With the release of v2.0 this past June, web2project now implements a simple Update Checker. Just like WordPress or Drupal, it will periodically check web2project.net to see if a new version is available. If there is, it will display a message to the System Administrator along with a link to the download area of SourceForge.

With the release of v2.2 this past December, we added a simple module uploader that can validate and deploy modules from a simple web interface. At present, it’s been tested with numerous modules and works 100% but only handles zip files. In the next release, it should handle tarball’s and eventually even the phar file format available to PHP 5.3 users.

The goal behind these efforts is simple:

To provide our community the fastest possible way to know about updates and give them a simple way to deploy them quickly

When we make a release, we want the community to upgrade as quickly as possible. The altruistic fluffy-bunny reason is that we want users to experience as few bugs as possible. The cynical reason is that it wastes everyone’s time when we get bug reports on an issue that’s been closed for weeks or even months. The most tangible and important reason was demonstrated in the WordPress community recently:

Version 3.0.4 of WordPress, available immediately through the update page in your dashboard or for download here, is a very important update to apply to your sites as soon as possible because it fixes a core security bug in our HTML sanitation library, called KSES. I would rate this release as “critical.”

Source: WordPress 3.0.4 – Important Security Update

Within minutes of being released – granted, I saw the news on Twitter – the Admin Dashboard of web2project.net (a WordPress site) told me an update was available. Upgrading the site took a couple of button clicks and watching the result. It was quick, painless, and didn’t require shell, ftp, or anything else. All plugins worked flawlessly… and in fact, when new versions of plugins are available, the Dashboard tells you about that too.

Our goal is to get web2project to the same point. Whenever a new version of the core system – or supporting module – is available, the system should handle the rest.

Of course.. that means some of you need to stop hacking core.

Great question. The answer is best considered in stages:

• The earliest versions were basically dotProject with a new theme, some performance improvements due to some database fixes, and a permissions caching layer.
• By the time version 1.0 rolled around (June 2009), we had removed old/irrelevant code, added dozens of new features, added a module to core, and closed more issues than we care to consider.
• By the time we reached version 1.2 (December 2009), the differences were more obvious: We had removed 35% of the codebase (~65,000 lines of code), added extensive Unit Testing, improved performance by 20-50x on many screens, and began a complete refactoring of the core API to make it uniform and more easily extensible.
• More recently with the version 2.0 release (June 2010), the differences have grown further: Adding user-based timezone support, detailed subprojects functionality with data roll-ups, and extensive audit logging and security checking.
• By the version 2.4 release (August 2011), task dependencies – including subprojects – auto-update as task end dates shift. Further, less than 10% of the web2project code is carried from dotProject.
• In the coming version 3.0 release (est: November 2011), we have a full event-driven hook system to allow for modules to use pre/post- (create, update, load, and delete) actions. More importantly, we will support task/costcode-based budgeting and reporting. Finally, our GPL -> BSD license change will be complete.

So, is web2project just dotProject with a new theme?

We were… but now we’re something else entirely.

You can find all about it here:
http://forums.web2project.net/viewtopic.php?t=158

Big thanks go out to Bruce and DemVal for this amazing tool and work.

Pedro A.