The Evolution of Web Publishing from 1990 to 2020 - Joomlashack Conference 2020

As Steve Job once said, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.

This talk will take us back to the very beginning, 1991, the birth of html and the start of the HTMLolithic era, from there we will explore the Dynamolithic, Webpublolithic, and Sepratolithic eras, ... to eventually arrive in the Pageolitic era and to the birth of Joomlatools Pages.

Expect a fun entertaining talk, a mix of web technology and Joomla history, illustrated with very simple code examples. If you always wanted to know why things in Joomla are as they are, where Itemid's come from, or template overrides, or what the is up with the MVC thing developers talk about, and how all these dots once connected lead to Joomlatools Pages, then this talk is for you.

Event: https://www.joomlashack.com/conference/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srOb8VgEOmw

Transcript

1. http://www.joomlatools.com/developer @joomlatools There and back again A story about the evolution of web publishing from 1990 to 2020
3. The HTMLolithic era In the beginning, let’s call it the HTMLolithic era, if you wanted to publish on the internet you had no choice but to learn HTML, and produce a static HTML page that you could link to by its Unique Resource Location (URL).
4. 1991, the www is born ….
5. 1 The first web page went live on August 6, 1991. It was dedicated to information on the World Wide Web project and was made by Tim Berners-Lee. It ran on a NeXT computer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN. The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/ TheProject.html.
6. 2 http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
7. 3 The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used to create hypertext documents that are platform independent. HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for representing information from a wide range of domains. 
 
 HTML markup can represent hypertext news, mail, documentation, and hypermedia; menus of options; database query results; simple structured documents with in-lined graphics; and hypertext views of existing bodies of information. From: https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/
8. 4 HTML 2.0 included everything from the original 1.0 specifications but added a few new features to the mix. » HTML 2.0 was the standard for website design until January 1997 and defined many core HTML features for the first time. For more history: https://www.yourhtmlsource.com/starthere/historyofhtml.html Features • Single file • Dynamic • Separated • Any-datasource • Copy-paste • Cacheable • Itemid
9. The Dynamolithic era In evolutionary terms, the next step for web publishing didn’t take too long. In the Dynamolithic era, instead of a single fl at fi le to build and display a page, pages were split up into re-useable blocks and could be coupled to a database. This made the task of publishing articles a lot easier as the developer could build multiple pages whilst reusing code for common areas like headers and footers, as well as import data that was held in a database, in order to display an HTML page.
10. 1995, PHP/FI is announced….
11. 5 PHP development began in 1994 when Rasmus Lerdorf wrote several Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs in C, which he used to maintain his personal homepage. He extended them to work with web forms and to communicate with databases, and called this implementation "Personal Home Page/ Forms Interpreter" or PHP/FI. 
 
 PHP/FI could be used to build simple, dynamic web applications. To accelerate bug reporting and improve the code, Lerdorf initially announced the release of PHP/FI as "Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools) version 1.0”.
12. 6 Early PHP was not intended to be a new programming language, and grew organically, with Lerdorf noting in retrospect: "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way." A development team began to form and, after months of work and beta testing, officially released PHP/FI 2 in November 1997.
13. 7 Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3, changing the language's name to the recursive acronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor Afterwards, public testing of PHP 3 began, and the official launch came in June 1998. They then started a new rewrite of PHP's core, producing the Zend Engine in 1999 They also founded Zend Technologies in Ramat Gan, Israel. On May 22, 2000, PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released.
14. 8 Selecting data from an MySQL database and rendering HTML 4 using PHP. Features • Single file • Dynamic • Separated logic • Any-datasource • Copy-paste • Cacheable (yes but …) • Itemid
15. The Webpubolithic era Once the permanency of the internet had been established, individuals and businesses all over the world were clamouring to get a website online. This led to the natural evolution of web publishing systems that would allow non-developers to write and publish articles to a website. Like their ancestors in the dynamolithic, web publishing systems could be connected to a database in order to provide dynamic content to an otherwise static HTML page.
16. 2002, Mambo Open Source
17. 9 Miro Construct Pty Ltd, registered in March 2000 in Melbourne […] starts development of Mambo, a closed-source, proprietary content management system. The company adopted a dual licensing policy, releasing Mambo Site Server under the GPL on Sourceforge in April 2001. 
 
