If you were at the WUC last month, most of this will likely just be recap for you. But for those of you who weren't this should be pretty interesting. Now that we're past Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and half way through Cyber-Monday people are starting to prepare for the new year. If you're a WebGUI user then part of preparing for the new year is finding out where WebGUI is going.

The easy place to start is in features. Everybody wants to know what shiny pretties to expect going forward. While this is not a comprehensive list, it does indeed cover some of the bigger todo items for WebGUI in 2008. We'll be introducing a gallery asset which can display photos and videos. We'll have a map asset that ties into Google maps. The commerce system and user interface are getting a much needed makeover. And we'll be introducing a new killer app called the Thingy. (Use the link above for screen shots and longer descriptions of each.)

In an effort to reach out to more people, Plain Black will be sponsoring a WebGUI exhibit booth at several trade shows this year. We'll have a booth at Scale, GTS, and OSCON. We'll also be presenting at those, and probably a few others like YAPC. And we'll likely also be in attendance at even a few more, like HostingCon.

We're also going to unveil a few new products in 2008, though at this point I can only talk about three of them. The first two are books. One is the WebGUI Developers Guide, which will cover how to program for WebGUI. It will discuss such things as the WebGUI request cycle, how the session object is used, and writing plugins for the various WebGUI plugin points. The next is a primer called WebGUI Lite, which will show you how to actually remove features from WebGUI, to pair it down to a much easier to use subset of features. It will include topics like configuring custom UI levels, pulling out complex assets, and hiding versioning and workflow. The third product will be a new line of low end hosting for WebGUI, that takes all of the tips and tricks of WebGUI Lite and puts it into a low cost hosting package, so that people that can't currently benefit from WebGUI, will be able to. 

Last year at the WUC I said that the WebGUI 7.x API would remain backward compatible until at least 2009. But, we're going to extend that to at least January 1, 2010. Most CMS companies break their API's with each new release. We've put out five releases (7.0 - 7.4) already, with the same API, so that plug-ins written for 7.0 will still work in 7.4, and we plan to continue that until at least 2010. Do keep in mind that there is still a disclaimer on the commerce system. No API guarantee there.

And finally we're going to adopt a new release strategy in 2008. WebGUI 7.5.0 will be released in late January or early February. However, it will be released as a beta and will continue getting new features as we put out releases. Meanwhile 7.4 will continue getting bug fixes and will remain our stable release. 7.5 will be installed on plainblack.com so you'll have some idea of how stable it is. Our hosting will be divided between beta and stable options, so each client can decide if they covet new features or stability more. About June of 2008 we'll put a feature freeze on 7.5, and sometime in July we'll make 7.5 the new stable release. Then 7.5 will keep getting patches while we put 7.6 out as beta. In December of 2008, a feature freeze will be placed on 7.6 so we can release it as stable sometime in January. And so on. So instead of just a couple of months of bug fixes like we have now, each new release will have at least 6 months of bug fixes for the stable version. And also, those people who want the latest and greatest feature set, will have that available to them, but those who put stability above all else, will have that as well.

So that's a brief glimpse into the future of Plain Black and WebGUI for 2008. I hope that aids you in your planning for 2008. I'm looking forward to it. 2008 will be a great year for both WebGUI and Plain Black.