A life according to ImpressPages

[dbleisch]

I still can't believe that a great CMS like ImpressPages with such a good, solid concept is no longer being developed ...

I have evaluated dozens of other solutions and I have not seen a comparable solution for simple small to medium sized websites. Most likely ApostropheCMS would go in this direction, but it requires Node.js. Concrete5 has been my preferred solution for medium sized websites, but in the last 2 years its further development has raised more questions than ensuring consistent improvements and bugfixes.

Some of the strengths of ImpressPages

• Simple and user friendly
• Incredibly handy & flexible
• Low threshold (simple PHP application)
• Lightweight and high performance
• Internationalization
• Link validation and normalization of internal links in rich text content
• All necessary functions
• Data model with pagetree and content objects on Json basis
• Developer-friendly

Of course, there would also be some potential for improvement such as

• Improved handling of multilingualism
• Copy-Paste for contents
• The aesthetics of the backend
• Solid integration wizards e.g. for slideshows
• Bug fixes

But to invest currently in this project would be a bad investment and without perspective for future updates

How about a developer group porting the whole thing to Laravel (maybe with vue.js)? That would again be on a future-oriented technology, would be based on broader standards, would appeal to a larger developer community.

How about crowdfunding? I would be willing to invest a few thousand Euros myself. Are there experienced Laravel developers interested in refactoring this project under MIT license? Are there other users of ImpressPages who would be willing to participate or contribute financially?

[azanov]

@dbleisch You might have seen my comment from some time ago (https://github.com/impresspages/ImpressPages/issues/888#issuecomment-531586414)

I'd definitely be interested working on the project. For the past years my focus has been on the frontend, so my experience with Laravel is limited. Nevertheless, I can give it a try too.

[alaneku]

I am not a programmer, just a user. It is a great shame this project is not being developed or maintained - the impresspages market place web page has not loaded properly for months.

It would be great if this project could continue in some way.

[dbleisch]

Thanks for your reply! Let's wait and see if there are more interested people :-)

[demolaokesola]

I'd be interested too. I have useful experience with Vue.js and Laravel and I want to contribute.

I really enjoyed using Impresspages and I would love to keep it alive in one form or another.

On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 9:30 AM Daniel Bleisch notifications@github.com wrote:

Thanks for your reply! Let's wait and see if there are more interested people :-)

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[rogboyce]

I'm not a programmer either, but I would like to see it keep going too. I've tried many CMSs over the years and none have the ease and simplicity as ImpressPages.

I recently tried zenario but found it way to cluttered an interface with too many options and choices and steps to complete things.

And then there's microweber, don't get me started on that! I've just completed a project with it and it seemed like I was having to fight with it all the way to get it to do what I wanted. I had to include numerous CSS overrides (!important) into my theme CSS, and it behaves a bit cranky at times in my view. And it does annoying things like when you try to centre a paragraph or even just delete a line to add a paragraph to the previous one it automatically inserts a span around the text with it's own inline styles which your stuck with! ... a different font family, font size etc. I won't be using it again.

As for Concrete5, I remember trying that before I discovered ImpressPages and I wasn't impressed at all with it. Maybe it's improved and simplified things since then, but when I tried it I didn't enjoy using it as customising it was much more hard work than it should have been.

I really hope ImpressPages will be revived soon as for me it's the best.

The only thing I would add is that I'm not sure about laravel, I've never been able install on shared hosting anything in laravel. So, if IP does get revived, it would be great if it could retain the option to install it the simple old-fashioned way by just uploading and opening in a browser.

[eazuka]

I still can't believe that a great CMS like ImpressPages with such a good, solid concept is no longer being developed ...

I have evaluated dozens of other solutions and I have not seen a comparable solution for simple small to medium sized websites. Most likely ApostropheCMS would go in this direction, but it requires Node.js. Concrete5 has been my preferred solution for medium sized websites, but in the last 2 years its further development has raised more questions than ensuring consistent improvements and bugfixes.

