This Kickstarter campaign exists to take Kalabox 1.0 to the next level! Literally!
Let’s be honest. There are a LOT OF TOOLS out there to turn your computer into a web server and help you leverage sophisticated tools. They range in cost from free to cheap to pricey. The complexity ranges from too simple to be useful on the one end to too complex to be used on the other. Yes, there is some middle ground there, but at the end of the day you simply don’t have all the tools that the cool kids use. :-(
Now, Here comes Kalabox!
KALABOX uses the tagline, “Advanced Dev tools For The People.”
I love this! I’ve always been the kind of geek who was happiest when technology makes a difference, like when introducing new technology makes humans happier and more productive! And this is exactly what Kalabox is already doing AND wants to do a whole lot more of.
The tagline is catchy, but the full definition, of what Kalabox is, gets me equally excited:
Kalabox is an “Integrated workflow solution for people who use Drupal.”
They're talking about US! If you’re reading this you probably use Drupal and if you’re not excited yet… Keep reading!
Here’s a bullet list of some Kalabox facts that caused me to reach for my credit card. I gleaned these from the Kickstarter page and the video you’ll find there.
- Both novices & pros can use it easily.
- Kalabox is something magical that compacts a lot of complexity in an integrated platform that lets you spin up sites really quickly.
- Kalabox builds a computer within your computer called a hypervisor. Launch it and you get a friendly dashboard to get things done.
- One click and you have a Drupal site on your computer.
- Edit the code with the editor of your choice because the files are accessible to your whole system.
- Integrates with pantheon. look at your site list. Pull one down. Make updates and refresh. It’s everything you need to test code and go live in one spot.
- Under the hood are all the tools you would expect: git, xdebug, puppet, node.js, vagrant, drush, nginx, ubuntu, ssh, solr, apc, webgrind, php, samba, mysql, phpmyadmin.
- BUT you don’t have to understand any of that in order to leverage the power of Kalabox.
- Within 6 months of the launch of Kalabox 1.0 it had over 1000 downloads.
- Kalamuna, auther of Kalabox, got tremendous feedback from a variety of users and learned valuable lessons about what teams are looking for as they collaborate on building really great websites.
- They want to integrate new and exciting technologies.
- They want to make it open source and share the love!
- They want to add Windows support!
- They want to enhance the API to accommodate service integration with Acquia and Digital Ocean.
- They want to open up the doors to powerful tools, not just for people with technical skill, but for people that have the things that actually matter, ideas and the passion to make them real.
- Kalabox provides a Node.js frontend so you can quickly spin up new Drupal sites, access utilities and tweak your environment without earning DevOps ninja-pants.
- They want to add Docker Integration. Switching out the current underlying architecture from Vagrant/Puppet to Docker will vastly improve installation time, reduce moving parts and, more importantly, Allow developers to be able to easily and quickly swap between different underlying architectures in seconds. This means you can use your own tools with Kalabox, too!
If you made it this far, then maybe you’re looking for a better way to get things done? Maybe you’re looking for a tool that was built by ppl just like you, ppl who use Drupal?
Maybe you’re looking for Kalabox 2.0!
Check out their Kickstarter campaign here : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kalabox/kalabox-advanced-web-tools-for-the-people