Welcome to the first Weaver's Bites of 2025! I hope that you had a wonderful holiday and New Years. I honestly never really stopped working (I did take a few days). I have so much to accomplish in 2025, especially in the first half of the year. I thought it would be fun to review everything that I am working on. I have 5 projects that I have been working on.
Unless you have been under a rock, you know that I have been working extremely hard on Total CMS 3. The first beta was shipped to users at the Stacks Summit last year. My goal is to get it officially released at this year's Stacks Summit (more on the Summit later). T3 is a complete overhaul of the entire system. It's better in so many ways. Beta testers have been building some really awesome things with it already. Some project designers are starting to build templates with it as well. It's am super excited for the future of Total CMS 3.
On a related note, I am doing something that I have never actually done before. I am working with the team at The Greener Camping Club to rebuild their website with Foundation 6 and Total CMS 3. While I have build many small sites with T3 for myself, there is no substitute for building a mature website with your own tool. When it's done, we should have a good flagship website to help us see the power of Total CMS. And it will help me strategize the next major version of Foundation for Stacks app. If you are in the UK and enjoy camping, Gary and Kevin are great guys and have something nice going on here.
A couple of months ago, I asked if anyone would be interested in me starting a hosting company. Based on the response, that is an overwhelming YES! I have been working hard at building the infrastructure and software that I will need to make this a reality. My goal is to make a high quality host that is easy to work with and has some modern features and publishing workflows I have been using for years. I already have a couple of victims, I mean volunteers, to help me test things out. I think that this will be a really great addition to the community.
The Stacks Summit is tentatively scheduled for April 11-13th. I have not really double checked for conflicts with a couple of the key stake holders. I know we all want to see Stacks app in its full glory (more on that in a second). I literally just sent those dates to Isaiah but pencil them in. I will have tickets for sale later this month. While I already have some speakers lined up, I am always in the lookout for new speakers. It's fun to see new faces and learn things from a different perspective. Everyone has something to teach, even you! 😉
So the last thing on this 2025 list is obviously helping to get Stacks app ready for primetime. It has come such a long way since the first preview builds after Stacks Summit 2024. If you have been joining the Friday hangouts, you have gotten to hear some more details on how things are going. Here are some notes…
It's fast! Open a project and almost immediately get to work.
The workflow of how to app is organized is greatly refined from the early preview builds.
The new Layouts engine is going to be game changing.
I am very excited about the Theme API. It's going to open up an entire new world for us to build with themes again.
Remember that all of your existing stacks will continue to work with Stacks app. Foundation 6 is already working great. I am working on a new version of the F6 theme that will negate the need for use to need Site Styles! But I will also be working on porting some of our beloved NCD themes to Stacks as well. And the best part is that they will all be compatible with Foundation stacks.
I hope that helps paint a picture of how 2025 is shaping up. This is going to be an epic year. Now let’s dive into some great posts on the WS Community over the past month…
oEmbed is the Deal of the Week. This is a great way to embed components from tons of online services with just a URL.
I shipped Total CMS 3 beta 16 on New Year’s Eve. It's packed full of really big features and fixes. One of the surprise features was a really awesome Twig Playground.
Dan just wanted a close button in an F6 Lightbox. Sounds simple right? It is when you know how! Foundation 6 is very modular which is one reason why it's so flexible and powerful.
Joost wanted a stack that can produce barcodes. While one does not exist. Josh jumped in with two feet and is developing one! I have added this to my T3 todo list for the future. It will go well with the QR Code twig extension that I built.
Harry wanted to know how to de-index from Google. Josh jumped in to save the day with some great advice.
I created a pretty cool highlighted text animation. It’s a great example of Foundation 6 swatches allowing you to create anything you can imagine.
Easing Wizard is a very cool easing tool. It’s more on the advanced side. But it allows you to create custom animation timing functions that could be used in swatches.
I shipped an update to the Call to Action stacks that adds support for Google Analytics 4 events.
Thank you for being a member of the WS Community. I know that the last couple of years has been like driving into the unknown sometimes. This year, we are going to come bursting out of the tunnel at full speed. Are you ready for it? I am 1000% ready for it.
Before I go, just a side note that the live stream this week is going to be on Thursday. I have an electrician coming by tomorrow and I won't be able to go live. However, I don't want to skip this week, so we will just push it back a day. See you then!
Cheer,
Joe