Some of the strengths of ImpressPages

• Simple and user friendly
• Incredibly handy & flexible
• Low threshold (simple PHP application)
• Lightweight and high performance
• Internationalization
• Link validation and normalization of internal links in rich text content
• All necessary functions
• Data model with pagetree and content objects on Json basis
• Developer-friendly

Of course, there would also be some potential for improvement such as

• Improved handling of multilingualism
• Copy-Paste for contents
• The aesthetics of the backend
• Solid integration wizards e.g. for slideshows
• Bug fixes

But to invest currently in this project would be a bad investment and without perspective for future updates

How about a developer group porting the whole thing to Laravel (maybe with vue.js)? That would again be on a future-oriented technology, would be based on broader standards, would appeal to a larger developer community.

How about crowdfunding? I would be willing to invest a few thousand Euros myself. Are there experienced Laravel developers interested in refactoring this project under MIT license? Are there other users of ImpressPages who would be willing to participate or contribute financially?

Hello @dbleisch, having used ImpressPages for many years and countless projects, i would say i know ImpressPages in and out to the point of discussing with the core developers on possibility of taking over maintenance and keep the project going, because like you, i believe this application framework is too awesome to die. #891

Before settling with ImpressPages, i was using Concrete 5 which is another nice CMS but my bias view don't consider them same, i rate ImpressPages higher 😄. I also have experience with Laravel.

I agree with you that we should put efforts into reviving this project as a community. I have actually started efforts in that regard and hinted that in another thread here: #891 but due to other reasons, i have not been able to sustain the development.

Without going into much details at this time, i would say i don't think porting to Laravel is a good idea. That will kill some of the awesome features you already highlighted above like the Lightweight and high performance, easy learning curve for developers. ImpressPages is a framework in it own right and we can sustain that and make it better. I think the Laravel route will tilt the project towards being convoluted. While i use Laravel for some projects based on clients request and the digital agency where i part-time, it is not my primary framework for reasons.

Please note that this is just my opinion and suggestion. Using your word, i would suggest we continue on the Low threshold (simple PHP application) route, upgrade the minimum PHP version compatibility, and discuss areas that needs improvement and new features, etc.

Just my feedback at this point.

[eazuka]

If you looking for something similar to Impresspages and also been ported to Laravel, then i think Microweber is it https://microweber.org. It has it own unique features but yet can't be compared with Impresspages.

[rogboyce]

eazuka has the right idea I believe with this advice:

"continue on the Low threshold (simple PHP application) route, upgrade the minimum PHP version compatibility, and discuss areas that needs improvement and new features, etc."

Excellent suggestions.

I know of another CMS that I wont name here that I've used a lot in the past but which lost some of it's simplicity and ease of use after it's development was taken over and continued by others. I hope that can be avoided here ...and as the saying goes: The simplest solutions are usually the best!

[dbleisch]

I was very pleased about the reactions and contributions to my ticket. It shows me that others share the impression and the importance of Impresspages with us. There are many of you who are technically more competent than me and I have no ambitions to take a leading role here. I just wanted to acknowledge my contribution to Impresspages and see if I can contribute to the maintenance and further development in any way.

I can understand your point of view @eazuka regarding laravel and I also think a preservation of the existing framework is a valid option. But I wonder how the longer-term development would be guaranteed?

How much effort do you estimate for an initial update of the current IP-version and who would be willing to maintain it in the longer term? As I already mentioned, I am willing to contribute financially or try to initiate a crowdfunding.

For me it is clear that a change to laravel would also change basic properties of imprint pages. My only impression is that the longer-term perspective would be more sustainable on this basis.

[azanov]

@dbleisch There have already been some efforts to increase the compatibility of the code with the latest PHP versions (https://github.com/impresspages/ImpressPages/pull/893).

I would agree with @eazuka that an update to Laravel is not a must (at least not short-term). The core code is pretty clean easy to understand.

Looking at the issues and also thinking about the problems I have faced with my customers, I think the first step we should take is making sure IP and the extensions offered on the marketplace are fully compatible with PHP 7.X.

After this, I see two things that we need to do:

1. Collect feature suggestions from the community (most people should be registered users on the impresspages.org website, so the core-team might help us to do a proper mailing).
2. Identify which parts of IP require technical upgrades and estimate the effort and the skills required.

[alaneku]

hi I have IP3xx on my website, which is in desperate need of updating (content rather than function). So I am looking for a new CMS to do a new website.

