Progress Report - July 2022
Our last progress report was on July 19th, and our team has done A LOT since then. Maintenance 9 new patch releases for Backpack CRUD...
Cristian Tabacitu
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Our last progress report was on July 19th, and our team has done A LOT since then. Maintenance 9 new patch releases for Backpack CRUD...
Our last progress report was on July 19th, and our team has done A LOT since then.
Antonio Almeida has overhauled our installation process. I honestly can't believe we've waited so long to see and fix this. But our previous installation process was so unintuitive. Now... it actually takes your step-by-step, informs you of what's happening, asks you what you want to do and guides you to success:
This is another HUGE improvement to the UX of a first-time Backpack user. After you install Backpack, you're no longer greeted by an empty dashboard. Instead, over there you'll find some "Getting Started" steps, that will guide you to create your first CRUD for Users:
The two items above might sound like small wins, but they're not, they're HUGE. We've never realised how broken our onboarding was, how much you had to switch between docs/videos to your project. But now that we have, we've finally fixed it.
Now, getting started with Backpack is easier than ever. You just need to do:
composer require backpack/crud
php artisan backpack:install
And the command-line will guide you to your admin panel. Then the admin panel will guide you to create your first CRUD, and where to learn more. This is SO MUCH better than when you probably got started... sorry it took us so long to find this flow.
This has been A LOT harder than we expected. But thanks to Mohammad Emran we now have accurate changelogs for PRO, DevTools and EditableColumns. They still need a little polish, to make 'em pretty (will do ASAP), but... they're there. You can see what's changed, you can see what's new, you can tell what you're missing out if you're not up-to-date.
Pedro Martins has hit a roadblock, unfortunately. The operation is working fine for hundreds of entries... but for thousands and more... it takes too long to generate the file. We'd need to do it in a queue, which would make the whole operation and UX more complex... and we don't like that at all...
We've paused development for a while and we'll take another look after a short break. If you've done anything like this previously and have tips, please reach out to us, maybe we can find a solution together or learn from your experience.
Jon Pilbeam is re-doing our videos... right now they all teach you how to install Backpack 4.1 🤦♂️ So we need to update them ASAP. In the process, we're also improving them and making them smaller (1-3 min each), so that they're easier to consume.
Pedro Martins and Jorge Castro have teamed up as our "maintenance crew"... with the goal of reaching "zero bugs" by November 1st. It's not going to be easy but... it's a worthy goal 🤞 This also means if you report a bug, we now try to respond within 24h.
Mauro Martinez is working on a GUI for creating new Operations. It's 90% done, and we expect to launch it by the end of the month. This is SUCH a great improvement, I can't wait to see all the Operations you create, now that it's dead-simple to do.
We're currently working on adding Affiliate and Referral systems to our website. If you have a Laravel audience, create content for a developer audience or want to start doing that, please send us an email. We'd love to give you a HUGE commission. We suck at marketing, so we could really use your help spreading the word about Backpack.
That's it from us. Can't wait for us to finish the above (and the few things I haven't told you about 😉).
Thanks for using Backpack - we love doing this for you. Cheers!
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