CakePlate

It has been a year (literally) since the last update.  I have just pushed a new version of CakePlate that is based on CakePHP 2.0.  There are quite a few updates and changes, and things are a bit cleaner.  I hope to be making updates more regularly now as well.

Check out the new goods at https://github.com/rynop/CakePlate . Just fork and follow the quickstart guide on the wiki.

Still rolling with 1.3? I created a 1.3 tag...

Frustration becomes inspiration

You know how as a developer each time you create a new web app you spend the first few hours downloading, installing, and configuring the important add-ons that you need for nearly any production-level project? When all you really want to do is get started on your kick-ass code! Yeah, we know that feeling too. And that's why we decided to do something about it. We're launching CakePlate, a open source distribution of CakePHP that's ready to rock, right out of the box.

Cake(PHP), served on a platter

CakePHP is an amazing PHP framework that is pretty incredible by itself. However, the real power comes from its extensibility and plugin community, letting you quickly tune your weekend project into a scorching fast, social, feature-rich masterpiece! The only drawback is that many of these plugins and tools are so good it's a sin they aren't in the original CakePHP distribution. If they are a pre-requisite for any production ready application, wouldn't it be easier if they were there from the start? 

We certainly thought so. We developed CakePlate to make our own lives easier. To cut down on all the time spent on initial configurations for our apps, and to create a baseline that's up to our lofty (ok, snobby) development standards. In short, it's a mashup of best practices and cool open source technology - the important stuff for a fast, secure web application made from CakePHP, all rolled into a single distribution.

And if it's good enough for us, karma dicatates that we ought to share it with the web.

Gimme the recipe

Our criteria for inclusion in CakePlate is simple: if we use some plugin or add-on often, it made the cut. Below is a sample of what we've included in CakePlate. But to see the full, updated list check out CakePlate on github.

Foundation

• CakePHP 1.3.6

Performance

• JSMin (Javascript Minification)
• CSSTidy (CSS Compression)
• Model Lazy Loading

Making Life Easier

• HTML5 Boilerplate
• File Upload Handlers

Utilities

• Recaptcha
• PayPal IPN Plugin
• Facebook Connect
• Many more!

Don't like something that's in there? Just remove it. Everything is modular and loosely coupled, so removing anything is as easy as deleting it or simply ignoring it.

Come and get it!

If you are a PHP developer, we think you'll like CakePlate. We do. So go get it now from Github. And don't forget to let us know what you think.

We've updated some of our software and package versions, including CakePHP to 1.3.6 and the latest jQuery CDN. Additionally, we've got a new logo (fancy, huh?) and polished the test cases. Thanks to Ryan Cradick for testing CakePlate on his latest project. We're inching closer to launching to the masses and promoting CakePlate. Stay tuned.

We're finalizing CakePlate before "releasing" it for public distribution. That includes making sure our documentation is in order, the blog is to our liking, and ensuring the code distro is solid and useful to others. 

One to-do which we could use your help on: improve our logo! We'd like to keep things simple, and avoid any copyright issues. If you've got any ideas for a cool CakePlate logo, or know of any nice (open licensed) icon we can use, please let us know in the comments. We greatly appreciate it!!

Just finished the CakePlate site rough draft. MUCH more info coming soon.