Perch 2.6 Preview - Categories

A question we often ask here at Perch HQ is, “why do people use the Blog App for things that are not a blog?” At first we thought it was because people were so used to using blog software or things with blog roots as a CMS, but we asked Perchers. You told us the main reason was because using Blog gives you categories.

Our blog app is great – if you want a blog. However it is very much aimed at blogging and you lose a lot of the flexibility of regular Perch content, such as repeaters, if you base things other than blogs on it. You also end up needing to do a lot more work than you would if you were using Perch Content.

So Perch 2.6 is all about the Categories.

Categories are administered through a centralized core Categories app. The various add-ons that use categories currently (Blog, Events, Gallery etc) will be updated to make use of the centralized category management. This will make add-ons more consistent and also mean you can have content and things in apps using a category.

The category management will be exposed through the API making it easier for add-on developers to implement it in their applications.

You will be able to do things like set up a portfolio with categories for different types of projects, categorize real-estate listings or create product listings with categories for different colours, sizes or types of product.

It’s a really flexible solution and we hope you will love it.

Perch 2.6 Beta is currently with our Registered Developers and depending on feedback should be out very soon for everyone.