What would you like to see as a new feature in PulseCMS?
Some ideas:
Better e-commerce support.
What should we integrate to? Our should it be totally standalone/improvements to Pulse commerce plugin.
Upgrade Service for a flat fee.
For example, customers can pay $XX for a hassle-free white glove upgrade. You can do it yourself. But for complex installs it’s an insurance policy that we will help in really tough cases.
Wiki support
This could add a new use case to your Pulse license. It also adds better monetization for those who resell services since they can charge for this.
Stick to stability
In that case please let me know new bugs. I see some already. Let’s add more to fix.
Or, add your own! What would be a great feature you’d like to see in Pulse?
For me the most important things to tackle first would be stability and better documentation.
There are things in the settings and backend that I have no clue what they are or how to use them.
Blog tags have changed and become a mystery to me as to the proper use and implementation. I have sites that were working fine, that now have pagination issues, and other display issues. I actually ripped a Pulse blog out of one site, and about to do it with another one
I have been using the Blocs App recently to create Pulse templates (I still have a bunch of older Rapidweaver sites as well with Pulse integration) - and the documentation in the Pulse manual is hard to follow, and not the best way to use Blocs and Pulse together. No wonder it seems I am one of the few people that are to be able to get it to work, I ignore the Pulse instructions...
Forms. The basic included form is too basic and not customizable, and the "Just Forms" (your "Easy Forms" integration) is not end user friendly if you are turning the site over to clients
Nav menu... For such an important element, the documentation is almost non-existant, and Nav options are really slim...
The "Pulse Builder" is there documentation for it anywhere? I have no clue how to use it...
@Raimo what is your thought on having a "done for you" upgrade service? Something like $XX and we bring you up to the latest version of Pulse, zero hassles? (Either we go in via SFTP or send us a ZIP.)
Granted, I prefer DIY. My thoughts:
If we cant migrate the site without bugs, its free/refunded.
It might be money-losing or break even. But we gain from future stability.
Its an insurance policy for users. If you're afraid of future code upgrade issues, at least you have an option.
Users may be able to "resell" this service or bill it to customers for a higher amount.
When you think of it, if we have bad code, we lose on labour. So it creates an internal culture of keeping upgrades stable.
"What would you like to see as a new feature in PulseCMS?"
This is an interesting question.
First let's start from the beginning.
My first licenses were for Pulse-3.
Great software.
My latest version works with TiNymce and MDBootstrap 5.
My rating for Pulse-3 is 95%.
My rating for Pulse-4 is 75%.
My Pulse-4 and Pulse-5 ratings drop with the newer version.
My rating for Pulse-5 is less than 50%.
Pulse-5 does not have a reliable and stable version.
For me, Pulse-5 = the wrong investment.
This is just my personal assessment of Pulse issues.
Where to start?
Remove all redundant code and comments.
Remove unused add-ons such as unishop, justforms, mailchimp and the like from the installation.
Similar add-ons and extensions need to be distributed to a non-installation folder.
Let everyone choose to install the accessories themselves.
"Something like XX$" >>> (THIS IS SICK!)
The content of each distribution must be accompanied by a detailed and up-to-date manual, not a .pdf.
Something like a task.
The home page is uvad.txt (Úvod).
Create a new page datel_velky.txt (Ďateľ Veľký).
Edit Navigation = OK.
Use the "breadcrumb" tag.
Displayed breadcrumb = Home/Datel_velky
It is necessary to display correctly = Úvod/Ďateľ Veľký.
I have raised this question several times, but in vain.
In the meantime, try increasing user satisfaction to at least 95%.
Good luck.
For my use case, this has no value. I build sites for my clients, and generally also host those sites as well. Updates usually have not been a problem for me, and I handle them all via FTP very quickly.
However, I can see where this may be of value to some people, I suppose. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Pulse is more of a "Developers" tool anyways, it doesn't seem to me that there would be a whole ton of people that really need this.
The issue I had with the "blog tags" has to do with the fact that the actual syntax of the tag itself changed...
Huh? The idea is- if you have install problems, we can help for free over the forum. Unlimited free forum and email help. But sometimes people have many problems with a custom install and get stuck. In those cases, you can opt to pay a fee and we will go via FTP and guarantee to fix everything, bring your Pulse totally up-to-date to the latest version ourself, or your money back on the custom install fee. That is the proposal.
