up - great as it is, it’s simply not possible for us to use our amazing Elements tools in it. We’re essentially back to “Stacks oh yes but I also need a blog and contact form” twin paradigms.
I will muddle through … putting some mark-up together with the help of fab tools like these ones that convert formatted text to paste-able markup.
But - we need a bridge … essentially allowing our native tools (at least the basic ones) … to output Markup for the CMS.
I think it’s a challenge the RealMac men are up to !
What do you think Dan - tell us you are brewing up a little alchemy here.
I think in episode 93 at the very end, they mention that marked down is just a temporary fix that they plan on implementing a full CMS that will allow us to use all of elements in full…
I completely understand where you’re coming from! We want to integrate the CMS more tightly in to Elements —with things listing/viewing CMS data directly in Elements, a better UI for creating/editing content, online editing, and more — however, we’re not there yet.
We have a very solid foundation for the CMS already in place, but it is still early days. It’ll be a while before we get to adding the things mentioned above.
I hope the current CMS system covers your needs for now. Improvements to the CMS are already on the roadmap
Nice answer, but all the efforts seem to be going into the Elements Store at the moment. I can understand that it’s important for the future of Elements, because developers can more easily sell and distribute their components and templates. But what about the roadmap for the CMS? Can you give us some information on this?
One thing at a time I’d say. The Store is the logical next step with developers and designers being on board now. I don’t know how high on the priority list the CMS functions like described are, but I’m lucky they are on the roadmap. That means they’ll be implemented eventually.
We want to do everything too! But the reality is we can’t build it all at once. We have to prioritise what brings the most value and stability to the overall product first.
The CMS will absolutely evolve and get the attention it deserves, it’s on the roadmap, but we need to tackle things in a sensible order so each piece fits together properly.
Thanks for your reply. I fully understand that you can’t build all at once and have to prioritize. It’s just that I was happy with what I saw Ben demonstrating in de Dev Diaries and I hoped to see more of the components I saw on his computer to be released to us. I’m not a developer and not a techie but want to integrate my WordPress blog into my website. That’s why I asked about the road map for the CMS. I just hope it won’t take too long to fully evolve beyond the Markdown version. Just keep on going with the good work! I love it so far.
