Still to-do

Now that Dooze has made it past version 1 (arbitrarily decided, of course), it's time to look at the next round of stuff to do to it.

Here are my thoughts:

Automatic layout generator

This will be a JavaScript-based tool that will be accessible from within the admin area. It will allow you to add/remove/move/resize content areas and automatically generate the layout files.

Grab-that-layout

If you see another site running Dooze that has a particularly nice layout, you will be able to enter its URL into this tool and it will grab the layout files and any related images. You can then use it on your site without having to copy and paste or view source.

EasyUpgrade

The Dooze installation process is stupidly easy but the upgrade process is unnecessarily complicated. This will become a single button in the admin area that will grab the latest version from the Things in Jars server and apply it to your site.

Be Social

A big list in the admin area of all the major social bookmarking sites with a checkbox beside each one. Checking a box means an automatic submit link will be added to each post.

What Dooze Does

Here's a full list of what Dooze does:

Media

• If you attach a video to a post, it'll be automatically converted from whatever format you have (AVI, MPG, WMV, MP4, MOV, etc) into FLV and embeded in your post using Jeroen Wijering's FLV Player.


• If you upload an image, it'll get resized then wrapped in Lightbox


• MP3s are automatically embedded in a flash MP3 player

Integration

• Put your last.fm username in and you can get a flash or image based list of your Top 10 artists (or most recent played or whatever...)


• Put your flickr username in and it'll include your latest photos.


• Put your facebook RSS link in and it'll include your current status.


• You can set up your flickr account to 'blog this' to automatically include people's flickr posts in your blog (using the Metablog API)


• Put your Open Source Food username in and it'll randomly include one of your recipes.


• You can set it to be your personal OpenID server


• Automatic inclusion of a bunch of Google stuff: calendars, analytics and maps.

Other stuff

• RSS feeds for each category


• Some nifty anti-spam stuff...


• ...which comes in handy for the comments


• A simple way to add on any kind of extra functionality as modules


• Layouts and styles are written in HTML and CSS and are really easy to customise


• Support for MySQL and PostgreSQL


• Automatic installation and database setup (just upload the files and everything will install the first time you visit your site)


• Depending on your server setup, the whole thing generally comes in at about 2MB (including the flash movie player and everything)


• One-file installer

Flickr Photos

last.fm

Facebook Status

Dooze

Download Dooze 1.8.2 installer [zip - 603B]

Dooze is a neat little CMS written in PHP. It's maybe not quite as straightforward as personalising your MySpace or Facebook page but it's an awful lot simpler than most other CMSs. It has built in modules to tie in with a bunch of websites (see the about page for the full list) and can be skinned any number of ways.

If you know a bit of PHP, you can make it do whatever you like. If you know a lot of PHP, you can probably make it do even more.

To install Dooze, you just need to download the Installer, unzip it and put it on your server. When you visit your website the first time, the installer will run over to this server, grab the latest copy of Dooze and install everything for you. So far, the record install time from empty server to working website is 43 seconds but I'm sure it can be beaten.

The only bit you'll need to do to prepare your server is make the database Dooze is to use. A lot of web hosts won't let you do it unless you're using their control panel so it couldn't be built into the installer.

At the moment, the documentation included is a bit sparse but that's being worked on...