I've been banging on about BalfBlog for at least the last two months. The most important two months of it's journey to becoming a stable content management system that can be used by many.
The staple aim of BalfBlog is to develop a concise, well-defined, well-built and independent of any styling, content management system. It will always rely on the host website's core styling in order for it to produce posts. This means that a bit of technical knowledge is needed, but very little.
The Dashboard is very easy to configure, with a set of easy to use options and tools to make it easy to manage your content.
In May 2016 my own website changed to BalfBlog for article and review management and in October 2015 my website introduced my very first journal (one that nobody can access but me, of course).
Of course with time, the focus has shifted from being a blogging system as it was when JBlogs first started. In fact JBlogs never meant to come out of it's shell and become anything for use outwith my own website. When BalfBlog was announced, I made the version jump from version 1.1 to BalfBlog 2.0. This name change was made in 2016 to keep in line with my other projects in my Web Independently Styled Project (WISP) such as BalfBar, BalfSlider and BalfRibbon but it was never going to be permanent.
With the introduction of Article Mode - which is used in my articles and reviews, BalfBlog stopped just being a blogging system but a full on content management system (CMS). This was a big step and one which made it difficult to keep under the BalfBlog name. For a long time a name change has been on the cards.
Now, I'm proud to announce that BalfBlog will be known as Dash Content Manager from now on!
Why Dash?
Dash is always stylised in italic when I refer to it because it's similar to what the logo for Dash will look like. The name Dash came from several roots. Originally I was going to name it Atomic, based on the concept of atomicity within databases, but I liked the name Dash better.
The name is far more representative of what it is. Dash represents a fast system, which indeed it is. The name Dash is actually a bit of a homage to the agile way in which it was developed since to me a dash is like a sprint.
Dash of course also represents the core part of the Dash structure, since the main focus for BalfBlog 2.4 and Dash is the dashboard.
Dash is itself a recursive acronym:
Dash: Adaptable, Secure and High-performance Content Management
Let's go through those words to see where they fit in:
- Adaptable - BalfBlog 2.2 introduced plugins, and Dash extends the way plugins interact. This makes Dash adaptable
- Secure - Dash is designed with a sophisticated and secure system to authenticate users and verify they are who they say they are. No unencrypted passwords are saved in any database and it's not possible to access data outwith the boundaries of the dashboard.
- High-performance - Dash is designed to be lightweight and fast. Features that have been added have been designed to have minimal impact on the performance of Dash.
- Content Management - BalfBlog was a blogging system originally, and only managed content in a blog. Dash on the other hand (and of course later versions of BalfBlog) is designed with all kinds of content in mind.
Dash can now even manage your files within the assets directory thanks to the new file manager.
Another big update
Another big thing I should mention is some that related to the version jump from 1.1 to 2.0 when JBlogs became BalfBlog. Now that Dash is nearing ready for release, I'm doing another version jump. Except:
BalfBlog 2.4 => Dash 1.0
Yeah that's right, BalfBlog 2.4 is actually now called Dash 1.0.
The future
There's still plenty planned for Dash such as single installations multiple blogs, page management and a new comments system (possibly).
If you are wanting to see the latest version as it develops, visit http://dash.projects.jamiebalfour.scot/. This rubbish subsite is dedicated to new features being added daily, so it will vary all the time. At some point I will add styling to it but it's low priority.
