Welcome to our first news update of 2024. Here, I want to let you know what the three priorities for Trongate will be in the year of 2024.

Quite simply, the focus for this year will be education.

Unfortunately, there are a variety of misconceptions about the Trongate framework. Top of the list is a widespread misunderstanding of what we mean when we say that Trongate is 'v1 forever'. To be crystal clear, 'v1 forever' was never intended to mean that Trongate doesn't get updated or improved. On a personal note, I can tell you that I've been utterly gutted to receive messages from some well-intentioned Trongate users who speak of Trongate in those terms. Some of these people are seasoned Trongate users. They're not trying to be rude. They're friends. Sadly, however, some developers out there still believe that Trongate never gets updated - apart from perhaps an occasional security patch.

Here are the hard facts:

Trongate almost certainly gets updated more frequently and more aggressively than any other PHP framework. Christmas day? Framework updated. New Year's Day? Framework updated.

All of the work that gets carried out on Trongate can be viewed on GitHub at the following URL:

https://github.com/trongate/trongate-framework/commits

These updates are rarely anything to do with security and are almost always the addition of new features, new innovations, and general framework improvements.

If there is one thing I'd like people to know about Trongate - above all else - it's that the framework gets improved constantly. That was always the case. The thing that makes Trongate different from other PHP frameworks is that, with Trongate, the goal is to make the improvements non-breaking changes. It's an astonishingly simple idea that should, actually, be the norm for web development. Please do stop saying that Trongate doesn't get updated. It's utterly gut-wrenching and a million miles from the truth.

Moving on:

Another area of focus this year will be the documentation. The pace of change for the framework has been so fast - as of late - that we've had a hard time keeping our documentation up to date! I'm happy to report that about half of the documentation has been rewritten and will be getting uploaded over the coming weeks. We also fixed the search engine for the docs (which wasn't very good!) today. Having clear, well-written docs is a priority. So, I look forward to seeing that happening and I pledge to make sure Trongate has really great documentation.

Finally, let's have a word about the Learning Zone. It has to get rebuilt!

When I built the initial Learning Zone, I made the mistake of starting with the 'boring' nuts and bolts of the framework and then I made it my goal to progress to the things that are fun and fast - for example, the code generator. This was a mistake. The Learning Zone should start from the easy and the exciting. Then, as users progress further, they should be introduced to the nuts and bolts of the framework - not the other way around. Again, this was my mistake and it's something that I am eager to fix as a priority. So, you can expect new Learning Zone content soon.

If we can get great documentation and a great Learning Zone up and running, then I'm very optimistic about the future of Trongate.

As always, none of this is easy, and I predict it'll take me an entire first half of the year to get through this. Nevertheless, I am determined to get this done and - with your help - anything is possible.

Happy coding!

DC