Updates Log: The progress of Fast Edit
26th April 2011 -
Fast Edit v2.0's Admin panel now supports multiple (unlimited) users.
26th January 2011 -
Fast Edit v2.0's Sub-Page Manager 
has now been equipped with "mass-action" buttons to backup, restore, move or delete all sub-pages (of a particular category) in one go
.
You can review these alterations in the Fast Edit v2.0 demonstration.
24th January 2011 -
Given that page names are cleansed during new page creation I've now added a "menu alias" option to Fast Edit v2.0 which is just a cosmetic thing so you can type
what you want on a menu button instead of sticking with the default text that is set automatically.
Pages that have a "menu alias" set are easy to spot in the admin back-end; they're the ones with a red asterisk (*) alongside the title
and a hover tooltip that looks like this; 
.
See the latest improvements in the Fast Edit v2.0 demonstration.
19th January 2011 -
Lastnight I realised a flaw with the Page Manager's
page status and menu status toggle
switches; If top-level menu buttons are in any way removed from the menu, how will website visitors access the sub-pages?
Hmmm, they can't!
Not to worry though as I've devised a solution whereby only pages without sub-pages can now be hidden
from the menu, while pages with sub-pages are
instead locked and remain visible 
.
If no sub-pages exist, the pages in the Page Manager
can be hidden
as normal.
Deactivating 
a page now only
removes the active href link from the top-level menu button, while leaving the actual menu button present.
Sub-pages in the Sub-Page Manager
are not affected by these changes.
You can review these alterations in the Fast Edit v2.0 demonstration.
18th January 2011 -
Say hello to the Metadata Manager 
where you can help people find your site by setting default 
keyword and description metadata for the
entire website and custom 
metadata for specific
pages (if you so wish). If custom metadata is not
set for any page then the default metadata is
used instead.
The Metadata Manager is
optional so you can choose whether or not to use it in the main config file and, if enabled, will be accessible both via the website front-end and admin back-end.
See the Fast Edit v2.0 demonstration to follow development.
13th January 2011 -
All download packs have been updated to fix some "isset" errors in "fast_edit/fast_edit_config.php" and
"fast_edit/fast_edit_login.php" so you only need to replace these two files to correct the bug.
(Also documented in Bug Fixes/ChangeLog)
7th January 2011 -
Almost ready for release; web pages can now be moved 
around
into different menu groups in Fast Edit v2.0. I've also swopped two icons, so this:
now indicates "move" rather than "restore" (as it does in
Fast Edit v1.0). The "restore" icon in Fast Edit v2.0 is now represented by:
.
See the Fast Edit v2.0 demonstration.
4th January 2011 -
The latest addition to the Page Manager
and Sub-Page Manager
in Fast Edit v2.0 is a page status feature that allows the admin to "activate" 
and "deactivate"
web pages.
Unlike the menu visibility toggle, which merely hides
or shows 
pages in the menu,
while leaving them accessible to visitors via a known hyperlink,
the page status toggle hides the deactivated
pages from the menu AND makes their content unviewable to website visitors, displaying a (customisable) "Sorry, this page is unavailable" message instead.
The admin however can still view a
deactivated
page while logged in, making this feature ideal for private archiving or just for keeping pages unviewable while the site
administrator completes work on them.
See the Fast Edit v2.0 demonstration for reference.
2nd January 2011 -
Fast Edit v2.0 can now rename pages
.
See the Fast Edit v2.0 demonstration.
Please note, the main page heading, as printed into a new page during page creation, is hard-coded HTML so this will not change
automatically when a page is renamed. You will physically need to edit headings in renamed web page content as you would with other HTML content.
28th December 2010 -
Fast Edit v2.0 is well underway but needs a little more work to fix a few small bugs before it's officially released.
The main difference with this version over earlier ones is that it supports;
- Manual menu button ordering
- Sub-pages that automatically appear in the appropriate multi-level sub-menu
- Configurable page quota to limit the end user to the number of pages they can create on their site
- Configurable space quota to limit the end user to the amount of server space they can use for uploads
Further planned Fast Edit v2.0 features will also include;
- to do: a rename page function
- to do: a move page function
- to do: a page status toggle function
- to do: a metadata entry form?
13th December 2010 -
The download pack for Fast Edit v1.0 has been updated to fix some settings for the File Manager
-
(TinyBrowser v1.41) -
see "fast_edit/fast_edit_config.php" for changes.
(Also documented in Bug Fixes/ChangeLog)
10th November 2010 -
The download pack for Fast Edit v1.0 has been updated to fix a glitch in the Template Manager
,
where the save function also wiped the template backup too.
(Also documented in Bug Fixes/ChangeLog)
4th November 2010 -
Back-tracking slightly, I re-uploaded the CORRECT download pack for Fast Edit Mini. The one previously on the server contained interim code for a half-complete Fast Edit v1.0 and so didn't look too good or work as it should. The Fast Edit Mini download pack is now correct and accounted for. Sorry for the mistake chaps. What surprises me most is that at over 100 downloads, no-one had contacted me to point out the error :(
On a lighter note, Fast Edit v2.0's Sub-Page Manager is coming along nicely and a trial version should be out soon!
16th August 2010 -
Further modifications made to the ['REQUEST_URI'] fix from 14th July (below) based on user feedback. Thanks Sam.
(Also documented in Bug Fixes/ChangeLog)
14th July 2010 -
['REQUEST_URI'] fix added for redirects on IIS servers. This fixes the "looping" refreshes bug on redirects after login, logout and save actions.