Many web hosting companies offer custom installations, that's OK.
If the customer specifies a specific web hosting, functionality requirements, specific language support and removal of unwanted extensions (extensions that will not be used) and installation and all features will work properly, then it is a good service and deserves a reward = after work.
The worst advertising is if you allow a refund.
Ok, good point. I'll think on that. Perhaps no refund. I still suspect that large web design firms might find this handy. I'll ask around. This is excellent feedback, thank you.
offering an upgrade service might be a painfull path. Because there are so many web hosts. You are depended of PHP settings, mail servers etc. You will need to have access to the users webhost control panel, mail account and ftp account too. i.m.o. you should only do this if you are hosting the customers website by yourself.
See the forum questions here. Some of the questions are related to PHP version and mail server settings.
I agree it would be. However, I've been in the web host industry for years. Once you wrap yourself around all the different variations and nature of the stack the debugging gets simpler.
Also, for example, we might only support a range of versions and options.
The top hosts are: GoDaddy, DreamHost, HostGator... Once you practise with the top 7 hosts then you eliminate most concerns.
Overall, its a training exercise, and also encourages users to stay current.
Right now, I'm leaning towards not doing this. But considering it.
For now I'm working on some core items mentioned by @Raimo.
This will be in an upcoming build, but happy to privately share that build now for people having issues.
Fixed the one-word limit in the navigation. You can now use spaces via dash ("-") replacement. I'll also add docs on how navigation is rendered for those who need more customization until we get more options. (In sum see the pulsecore/filter.php then navigation() function.)
Upon community approval, adding logic so blogs wont get broken links after rename. (If blog not found, it matches on ID or title slug rather than throwing to blog index page. But not yet secondary blogs.)
Next things I see are:
Improve docs on Blocks integration.
Fix pagination issues and blog rendering.
Want to emphasize- we are still onboarding and weeks from being able to get this at full steam.
If anyone has a sample Pulse install with broken blog rendering or pagination, I'd love to get our staff's hands on it, so we can fix the issue and better understand it.
Less files - IvaRo mentioned - remove all the unused add-ons (mailchimp, just forms, fontawesome etc), and let users choose if they want to integrate them.
With upgrades it would be good to know which files were actually edited and changed. For example I customised code of some tag files, I need to make sure that those don't get overwritten in the upgrade. Knowing which files are affected allows us to just overwrite old files using ftp.
More flexibility with navigation. Two words in a title (you're already working on this), also making sure 'active' class is applied to a menu item. Currently we can add a non pulse url and create a custom link but that doesn't apply an 'active' class. Also you want to ensure that for example when the about-us.txt is open is 'active' class going to be assigned to 'about us'.
Breadcrumbs to work in blog items. Home > Blog > Title
Stability. For example, I installed pulse 3 times until I got an instance that worked. I don't know why. Also had issues uploading because there were too many files.
Blog text counter, so that {{more}} is inserted automatically. For example set {{more}} to be inserted after a certain number of characters, so that every article on the blog page contains the same amount of text.
Yeah, But how to deal with people doing web hosting from their bedroom (sorry) They are hard to reach if you run in problems and hardly respond on questions
I've build cross platform software that relies on different hosts before... It ran even in hosts ran from a bedroom
It's still Apache (or nginx) and PHP, after all. SMTP can get hard. .htaccess, bizarre mod_rewrite creating voodoo. I have lived thru it all
The key is provide diagnostics and get people who worked in the hosting industry and have been thru these battles.
One comment about @Raimo 's view.. I do not see Pulse as only a developer tool.
Correct me if you disagree.
Compatibility with developer tools like MDBootstrap is essential since developers are a large part of the userbase. I am a developer so I know that stuff is essential.
PulseCMS can be a developer tool. But I think the main target is IT, designers, consultants and marketers working on small-midsize projects.
I feel we need to make it a tool that doesn't need coding skills. Just basic HTML and some CSS... And eventually, even that should not be needed.
Programmers are one target market. But I'd like to target them because they do not need to code just to do the fundamentals.. Programmers want to spend time on custom scripts, automation, etc. They dislike spending time on things like DB management, updating text, basic website development (unless they are front-end developers). Pulse should free programmers to work on other tasks, and offer total flexibility should they need to customize the code.
