I’m excited to announce today’s new release of Rookeries: version 0.14.0. This release previews support for plugins!

After quite a lot of experimentation, and I was able to create a tech preview of a plugin architecture. The server can now find and load frontend plugins. And the frontend plugins now extend the markdown editor, and provide new web components on a page. While the current plugins are essentially tech demonstrators, and the server and admin console need work, I am confident that this architecture will enable Rookeries to move to the next level.

What is the next level? I want to make Rookeries the most usable, extendable Markdown based CMS, targeted toward more technical users such as developers, and technical documentation writers. Rookeries will focus on enabling the creation of web site by writing Markdown, styling with CSS and using plugins for more complex additions: such as SEO, custom markup, image resizing, et cetera.

As for my next steps, I will be working in 3 areas:
* Reducing the size of the Rookeries Docker image (currently at a massive 4 GB).
* Refactoring the main app and the admin console to take advantage of plugins.
* Creating an experience for using plugins that rivals WordPress.

There is still a long way to go, however I am confident that Rookeries will be usable for production (outside of hosting its own site) before the end of the year.