Today SiteTree becomes officially part of the history. Don't worry, I am not going to say my goodbyes to the project, far from it! This post is about a breath of fresh air: I gave the plugin a new name, and from now on it will be distributed in two versions, Pro and Lite. The introduction of the much anticipated Gutenberg Blocks is another big novelty. But let's start from the timeless question: "Why?"
Flock can easily turn out to be a companion for those just starting out blogging as well as a complete answer for anyone seeking minimalism. Despite its being essential, it offers an acceptable degree of customisability. It is clean, functional and content-centric. Flock is a theme for personal blogs.
Having to deal with spam comments like any other owner of a WordPress blog has to, I said to myself: "Luigi, do you know that the time is ripe for a new project?" Not that the WordPress community was lacking of an anti-spam solution for bloggers, but as you know, freedom comes from the possibility to choose. In other words, there are never too many alternatives. So today I'm happy to introduce to you the first version of a plugin that weeks ago blocked its first spam comment on this very site. Welcome RedBrick!
Renaming a key of an associative array in PHP is not a matter of magic, usually we can do it by assigning the value associated to the old key, to a new key, and unsetting the old element. But things complicate slightly when we want to rename a key without causing the elements of the array to shuffle. In such a case, native PHP functions alone aren't enough. Creativity has to absolutely come into play.
Even though it has been an experience lasted only a few months, developing add-ons for SiteTree has been very pleasant. As we know, sooner or later everything draws to an end, but that isn't always bad. I write this because the last add-on left too, Multilingual Leaf, has been incorporated into SiteTree.
Today is the day. SiteTree turns into a premium plugin to all intents and purposes. As disclosed about a month ago, this change of course is the offspring of my current financial situation, but also of the will to give a future to the project.
I guess you wouldn't have expected such a drastic change of course. Me neither. I have always been of the idea that the freemium business model was the one that best suited my way of thinking, and I am still convinced of that, but sometimes needs change rapidly, and when it does happen, action has to be taken proactively.
Do you like the new icon? The slight refresh hasn't changed its meaning — something I will tell you about some other time — but it adds-up to an update that introduces in SiteTree two functionalities previously exclusive to Demux Leaf: the ability to produce a multi-page Site Tree and that of creating collections of XML sitemaps.
Developing a software is tough, but giving it a new name, it's a no less challenging task. Most of the time such a choice is nourished by an obvious reason, other times it is simply the need to give breath to an idea, to push for the change. Wonder Leaf is born exactly from said need. It's the result of a thought that finally reached full maturity: the ability to look at life in wonder isn't a privilege of a few, but an aptitude of everyone, and as such, it has to be celebrated everyday.
Pro Leaf is slowly collecting new gems, little features currently focused on improving your productivity as a SiteTree's user. This time around it's the Ghost Pages feature of SiteTree to see an uplift: Pro Leaf 1.2 makes Ghost Pages easier to spot, and faster to flag.