2018 was intense! Craft 3, Commerce 2 Beta, and the Plugin Store were released right on schedule in April, and Craft 3.1 and Commerce 2 are currently just weeks away from stable releases (including Commerce’s new Lite edition). We also launched Craft ID, the new craftcms.com, and the Craft Partner Network, we hosted the second annual Dot All conference in Berlin, and we began streaming webinars to introduce Craft to newcomers.
It’s been a monumental year, and we’re extremely proud of all that we accomplished. But we’re even more excited about what it all means for the future.
All the refactoring work we put into Craft 3 has made Craft a much better development platform, which has already led to hundreds of stellar plugins, and is enabling us to build out new features faster and more elegantly than ever before.
The new craftcms.com gives us much-improved channels for publishing marketing and learning resources, like the new In the Field and Guides sections.
The Craft Partner Network is more than just a way for businesses to find a partner for their next big web project; it’s a sales tool for showing clients that Craft is a safe bet, and the preferred choice of hundreds of agencies around the world.
We can’t wait to start taking full advantage of these investments in 2019, with new Craft and Commerce features, new learning resources, and better sales resources for Craft agencies.
Craft Roadmap
Speaking of new Craft features, once Craft 3.1 is released we’re going to shift our focus to a few areas that could use some love.
Updater. We made a mistake bundling Composer directly into Craft for handling system and plugin installation/updates. It’s just way too time and resource intensive to be running on web requests reliably. We plan to fix that by offloading Composer to a web service.
Testing. We’ve heard developers loud and clear: Craft should be providing clear guidance and examples for writing unit and integration tests. We’re on it!
Accessibility. We’re going to give Craft a proper accessibility audit and begin working toward WCAG 2.0 compliance.
Content modeling & author experience. Craft has raised the bar on what sort of content challenges an off-the-shelf CMS can handle, with element types, Matrix fields, and flexible relationships. It’s time to raise the bar even higher.
Commerce Roadmap
We’ve got a lot of exciting things planned for Commerce, from new integrations with payment, shipping, tax, and fulfillment services, to multi-store. Luke and I had a chance to chat about the future of Craft Commerce on the inaugural episode of Commerce Minded, which is worth a listen if you’re interested in what’s to come.
Once Commerce 2 ships we’re going to start looking for a new senior Commerce developer to join the team. If you think you might be interested, please get in touch!
Upcoming Events
We’re heading down to Melbourne in February for Dot One Australia, a one-day microconference we’re hosting for our Asia-Pacific customers.
Later in the year we’re taking Dot All to Montreal for another three-day conference with more great workshops and sessions by and for the Craft community!