We are very pleased to present you X3, the new Xoops Engine for the next generation of XOOPS powered web application development.
This new Xoops Engine was long time in coming. During that time, we went through different phases of trials and errors, but we believe that we finally have the best combination of features and technologies to strategically position XOOPS as one of the top Web Application Platform solutions.
The new Xoops Engine has been re-designed from the ground up to take advantages of third-party frameworks like Zend Framework and Smarty 3.
Why did we rewrite XOOPS?
XOOPS is one of the most successful Open Source CMS and portal solutions, constantly placing in top places in various competitions, and receiving various awards. But it is showing signs of aging, that would require major rewrites of the Core.
In order to keep us focused on creating a flexible and extensible development engine for developers and a high performance application platform for end users, the development team has decided to use industry-standard frameworks. By doing so, we can focus our limited resources on aspects that make XOOPS unique and special, while leaving standard functionality to be addressed by off-the-shelf frameworks. This way we can take advantage of latest internet developments already included in those frameworks - it's like getting suddenly a whole new team of some of the best and brightest PHP and RIA programmers joining XOOPS!
After much research, we've selected a couple of frameworks at this stage:
PHP: Zend Framework
Template: Smarty 3
JavaScript: jQuery
Meanwhile the multi-engine mechanism of the Xoops Engine will ensure the possibility of adopting other excellent frameworks in the future, like Yii Framework, Dojo Toolkit, etc.