Topic: PHP Classifieds v7.6 plans
I'm working on v7.6, that is scheduled to be released within two months.
(note: If a really serious issue appears in v7.5, v7.6 may only become a bugfix)
Originally, I thougth to just change the stylesheet in this release (in the templates). But, in order to not make users both change template in this version and the next, I'm choosing to do some more dramtatic changes at once. The changes is done in order to make PHP Classifieds more customize friendly, and I'm borrowing a consept from Windows C# (asp.net) to do this:
Planned and partially completed features
* One masterpage.tpl template contains the entire page layout instead of header and footers. Blocks that contains code to create category-lists, ad-lists, ad-details and so on is included on the fly. You can even assign what blocks to be included on every page from admin area. Everything in a block will be available to the masterpage.tpl template. If you want a category list to be available on all pages, it will be really easy to do so (or anything else you want to appear on all pages).
* You can include custom blocks, or, even override the default ones. This will make it far more easier to customize PHP code for those who has experience to do this. To start with, some code will be in functions.php, but more and more will be put in blocks (the code for creating category columns will be moved to category block/file). Also, upgrade will become far less painfull for those with PHP customize.
* New payment gateway system with API against all major credit card gateways (black box gateway system).
* Optimize speed: Both categories and extra fields will be improved by caching data into e_1 etc. fields into ad/category table instead of just into _selected table. On search, the selected table will still be used in order to search for a single field inside larger fields.
* Features already inside the program will be improved. For instance Google Maps.
* Easier to add extra pages since it doesn't require extra PHP files to do so (only template for new page).
* SEO will be improved to work far better.