 From this time until the middle of 2002, Miro was the only developer of Mambo, contributing bug-fixes and security patches but not really extending the code or adding to the feature sets. 
 
 With version 3.0.x, the open source Mambo Site Server becomes "Mambo Open Source" (commonly referred to as “MOS”). Robert Castley becomes Project Director of Mambo Open Source. By the end of 2002, Robert Castley had pulled together a volunteer team of developers. Mambo Open Source 4.0 is released.
18. 10 Rendering a list of weblink in Mambo 4.5 Features • Single file • Dynamic • Separated logic • Any-datasource • Copy-paste • Cacheable • Itemid
19. 11 Mambo 4.0 menu item manager
20. 12 Mambo 4.5 menu item manager
21. The Separatolithic era In the sepratolithic the number of websites on the internet multiplied exponentially, this was in response to the emergence of CMS systems that used separation of content and presentation architectures, for example using Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern. 
 
 Coupled to their mysql databases, to separate the logic of page building from the display of the page, CMSs made it painless and easy for even the least-technical person on the editorial team to create and publish an article as a HTML page. The developer could even use the same data to output a really simple syndicated (RSS) feed of a website’s articles.
22. 2008, Joomla 1.5.0 released
23. 13 Designers will notice marked improvements with Joomla! 1.5. Under the hood, the code base was better organized by separating program logic from presentation logic. What this does is empower designers with 100% control over how Joomla!'s content is presented. Now, template designers can use custom layouts, often referred to as template overrides, instead of the typical table heavy output from Joomla! core. … Some highlights of the new framework include the document package which gives the extension developer control over the entire document rendered on any given page load whether it be an Atom or RSS feed, a PDF document, or a standard HTML page … 
 
 … Perhaps one of the most powerful features of the framework is the new MVC based component objects. The clear separation between logic and presentation helps ensure code reusability and maintainability. From: https://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/4483-joomla-15- overview.html
24. 14 Rendering a list of weblink in Joomla 1.5 Features • Single file • Dynamic • Separated logic • Any-datasource • Copy-paste (partly) • Cacheable • Itemid
25. 15 Joomla 1.5 menu item manager Evolution: http://joomla15.blogspot.com/2006/10/evolution-adding-new-menu-item.html
26. The Pageolithic era Welcome to the future, you have now stepped into the Pageolithic era. This era has heralded the dawn of the dynamic page generator. Using MVC structured code and consuming source-agnostic data, which can come from any combination of a mysql database; a fi lesystem; or even a webservice. Dynamic page generators will allow you to display your content in almost anyway you want. 
 
 You’re no longer limited to just HTML and RSS output, you can now publish your content as HTML web pages, as an RSS feed, as a CSV spreadsheet, even as a JSON API that you could, for instance, use to populate a mobile app. The possibilities are endless, limited only by your imagination.
27. 2020, Joomlatools Pages announced
28. 16 Joomlatools Pages is a page generator inspired by the ideas and concepts of flat-file CMS systems like Grav and Statamic and static site generators like Jekyll. Pages is not a static site generator (SSG), Pages works in a dynamic, lazy and smart way. A page is dynamically generated, cached and only re-generated when its content or layout has changed. 
 
 Pages has a flat-file bias, and doesn't require a database to work you can use any kind of data source, for example you could use, a Joomla component, a database table, a headless CMS like Strapi, or even a webservice like Airtable or Google Sheets. From: https://www.joomlatools.com/blog/developer/joomlatools-pages-the-page- generator-for-joomla
29. 17 Rendering a list of weblink in Joomlatools Pages Features • Single file • Dynamic • Separated logic • Any-datasource • Copy-paste • Cacheable • Itemid
30. 18 Joomlatools Pages provides a no-code MVC Model Template
31. 19 Joomlatools Pages menu item manager (you still can create dummy menu items)
32. A little treat, Agrea.ph
33. https://www.agrea.ph
34. Rendering a list of weblink in Joomlatools Pages 20 https://github.com/johanjanssens/agrea.ph
35. Merry Christmas, Happy NY!
36. Johan Janssens
 Joomla Co-Founder / Former Lead Developer http://about.me/johanjanssens @johanjanssens johanjanssens johanjanssens
37. More Info http://twitter.com/joomlatools http://github.com/joomlatools http://facebook.com/joomlatools http://developer.joomlatools.com