Powerful CMS theme management tool

We need a back-end developer and front-end developer to work with our team on a very exciting and ambitious project. The goal of the software is basically to completely eliminate the need for a back-end to manage a site, modulate/widgetize every theme so the admin can just drag and drop modules, and allow the admin to customize a look without being able to mess up the design. The software is developed as a plugin for WordPress. We've already made developed a working version of the product, however, to fully launch and support this product, we're going to need some help from an experienced PHP/MySQL/AJAX developer. A strong background in JS will also be very helpful because there will be a lot of visual manipulation of items such as gradients, rounded corners, drop shadows and other effects using javascript. The project lenght is expected to be 4 months during which you will need to work at least 30 hours a week. So we need a total of around 480 hours of development work. We're looking for a single person or a team of 2. If you have a partner or someone you like working with, we're open to hiring the both of you. We need you to be dedicated only to this project while you're working on it so we have all your attention. We are very detail oriented with every step of the process and are very familiar with the processes that need to be taken to properly develop sofware. We utilize SVN for version management and Basecamp will be used for project progress. You'll be receiving wireframes for almost every instances and work with a front-end developer and a group of designers to make this project happen. We're really looking for someone that has their own ideas and really believes in making super usable and simple software products. You need to be a very hard worker and demand absolute excellence. Scalability and the proper structure is very important to us. We're looking to launch a subscriber-based version of this product by the end of the year so the code needs to be able to handle a large amount of users. It's also important to note that there is a strong open-source mentality behind this software. We will be releasing the software to the open-source community and leveraging the expertise to help refine the product during the development phase. This will truly be an innovative product and a great opportunity for anyone's portfolio. ## Deliverables **Below is quick summary of the most prominent enhancements we want to make to the product.** **The software is called "Flutter"** **A. Widgetizing the entire WP template** **(3)** You are probably familiar with sites that give you the ability to move the different "modules" of a site when you are signed in as the administrator. Facebook does this with your profile page, iGoogle allows for the same thing. Another good example of this can be seen on [Netvibes][1]. We want the admin to be able to literally grab any "module" in the theme and be able to move it wherever he/she pleases. In addition to arrangement, they will be able to edit certain options regarding each module on the same page. We have already moved towards this goal by laying a bit of the foundation. Every Flutter module can contain different size format and also templates. There are standard sizes and then there are also additional sizes that contain the width value of the module. So if the user was to place a "Recent Articles" module in the center main column that has a width of 480 pixels, the "medium" version of the module would be automatically used. The current Flutter also has the capabilities to restrict the different sizes, default certain templates, as well as other restrictions for each zone, so a majority of this process has already been accomplished. The problem with the current flutter is that there is a back-end and all this work is done through the "Layout" page under the Flutter tab. We need to move everything to the front-end of the site. So if the user is on the homepage, they can just re-arrange the modules directly on that page and save their changes. It should be that simple. ** B. Edit-n-place for all types of content** **(2)** The idea here is to enable the admin user to click and edit any part of the site without logging into a back-end. Since we have different types of custom fields for composition, we can closely tie the editing/composition end onto the front-end. So if a user is pulling an image into their theme, and they are clicking to edit the image, an overlay would be triggered that would allow for browse/upload from URL. For anything text related, it should act like [this][2]. For images, videos, date fields, drop downs, and other field types, the options would correspond accordingly. Basically, a small pointer icon will be overlapped with the area that contains that custom variable from Flutter. When the user clicks the icon, an overlay will be triggered which will allow the user to change that particular variable. I've included a mockup attached to this e-mail to show you better what I'm talking about. I think having edit-n-place capabilities for the majority of the areas/pages is very key. It's the most intuitive way of editing content. Any suggestions you might have to streamline the editing process and make it more direct are very welcome! We currently have edit-n-place activated for the titles and the body of content but it doesn't really work very well. The previous developers loved iframes (I hate iframes) and since iframes don't take the style of the rest of the page, there are many stylistic conflicts that are happening which breaks the plugin and doesn't allow the user to properly edit the content. To say the least, the functionality is not really working on anything but the standard WP templates. **C. Absolute modulation of all elements** - **ability to add extension / plugins to Flutter (1)** We just recently used Flutter for a mobile health care e-learning system. There was a good bit of functionality that was written for the project that we now cannot seamlessly use for future projects because it was written just for that particular project. I'd really like to create a way for Flutter to be able to accept and work with new functionality. Almost as if it had mini-extensions or plugins to work with that could be uploaded to a particular folder, similar to the way we import/export modules. Another example: our next project includes extensive commerce capabilities that are powered by Flutter. Even though Flutter doesn't contain the capabilities to do commerce, we'd like the site to use the custom field composition capabilities of Flutter to supply the data and then build an extension or plugin for Flutter that will provide it with commerce capabilities. I'd really like to hear what you guys think about this and what are your suggestions of how to approach this, especially because we have to start working on the commerce project almost immediately. It might be possible to treat these extensions as a different kind of module? I'm not sure. **D. A visual CSS editor with a brain** **(5)** [[login to view URL]<wbr />themeroller][3]- Closest example [[login to view URL]<wbr />wpthemegen/][4] <[login to view URL]> [[login to view URL]<wbr />sandbox/][5] [[login to view URL]<wbr />[login to view URL]][6] [[login to view URL]<wbr />cssedit/screenshots/[login to view URL]][7] [[login to view URL]<wbr />generator/[login to view URL]][8] [http://atck.<wbr />[login to view URL]<wbr />builder/][9] These are all half-ass examples of what I imagine for Flutter. I'd like the CSS editor to be on the same screen as the actual page. So if the user is logged in as an admin, they will have the capability to edit the style of the page that they are currently on. The "ink" plugin which currently comes with Flutter is not really activated but it does contain a good bit of the structure we need to make this work correctly. For example, it allows you to specify which properties you will allow the user to edit. I also want to be able to specify which values the user can choose from. For example, the background color options might only be three different shades of blue. This way, we can prevent the user from messing up the look of the site but still allow them to customize it. The UI for changing the CSS values should be as intuitive as possible, using things like sliders, color pickers, and so on. I'd also like to use a CSS framework like [Blueprint][10]or [YAML][11]to help provide some structure to how the templates are coded. I'm sure that will become helpful in manipulating the template later on. What do you guys think about this? In addition to page specific CSS properties, there are some general template options that I'd like the user to be able to edit. For example, to apply drop shadow to a set of divs that the developer/designer of the theme specifies using something [similar][12]to this script or apply a gradient to the background using something like [this][13]script or even rounded corners. I'd like to use javascript heavily to allow the users to really transform the look of the site without having html knowledge at all. This way, we can get more variations out of a given structure. **E. A super simple install (6) **This will become increasingly important in the hosted version of Flutter where users will be able to install WordPress, Flutter, and a given theme all together, so that the configuration process of Flutter should not be difficult. We need to simplify the use of Flutter as much as possible. ** F. Licensing system (4) **We need to be able to somehow control the use of the plugin. I will solidify this concept a bit more during the next few days but the thought is to have a monthly licensing system and the abilty to deactivate Flutter and prevent it from working on a remote or local installation through this licensing system. Users would receive an activation key/license key with their version of Flutter which would identify their account with their Flutter installation. If the account is past due, our administrators would have the capability to turn off the installation remotely. I'd like to use this solution for our hosted solution as well as installations on remote servers. I'm open to suggestions here.