Pond is changing course with a new approach

As you may know we have been working on October Pond for quite some time now. For those who may not know what Pond is: it is an application for macOS and Windows that allows developers to build, deploy and update October installations in the Digital Ocean cloud.

We wrote many lines of code and tried different ideas to get the best solution. In the process we learned that there are limitations to this idea, mainly around security and workflow. After some review we have decided to change the course of action slightly.

The new approach to Pond will still be a desktop application that you can download and install to your computer. Acting as a local site manager it allows you to create new sites locally and deploy them to remote servers easily. The main difference is the remote website can be any server that supports October's minimum system requirements. It doesn't have to use a special hosting environment and you won't be tied down to Digital Ocean's cloud solution. Pond will stay light on its feet and keep your development life simple.

Pond will connect directly to any website running October that has remote deployments enabled, this will update all plugins and themes you have, including your private plugins. This approach is much simpler than our original idea and it fits October's motto "Getting back to basics".

The other important news is that Pond will be FREE to use. This is different from what we were planning with Pond initially and would allow us to sustain further developments. Based on ongoing feedback throughout the entire process, we concluded that October is provided as a free product so deployments should be a standard feature of October. We believe this will make October even more popular and simple, which will be beneficial for everybody -- beginner and experienced developers as well as the Marketplace authors.

Developing Pond was a great experience for us and although we have not accomplished the planned goals with the first attempt, it helped us to find the right direction. We are grateful for your patience while we continue on this journey to find the best solution.

October CMS Community Manager

We would like to welcome our newest team member to October CMS. For some time now Luke Towers has been helping us manage the community aspects of the October platform. You may have seen him around on GitHub or on the Slack chat room, providing answers and finding solutions; helping to grow and nurture the October tree. His work is of great benefit to everyone that uses October, both directly and indirectly.

Here's what Luke had to say after he accepted taking on the role of Community Manager:

I'm proud of what the community's already accomplished with OctoberCMS and I'm excited to be helping move OctoberCMS forward and grow the project to reach its full potential.

Bravo Luke and thank-you for everything you do!