I have half a dozen CMSs on my localhost including IP5. For me, the interface and ease of use of IP5 is in a class of its own. Some of the others, it seem to me, must have been written by "megalomaniacs"

I have php 7.2 on my computer and I think that the IP "menu plugin" does not work properly, so I don't want to risk using IP on my new website. Great shame.

[azanov]

@alaneku as a short term solution, you can use the code in https://github.com/icampana/ImpressPages it should be running well on PHP 7.2

[rogboyce]

Not sure if it's already possible but the ability to change the login admin directory name easily for security would be a good idea.

[azanov]

I have created a Trello-Board (https://trello.com/b/PNxuIDrQ/impresspages-revival-roadmap) so there's some progress. Let me know who would like to join the team, so I can invite you.

You can also just join the board yourself (temporarily) using this link: https://trello.com/invite/b/PNxuIDrQ/5971ac8ae5d6560b7d87b1dcbb895f12/impresspages-revival-roadmap

[dbleisch]

Great, thanks alot!

[azanov]

I also stumbled upon https://paperbits.io/ recently. The UI for editing the pages is pretty fluent. One downside I see is that you have to manually save the content and rebuild your website to publish it. Nevertheless, there might be ways to leverage it for ImpressPages.

[dbleisch]

Wow, very interesting and promising. At first look maybe almost too extensive in features, but incredibly strong and clean interface.

I also looked at some solutions that are more in the direction of headless CMS and static page generator.

TineCMS tinacms.org

Surreal CMS surrealcms.com

AppDrag Cloud CMS & PageBuilder appdrag.com

[azanov]

These look interesting too. I think the amount of features should be dictated by the main target group the CMS is created for. ImpressPages always been a CMS for small websites.

I have clicked around in paperbits for some more time and even tried recreating an existing website with it. Despite a few bugs (some strange behavior after removing all the demo content and uploads not working on the local demo), it's pretty solid.

The thing I probably like most about it, is that everything is dynamic. This means it's no longer required to manually develop layouts - you can use the same drag & drop editor for it.

What clearly comes too short at the moment is the ability to build page parts based on existing data (e.g. auto generation of previews for the blog)

[eazuka]

The thing I probably like most about it, is that everything is dynamic. This means it's no longer required to manually develop layouts - you can use the same drag & drop editor for it.

This is already possible with IP. With ImpressPages imagination is actually the limit. Even IPGrid could be made dynamic. I'm not speaking based on posibilities, i actually did it on a project, dynamic layout with drag n drop, dynamic grid.

[azanov]

@eazuka Even it is possible to build the whole page dynamically, it would be difficult to reuse the same layout across multiple pages (in a way that you can also update it smoothly)

[demolaokesola]

I'd like to join the team. I'll be willing to help in anyway.

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 2:24 PM Pavel Azanov notifications@github.com wrote:

I have created a Trello-Board ( https://trello.com/b/PNxuIDrQ/impresspages-revival-roadmap) so there's some progress. Let me know who would like to join the team, so I can invite you.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/impresspages/ImpressPages/issues/899#issuecomment-613440032, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACEOWXZF36H7PXO2ST3URR3RMRPXBANCNFSM4LWMYJ5Q .

[azanov]

@demolaokesola Simply join the Trello-Board first

[demolaokesola]

Yeah. Seen the Trello Board, but don't I need an invite link to join?

On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 6:25 PM Pavel Azanov notifications@github.com wrote:

@demolaokesola https://github.com/demolaokesola Simply join the Trello-Board first

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[azanov]

@demolaokesola the link is in the comment above: https://github.com/impresspages/ImpressPages/issues/899#issuecomment-613440032

[demolaokesola]

@demolaokesola the link is in the comment above: #899 (comment)

Thanks, I'm in now. I was replying from email digest and the link didn't show up there for some reason.

[azanov]

A few days ago I have updated an IP installation for a customer and included the patches from the PR https://github.com/impresspages/ImpressPages/pull/893. One problem I stumbled upon, is that it requires composer (for auto-loading). A small patch solved it though. No other issues detected until now.