(Also documented in Bug Fixes/ChangeLog)
11th July 2010 -
Thinking ahead to a future release of Fast Edit v2.0 (yes, advancing towards a whole version step up), I've started work on a Sub-Page Manager. With my most recent script changes, when new pages are created, instead of being saved to the root website folder, the end-user can select a sub-category to save them in. This is in preparation for a multi-level menu system, leaning strongly towards use of the All Level Navigation Menu from Dynamic Drive.
5th July 2010 -
A few tweeks have been made to the installation instructions so please refer to the "Installation" page for changes to steps 8, 9 and 10. Ammendments are included in the "readme.txt" file included with the download package.
30th June 2010 -
Added an option in the main config file to sort menu items either A-Z or by page creation time.
Using the latter, you can control the menu order by making new pages in the order you want the buttons to appear.
The Fast Edit website is now live and downloads of Fast Edit v1.0 and Fast Edit Mini (the very first [minimal] incarnation - see the 28th May 2010 log entry at the very bottom of this page) are available.
29th June 2010 -
Working on the Fast Edit website. The template is prepared so I just need to start populating it with content.
28th June 2010 -
Added an option to use a "basic" or "advanced" Page Manager as defined in the config file. Using the "basic" option disables the following features;
- Create a new
web page - Menu status switch to toggle menu visibility of a page (hide or show page in the menu)
- Delete
selected page
This would be in case you didn't want to give the end-user the ability to alter their default website page setup.
25th June 2010 -
Two custom title buttons 
have been added to the WYSIWYG toolbar of Fast Edit 
. These apply custom classes to the H1 [Title] and H2 [Sub-Title] tags so they can be targetted in the default website stylesheet. The custom buttons are just so an inexperienced end-user can identify what buttons create headings rather than be confused by [H1] and [H2] buttons.
A table button 
has also been added along with a right-click context menu with even more options!
24th June 2010 -
A paginator (jQuery Tablesorter Pager plugin) 
has been added to the Page Manager to keep the page listing shorter and neater. Default limit displays 10 items per page but this can be changed to 5, 15, 20, 25 or "All" for quick navigation by the end-user.
23rd June 2010 -
The save button 
has now been incorporated into the Fast Edit WYSIWYG toolbar. It's more logical in the context of the edit function and also allows a save to be performed in fullscreen edit 
mode.
22nd June 2010 -
The latest revision sees Fast Edit with a File Manager - (TinyBrowser v1.41) - accessible both through the insert image/media/link 
dialogues of the TinyMCE toolbar and also as standalone versions via the slide-down File Manager. Upload size limit and allowed file types are all customisable in the main config file.
I've also integrated a "code protect" plugin to allow custom code to be inserted on a page by the end-user.
21st June 2010 -
A simple Template Manager has now been included. This is just a textarea to edit a custom stylesheet for the site where Fast Edit is installed.
A typical setup might be to have a default stylesheet (containing all the critical CSS for the website) pulled away from the end-user so they can't wreck layout, and then this additional editable stylesheet stored within Fast Edit to give the initial web-designer a bit of control over the CSS they actually want to let the end-user have access to (seperate critial layout CSS from the less critical/basic styles CSS).
The Template Manager also has backup 
, backup preview 
and backup restore functions.
If you don't want the end-user to have access to an editable stylesheet, the Template Manager can be disabled in the config file and all reference to it is removed from the main Fast Edit admin bar.
20th June 2010 -
Cookies (jQuery Cookie plugin v1.0) now persist the open state of the Fast Edit window and Page Manager between actions or during navigation around other pages of the website.
16th June 2010 -
In the Page Manager , the very first backup is created immediately when the backup icon is pressed, but subsequent backups now prompt the confirm alert "Overwrite existing backup file?".
This is so the end-user can decide if they really do want to overwrite their previous backup instead of overwriting it by accident.
15th June 2010 -
The "Save Changes" icon is now only enabled when the Fast Edit window is open. This is to prevent the user from accidentally clicking it when no changes have been made (assuming that changes will be made once the WYSIWYG window is in view) which would otherwise falsely change the "Last Updated" timestamp.
14th June 2010 -
A page preview function for backups is now added to the Page Manager . Long URLs have also been removed to save space. Page titles instead now become hyperlinks to their associated pages.
12th June 2010 -
Menu status for each hidden page is now stored in a text file instead of renaming pages with a "hidden_" prefix.
11th June 2010 -
I've done a bit more work on the Page Manager of "Fast Edit" - it now has the following functions;
- Create a new web page
- Show last updated time of all pages
- Menu status switch to toggle menu visibility of a page (hide or show page in the menu)
- Backup selected page
- Show the time of last backup (if it exists)
- Restore selected page (if it exists)
- Delete selected page
- Clickable sorting table (jQuery Tablesorter plugin v2.0.3) headers
(The index/home page is hard coded to exclude some of the above functions. This is to give the site a "base" so it can't all be deleted by accident by the end-user.)
1st June 2010 -
Work begins on a Page Manager which currently just lists web pages from the website (from the root folder) and allows them to be deleted if no longer required. New pages can also be created . Names of new pages are based on end-user input via a text field.
A dynamic menu now replaces the previous static one. The menu script reads all the .php pages from the website root folder and automatically includes them in the menu, echoing them as an unordered list which can easily be styled using CSS.
28th May 2010 -
The birth of "Fast Edit" (aka Fast Edit Mini). Basically it's a script that allows a nominated site admin (the end-user defined with username and password in the config file) to edit web page content right there on the page (an "edit in page" tool). Editable region content is stored in text files in a sub-directory.
Only the page edit and save function currently exists. A WYSIWYG toolbar plugin (TinyMCE v3.3.7) has been incorporated to make things nice and easy for non-technical folk.