So … yeah, it’s been a little bit, hasn’t it?
I know I committed to write more and to build in public this year. And it’s been March since my last post.
But things have been a bit busy.
At work, we just finished a monumental task: making sure our entire website (including PDFs) is accessible ahead of the DOJ deadline (which has unfortunately been pushed back a year).
And as for my personal projects, including the ArtisanPack UI suite, there’s just been a lot of work and not much time to write about them.
Until now.
Let’s take a deep dive into what I’ve been working on these past couple of months.
ArtisanPack UI
So I have spent a lot of time working on all of the packages for ArtisanPack UI (surprise, surprise).
Here’s an update on all of the packages.
Visual Editor
The visual editor has taken a lot longer than I thought it would.
Seriously. At the start of the year, I thought it would be ready by the end of February.
Yet here we are in the middle of May, and I have to admit that it’s still not ready for showtime.
It’s not because of a lack of effort. I’ve spent so much time trying to get this to work.
Initially, I found a lot of success working on a Livewire version of it, but then ran into issues with drag-and-drop blocks in various ways that just wouldn’t work with Livewire and Alpine JS.
So then I had to pivot to React, which then required working on a React components package (more on that later) before I restarted work on the visual editor.
And then from there, not even Claude could help me get what I was looking for. So now I’ve been working on using some of the WordPress packages for the block and site editors and making changes to address some of the complaints about the editors.
The goal for now is just to get something working for version 1, and then slowly start making it my own from version 1.1 onwards.
Maybe by the end of the month, this package will finally be off my plate. Magic Eight Ball, however, says don’t count on it.
Adding React and Vue
Speaking of React and Vue, ArtisanPack UI now supports both frameworks in addition to Livewire.
I always wanted to add support for both of them, but my main priority has been getting packages that Digital Shopfront and Keystone CMS need out the door first. So when I discovered that I would need to use React for the visual editor package, it was the perfect time to make the pivot.
Honestly, the move was surprisingly easy. The Livewire UI Components package provided a great base as an example, and Claude was able to take that and convert those components into React and Vue components in about a week, way shorter than it would have taken me to do it by hand.
The more challenging part was realizing that other packages would also need to support React and Vue for this to work. Packages like the Analytics and SEO packages included Livewire components that needed to be duplicated in their React and Vue counterparts.
Again, Claude was amazing at making that happen pretty quickly, and in less than a week, those packages were updated.
Security Packages
Finally, I’ve been working on updating the security package.
A while back, I had Junie run an audit of the package and identify areas for improvement, especially since it’s just a package that provides PHP functions for sanitizing and validating data. Junie came back with a ton of new features to add, and foolishly, I added them.
But before I released version 2.0, I realized that there was too much in this package and asked Claude for its thoughts. And as expected, it said that it was, in fact, too much and recommended splitting it into seven new packages.
So it sat there on the sidelines for a long time. That is, until last week, when I realized I would need those new packages as part of Keystone CMS.
Once again, it was Claude to the rescue. It was able to pull the code from the unreleased version 2.0 of the security package into the proper subpackages. And it was all working within a couple of days.
At this point, I still want to test it with Keystone CMS more before releasing all of them into the wild.
JMWD Keystone CMS
And speaking of Keystone CMS, I’m building an internal CMS I’ll use for client websites. It’s going to be built specifically for small businesses and their needs, whether it’s lead generation, ecommerce or anything else they might need.
Right now, it’s still very much in the early stages of development. Still, I’m using it as the testing ground for so many of the ArtisanPack UI packages, including the Visual Editor and CMS Framework packages.
I hope to be able to share more about it as I really start digging into building it up, especially now that many of the other packages around it are complete.
JMWD Designs
Finally, II’vealso been working on a simple app that will essentially show off the available starter sites and templates for the Small Business Digital Foundation Pro service that I’ll be offering once I get the new Jacob Martella Web Design website up and running.
The app lets users browse various website types and designs and choose any template they want, not just the service’s starter design. And there’s a customizer so a user can choose color schemes and font pairings and preview them in real time.
I’m hoping this will be a good marketing tool for the service as it can provide real-time feedback for prospective customers and clients. But time will tell if my thinking is correct.
An Updated Timeline
So now for the big question: what’s the updated timeline for everything to be available?
Well … I don’t have a great answer.
I’m really hoping that I’ve got the visual editor in a great place by the end of the month. And I would like to get a version of the Keystone CMS running for the ArtisanPack UI website by the end of June.
But if I’ve learned anything during my time as a web developer, it’s that trying to nail down an exact timeline for something, especially for things as big as what I’m building, is a frustrating exercise.
So I’m doing what I do best: just working as hard as I can to make it all happen.