[eazuka]

Of course, there would also be some potential for improvement such as

• Improved handling of multilingualism

Hello @dbleisch, with regards to your statement on improvements, can you give some further details on what you mean by Improved handling of multilingualism. How do you think multilingualism should be handled better?

[alaneku]

for me there is one very big difference in the meaning of "multilingualism" 1) a system that gives the possibility to offer different languages ie menu structures, and menu switches as the old IP used to do. and 2) a system that offers the above + attempts to do the actual language translation as well.

We all know what api stands for.................................

Unless you work in the oil & gas sector then api stands for "American Petroleum Institute"

or if you happen to work in the pharmaceutical industry api means "active pharmaceutical ingredient"

To cut a long story short, artificial language translation systems of specialised (and here I use the English spelling of specialised rather than the American spelling of specialized) are not only useless but can make the user of such systems look ridiculous amongst their peers.

I need a system than offers 1) above and we do our own translations of the language.

eazuka, you made a good point multilingualism should be defined.

[dbleisch]

The most important need for an adaptation I see in the assignment of pages with different languages. Here a selection of alternative pages from a page tree or the creation of new alternative pages via wizard would be very helpful for our end customers ...

This is how concrete5 solves the subject

[azanov]

@eazuka, @dbleisch In ImpressPages the content in different languages is strictly separated. This on the one hand allows to build different versions of the website for different languages, on the other hand, however, it is much more difficult to manage.

You have to switch between the languages and manually update content and page structure. A better approach would be keeping the structure of the page across multiple languages and only change the content.

Until now, I always been creating the whole website in one language, copying the pages into another another language and translating everything. Afterwards you can only hope that the content will not change often, because you'll need to make updates to same pages in different languages manually. The more languages you support, the more pages you'll have to update.

[dbleisch]

Same in concrete5. It just allows the user to connect related pages in other languages much easier. I also prefer this approach.

[eazuka]

It's been more than 6yrs since i last used C5, so I guess i have to set it up to get a sense /refresher on how things work now.

@azanov do you also support the C5 approach as suggested by @dbleisch

Also, what should the minimum base PHP 7.x version be? at the moment i have it tested and running on 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4 haven fixed a minor error that was raised on PHP 7.4, everything works well so far on my test environment. I'm thinking since PHP 8 would most likely be released by end of this year, maybe we make PHP 7.4 minimum and upgrade the codebase to PHP 7.4. what are your takes on this?

[flakerimi]

I have started, github.com/urbanway/construct and more like using and updating for internal needs, it has php7 support and it does the job, A new laravel Vue impresspages is something I can contribute, I would check squarespace.com they did great job on drag and drop, an opensource 'clone' is indeed helpful. Let me know if we are starting one.

[HeinOpal]

@alaneku as a short term solution, you can use the code in https://github.com/icampana/ImpressPages it should be running well on PHP 7.2

I have a nonprofit girls football team web site running on Impress Pages 5.0.3 and I am not able to work with it as it seems to have issues with php7.2. I receive the error message "assert(): Calling assert() with a string argument is deprecated in /data/web/1/000/014/211/480828/htdocs/Ip/Internal/Revision.php:44" and I don't know how to fix it. After having googled a bit I found this thread and some others about ImpressPages beeing dead. :( That is really very sad!

All comments and ideas here are highly appreciated and as far as I understood staying on ImpressPages is not a smart move. I checked the suggested alternatives and haven't made up my mind yet. But it seems to be a lot of work to redo the web site. :( In my case I'd prefer to fix my current installation to run and be maintainable for the time beeing and to move to a new CMS. Therfore I would like to ask you if you would like to give me a helping hand:

First: I found a fixed version at "https://github.com/icampana/ImpressPages" which seems to work with PHP 7.2. I wasn't able to figure out what I need to do to upgrade my installation accordingly. Does anybody want to point me to the right direction to update my installation? Will downloading the files an copying to the installation directories do the trick?

Second: Has anyone experiences in migrating a web site from Impress Pages to any of the mentioned CMS with limited effort? Or maybe moving to a static web site generator?

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

[unyfolk]

@HeinOpal maybe i can help you. How can I contact you?

[HeinOpal]

@HeinOpal maybe i can help you. How can I contact you?

