SiteDirector v5 - In the works

We haven't posted in awhile, there have been so many things going on and not enough time to post about anything that would be helpful. I know I know, if you blog you've got to blog, or don't do it at all. Well we like our blog and we would like to blog more, but with all the various projects going on, blogging is the low man on the totem pole.

Anyway, to our topic. We are working on v5.0 of SiteDirector right now. We are very excited we have some strong things going on and you developers out there will be very excited.

Right now we are in the planning stages and soon to be moving into production. But we are putting our pens and pencils to the paper and making sure we cover all the bases of things we have missed in the past.

Our main goals for v5.0

1) Clean code that is EASY to follow and customize: We want SiteDirector to be very developer friendly. More so than in the past. We will be breaking down the pages even more so it will be easy to add additional fields and additional customizations. This is what will make SiteDirector really appealing to even more developers. We had discussed frameworks, but decided against it, even though we like frameworks ourselves, we have found that many developers find it easier to work with procedural code and it makes for easier changes.

2) Easy Skinning - We are going to make the front end very skinnable and the CSS/XHTML will be much easier to manipulate as well as change out. Just swap out CSS files and the whole site makes it's change.

3) Finally the catalog building. We have ourselves been dealing directly with online stores to find the bumps in the road, the things that slow you down in managing your store. We are designing a much more fluid console area that will speed up management and improve best practices.

Some hints: Ajax, drag and drop, flyout windows, better promotions..... more to come!