anthrax3 / cms-3

The Kooboo CMS source code.

New Kooboo is coming

Dear Kooboo users,

We hope this letter finds you all well.

As you may have noticed, Kooboo CMS hasn’t been updated for quite some time. Our last official version, Kooboo CMS 4.2.0, was released in August 2013, with a latest update of 3 months ago.

Recently, we noticed there’s an issue reported on github wondering whether this project is dead: Kooboo#305

Despite Mouhong’s reply in the post on behalf of Kooboo Team, we feel obliged to offer some sound explanations to all our users who might be wondering the same.

As the title of this letter indicates, Kooboo project is not dead; on the contrary, it’s being revitalized. By that we are not saying the old Kooboo is no good, but we are developing the next version of Kooboo to bring everything to a whole new level. As some people speculated in the above mentioned post, it’s going to be a big change, and we are basically overturning all old ways to recreate Kooboo 100% with revolutionary concept.

That being said, we’d like to give you a glance of some cool features that’s being introduced. Screenshots below are taken from prototype interface, so please bear with us if you find any inconsistencies or any parts lacking.

New Features

1. New Kooboo will be mainly composed of 4 sections: dashboard, domains, sites, and email:


SS1 - 4 sections of New Kooboo

2. Dashboard is newly introduced to facilitate convenient access to overall management of content, with the following look: 

SS2 - New Kooboo Dashboard

3. Here’s what it looks like when adding domain(s), which are necessary to create your own website(s): 

SS3 – adding domains

4. “Email” section is newly introduced for handling business emails with customized domains: 

SS4 - New Kooboo “Email” section

5. In “sites” section, you can easily start creating a new site by one click: 

SS5 - New Kooboo “Sites” section

6. While creating a new site, you need to set some basics first: 

SS6 - Basic setting for new site

7. Then there’s one of the most important features of New Kooboo – in site template, you can choose to convert a website you like into your own (as an option, not mandatory): 

SS7 - Convert a site you like into your own

8. When converting is done, you’ll get all the pages you want downloaded to local server, at your disposal: 

SS8 - Pages downloaded to local

9. After converting, you may need to edit the pages to make a website of your own. We adopted the concept of “What You Click Is What You Edit”. Clicking on an item can be used to express that a particular item is to be manipulated (deleted, renamed, etc.), just like what we do with email templates using email marketing tools. Or, if you prefer editing codes directly, there’s also code view: 

SS9 - Editing interface: the codes area can be either collapsed or expanded

What do you think?

As you can see, New Kooboo is no longer exclusively for use of professional programmers; instead, ordinary users who know very little about programming can make use of it to create a website at ease.

Now let’s take a guess, after seeing what we showed you, you may wonder (or seriously doubt): Can you guys actually pull it off? What about all the technical difficulties (1, 2, 3….) and copyright issues that could cause you pain? And most important of all – when’s the new version going to be released?

As much as we want to answer all questions with 100% precision, we all know that a big project like this is no easy task, and it will be most likely to end up disappointing if we try to set ourselves a deadline. However, apart from what are being shown to you, some fundamental progress has been made, and New Kooboo is very hopefully going to be released earlier 2015.

Thank you

Our team is currently devoting 100% of our effort to bring New Kooboo to life, as soon as possible. Despite full awareness of all the risks and possibilities, we believe we are on the right track, stepping out of our comfort zone and striving for excellence, and we are not going back.

Together, we are forever grateful for all the confidence our users render upon us and would like to ask you to give us a little more time and patience. It’s a promise that we make to you, our dear users, and to ourselves –

New Kooboo is coming

Kooboo Team

2015.2.13