Craft CMS Dot One London - Part One

On a beautiful September morning in London, we made our way to 100 Shoreditch which was the venue for Dot One London. Having travelled to London the day before, not only was this going to be an exciting day to mix with the community and hear all about the latest developments with Craft, but a great opportunity for us to spend time together as a team away from our screens.

The Pixel & Tonic team have run Dot One events before, but this was the first time they hosted their own event in the UK. Joining and supporting events like this allow the community to thrive and of course create opportunities to speak directly with the team building the product we use every day, as well as meet other developers to hear how they're using the platform across different types of projects.

It was a great day with lots of takeaways, with our very own Andrew Armitage himself speaking at the event during the afternoon.

The State of Craft 2024

The conference opened with Pixel & Tonic CEO Brandon Kelly giving us an update on the state of Craft where he spoke not only about the product growth, but also that of the business behind the platform and the growing ecosystem they've put in place to support it.

In short, Craft is in fine shape with the recent release of Craft 5 and ambitious plans for Craft 6 already in the pipeline. The launch of Craft Cloud, the new hosting environment for Craft was also a significant achievement for the team, and Pixel & Tonic CTO Brad Bell would provide a demo of this later on in the day.

As a product we rely on in our agency (and of course one that our clients rely on us to support), it's reassuring to know it's in a good place, well supported and seeing continued growth.

Craft goes to the Museum

The next talk was from Alex Morrison of Coggapp who specialise in building websites for arts and cultural organisations. We've built websites for museums before, but not quite on the scale of these guys! Working with organisations responsible for preserving and showcasing historic national collections, this was a fascinating talk on how they've used the features of Craft to deliver superior solutions over competing CMS's (which shall remain nameless here!).

The (not so short) Journey of a New Craft Plugin

Developer Mike Lowe from Nottingham-based agency Webdna took to the stage to talk about the (not so short) journey he'd followed from a client request that led him to build his first Craft plugin. This is where so many plugins begin their journey, but the way they evolve can be influenced by lots of different factors; from how clients use the plugin, to new ideas and thinking that emerges through their development.

Mike gave an entertaining account of how we've all done things as a 'quick fix', before the true scope of something becomes apparent and eventually demands a more robust approach introducing new features and options that can often go well beyond the initial rationale for a given purpose.

Craft Cloud Demo

Pixel & Tonic CTO Brad Bell gave a demo of the shiniest tool in the Craft ecosystem, and that's the new Craft Cloud Hosting environment. After many months in the making, Craft Cloud means for those who choose to host with it, Pixel and Tonic can support not only the application, but the environment as well.

With lots of developer friendly features, this looks a great addition to the platform and for those who want to remove the DevOps aspect of running a Craft site. There's still a lot on the road map, but Craft Cloud should also provide more of a turnkey option for those new to Craft and looking for an 'all in one' setup.

Dot One London - Afternoon Talks

Hear about the rest of the days talks in our second Dot One post covering the final 3 sessions of the afternoon.