Hi guys!
I've not posted here in a LONG time, but some people will remember me for introducing plugins into CuteNews and more specifically: eruin's AJ-Fork.
I apologise if I'm repeating everyone else in the thread here - it's got pretty big and I'm not in the mood to read them all right now. I've also not sen the code for about a year, so I don't know what features have been done in that time. So here's my thoughts:
* Database storage. MySQL, PostgreSQL & SQLite. Passwords in files is not a problem - almost every single PHP script has a password stored in this way as a flat file somewhere (usually in a config file, with permissions set so that it cant be editted).
* Front-end code separated from the core code. I've not seen the most recent CN code, but last time I looked it was a disgusting mix switching in and out of HTML all the time. This should not occur.
* Friendly URLs. Every blog system should be able to do this, IDs should NOT be in the URL in this case - especially if a database is supported (records can be moved to another server where the ID may have changed).
* Plugin/API calls throughout the code. This is a major feature of WordPress, Drupal, and many other big PHP scripts. Plugins bring in more developers and extra functionality. I saw that someone mentioned that all functions should be built in (e.g. auto-archive) - plugins are used to stop the core code getting bloated with unused features.
* Valid XHTML & CSS admin interface and news output
* RSS feeds built in (without having to set up a new template etc etc)
* Internationalisation + localisation. Preferably in a database, file-based if neccessary.
* Multiple categories per news item.
* Subcategories
Some ideas:
* Full podcasting support, with RSS encapsulation, file upload, etc
* Multiple authors per news item
* Multiple news sites run from one script (without messing with categories)
That's all for now. I might check back tomorrow some time 