I know most of you could care less about the technical aspects of Projectfork or any other application. As long as it works, everything is good, right? But think of it as a car engine. The better the engine, the better/faster the car. The same is true for Projectfork. The PF framework is the foundation and engine that drives the rest of the system. And like all "techies" I like to improve and tweak this engine, enabling new technologies and methods to increase performance and stability, while at the same time trying to reduce resource consumption (computing time and memory usage in this case).
So, let's take a look :)
Joomla 1.6 compatible
While J 1.6 isn't out yet, PF 2.2 will run natively on both 1.5 and 1.6 without any performance or maintenance tradeoffs. So you don't have to worry if you decide to upgrade your website to 1.6 later on. Projectfork won't stand in your way.
Written in PHP 5
While Joomla 1.5 is written in PHP 4, PF 2.2 will require PHP 5. But that should be a non-issue for most of you because PHP 5 is available on most servers these days.
Dynamic caching
Until now, Projectfork did not have any caching mechanics at all. This feature has been added in 2.2. You will see a dramatic increase in performance, partially up to 500%! (Work in progress)
Updated code architecture
Even without caching, the framework has been largely restructured and optimized for better performance, resulting in faster loading time and reduced memory usage. (Work in progress)
Updated database structure
The database in 2.2 is going to be a bit different than in 2.1, resulting in faster queries, improved data handling and performance.
New language system
PF 2.2 switched from defining PHP constants over to what Joomla did in 1.5: *.ini file based language strings. Not only is this easier to work with, but it also increases the overall performance.
There are a lot more things I have done to improve the framework, but I don't want to bore you with those technical details that are not very interesting for the vast majority I believe ;) Just a final note on the overall code changes:
For a very long time, I've been a 3PD developer making extensions and hacks for various other Joomla components out there. And I've always wanted to give you guys the ability to make
Projectfork extensions fast and easily, because I know how hard it is sometimes to understand why some things are the way they are or how to work with the code. I had to realize that the current framework failed at achieving that goal, unfortunately. This time around I want to get it right and I will ask for your input on this matter at some point during the development (likely with the first test-release).
Oh and if you're worried about the upgrade procedure from 2.1 to 2.2, don't be. I'm trying to make this as easy and comfortable as possible. That's it for now, time to get back to work. I hope you enjoyed reading this so far. I'll tell you about some other changes and features soon!