Thank you @unyfolk. I added my mail to my profile.

[HeinOpal]

Thank you very much @unyfolk for your support.

All I needed to do was to change the file /Ip/Internal/Revision.php in Line 44 and in Line 75: assert('$pageId > 0'); to: assert($pageId > 0);

The error message disappeared. My ImpressPages now runs on PHP7.2. So how about crowdfunding like @dbleisch mentioned? I would like to participate and contribute.

[smitti]

It´s on me, I love Impresspages and I don´t want to let it go. But I´m not a developer. How can I support you?

[kijanilabs]

Hi everyone. I've been working on a fork of ImpressPages for a few weeks now. I bumped into ImpressPages sometime last year and I was quite impressed with it. Unfortunately it seemed to have been abandoned.

While refactoring its code to work with PHP 7.3 I got an inkling into why it may have been abandoned:

1. It looks like the original developers were attempting to build a Headless CMS of some sort. Some of it's core controllers spit JSON status codes.
2. They wanted to create a PHP MVC framework.
3. There is a rudimentary "Payments" & Ecommerce modules in its core. They wanted to bundle Ecommerce features into its core.

These are rather broad goals that may have derailed its development.

The fork that I am working on is called Klang CMS. You can follow its development here: http://www.tuxedosoft.com/klang-cms/ . I mostly work on it on my spare time.

It can't handle ImpressPages plugins that you directly download from the ImpressPages marketplace but if you have some programming chops you can rename the IP plugin's namespace to that of "Klang" and reference all the objects in its code to call the methods under the "Klang" namespace.

PS: Never mind about my English...

[mrx]

@kijanilabs, There was a repository of the front end, which had been separated from the CMS. Also a multi tenant version of I.P., both have been removed.

Will you be setting up a repository for your fork?

[rogboyce]

Hi everyone. I've been working on a fork of ImpressPages for a few weeks now. I bumped into ImpressPages sometime last year and I was quite impressed with it. Unfortunately it seemed to have been abandoned.

That looks really good! I'll definitely be trying it on my next project. Well done. (keep it simple to install and use please!)

[HeinOpal]

Hello everyone, I realy like the message from @kijanilabs telling that he is working on a successor of ImpressPages. Then I checked the mentioned URL and ws forwared to https://www.tuxedosoft.com/demotic-cms/. So Demotic is obviously the name of the successor and there is a post at https://www.tuxedosoft.com/demotic-cms/how-move-impresspages-503-demotic-cms-10/ describing "How To Move From ImpressPages 5.0.3 To Demotic CMS 1.0". I will definetely try this out! Kudos to @kijanilabs.

Before trying to migrate I would like to fix my current PHP 7.4 problem and any help on this will be greatly appreciated.The current error msg is: "array_key_exists(): Using array_key_exists() on objects is deprecated. Use isset() or property_exists() instead in /data/web/1/000/014/211/480828/htdocs/Ip/Internal/Translations/JsonLoader.php:48array_key_exists(): Using array_key_exists() on objects is deprecated. Use isset() or property_exists() instead in /data/web/1/000/014/211/480828/htdocs/Ip/Internal/Translations/JsonLoader.php:48"

So I navigated to JsonLoader.php and found

    $textDomain = new TextDomain($messages);
    if (**array_key_exists('', $textDomain))** {
        if (isset($textDomain['']['plural_forms'])) {
            $textDomain->setPluralRule(
                PluralRule::fromString($textDomain['']['plural_forms'])
            );
        }

As I don´t have enough knowledge on PHP I don´t know the correct replacement here. I am neither familiar with isset() nor property_exists(). Maybe anyone could help with this, maybe @unyfolk you have a solution for me again. I don´t know if the fix here will do the trick and my web site will then run smoothly again or if there are another x error msgs coming afterwards. I just think it is worth a try. If you tried the trick and know allready that there will be a lot more error msgs to come I would be happy about a notification.

Thank you in advance.

[gorn]

Demotic https://www.tuxedosoft.com/demotic-cms/ seeems to be fork of ImpressPages. Does anyone know where it has public repo? AFAIK it shoul at least publish code, becaseu of GNU licence.