It has been quite a while since my last update. I apologize for the long silence. I wanted to focus on getting Rookeries up and running, to the degree that I can host a website. Namely I was hoping to update the Amber Penguin Software website and the Juggling JSON with jq book companion website to use Rookeries. Unfortunately I had to re-architecture the UI and bring the CouchDB management of the site and pages up to spec. However I am happy with the overall results:

Interactive Editing of Menus

Rookeries v0.9.0 introduces support for adding, removing and reordering menu items. It took a bit to find a good simple implementation of a drag and drop able list.

]4 Version 0.9.0 introduces interactive editing of menus.

Interactive Editing of Site Headers and Footers

Rookeries v0.9.0 also extends support of editing pages to site headers and footers. It uses the same inline editor for Markdown and HTML, that the pages currently enjoy.

]5 You can now edit site headers in Rookeries

So what else changed?

• The migration of the UX over to a sliding sidebar is done.
• Internally redux was replaced with MobX, which is far more maintainable for me.
• The addition of saving sites and the current selected page.

There is still a lot to do on Rookeries, such as making the CMS more robust and flexible. Adding and removing pages is still outstanding. So is selection of pages via URLs. Marking whether or not changes have been made, to prompt the user to save. Also to check that the site is not in an invalid state. However things are starting to look up.

A few people have inquired about the state of the Juggling JSON with jq book, and when will a sample chapter and table of contents will be available. I apologize for not replying directly to those emails (I will do so shortly), but I hope to get those out in the next few days, and hopefully before the end of the year. Work on Rookeries has essentially ate up all the time that I would of used for working on the book. I think going forward I will work on both in parallel.