Russ wrote:
First off calguy1000, thanks very much for your reply, I know it helps me to know someone is listening and I'm sure others feel the same way to
1. OK, as for the Search module, no errors. Setting 'debug' in config seems to do nothing? In http log only
Code: Select all
localhost - - [20/Aug/2006:07:59:54 +0100] "GET /cms/admin/listmodules.php?action=install&module=Search HTTP/1.1" 200 3789
localhost - - [20/Aug/2006:07:59:55 +0100] "GET /cms/admin/style.php HTTP/1.1" 200 13040
Can I be of anymore help?
Which system are you using? apache/php (which versions), or IIS/php ?
2. The File Manager Module seems to be something to do with CSS or JavaScript as the content is still their but is not displaying. I've posted in the relevant group.
3. Thanks for the info on Module Manager, it is a 'nice feature' but is it critical compared to the other stuff talked about below.
You're right, it's not as critical as some things, but surprisingly, alot of peoplle cannot upload a folder via ftp to their installation. They have all kinds of problems and we're repeatedly helping them in the forum or irc channel with problems like case sensitivity, bad ftp clients, permissions, putting things in the wrong subdirectory, etc, etc. This feature is looked at as core as it (when we get rid of a few problems in it) will make life easier for all the users. it's pretty crude right now and I expect it to get alot more useful after 1.0 comes out and we can add more features and bells and whistles to it.
4. Thanks for the information on cms_selflink, I'll try it out.
5, 7, Other comments. See below:
I have this said this once before, but I guess it needs repeating. Focus is important in any project and the focus should be that of what the users need rather than what can be delivered to any timeframe or version number. I understand about limiting features when you get to a beta, but not when it is artificially created and does not include the right features. The choice of what goes in is critical to success. Look at the forums, it is not hard to see what users want!
We always try to come up with a compromise between features, bugfixes, and timelines that seems reasonable without waiting six to nine months for a release which is too long. Asking five different users what features they say are required will always get you five different answers. We have tried to walk the line as best we can. As well, since this team is made up of volunteers each with different priorities, they have to be balanced as well. This is why some features make it into the core whereas others don't. Because there is a volunteer willing and available to work on them.
For example, I would suspect that many of CMS users would really like a working editor. Get FCKeditor (or another) to work seamlessly and you will have a lot of happier users! Same would apply to replacing the file manager and image manager with better modules. These are things that people will use everyday! While you are at it, maybe include Album as the default image tool and lose the image manager plugin. This is a good start for the basic CMS. What about a spell checker - seems like a must have to me?
Again, I'll say it... I think HTML wysiwyg editors are a scourge. People expect them to operate like ms-word in php's 8mb of ram, and to have no errors. It's essentially impossible if you ask me. but this is why I don't use, or work on html editors. Work has been done on fckeditor, it's been updated to the latest version, and some people have worked on the cms addon features, but it will always be a continuing project and if you ask me it'll never be perfect for everybody. One person says one day 'why is this feature in the editor, it's huge, takes up alot of memory and nobody ever uses it (smileys)". Then the next week somebody says "why don't the smileys work... I want to use them". We can never win.
We decided not to include Album and the new file manager module in 1.0 to limit the beta period for 1.0, keep the core size down (believe it or not, some people are complaining about this too), and more importantly it's a "devil you know vs a devil you don't know" thing, esp related to security issues. Album and FileManager will go through their own development cycle for a while so that they can stabilize by themselves and we can re-consider using them in the core later.
As for News and perhaps a blog module based upon it - having the right url at the start is critical for Google/linking. On many commercial sites changing these links at a latter date would not be an option. So lets make them good from the start. (This would apply to album as well.) Now this is starting to look feature rich, especially when you add in a Comments module for feedback - which surely should be in the core? (You didn't answer my question on the smarty form creation rather than straight form creation in PHP in Comments and other modules?).
Search would also be core critical, but I can't test this at the moment, see see above. Piratos's works fine however. And what about including the Google sitemap.php - seems obvious to me.
For me at least, and I suspect many others, multi users editing is a must. What exactly is the point of all the groups and permissions etc. if only one person can really edit the site? This feature pretty much makes CMS useful for my children, but not for any serious CMS work - which I think is a shame because it has every potential to be a very good CMS.
I think the same would apply to multi-lingual for many of the current CMS users, although I understand you may want to achieve a working single language version before embarking on a multi-lingual CMS.
Surprisingly, most people I know don't use CMS in this way, at least not that often. Usually one or two people at most are editing the site, rarely simultaneously, and almost never on the same page at the same time. I agree it's something that should be fixed, but the volunteer base didn't get to it in this release because I guess they didn't need it. We also made our best effort to go through the bug list, and the feature list to see what was critical to fix, or non-intrusive to implement. Some things didn't make it.
As well, Ted says that he agrees multi-user editing is important, but doesn't know a way to implement it properly without potentially messing alot of things up. Thus, it has to wait for a new development cycle.
There has been so much work on things like the Ajax enhancements, Module Manger, Events and Soap, some of which are very good. Some of which have problems - module manager for one - is it necessary! Most people can copy a folder! Are they really core! I understand you are trying to build for the future, especially with events, but you are building on top of a half finished house! Lets finish the house first!
As this is a volunteer based project, the volunteers implement features that are important to them, and also bug fixes that involve areas of the code that they are familiar with and/or a priority to them first. This means things like Ajax enhancements and Module Manager, Events and Soap (which are all mine), will get in before FckEditor gets fixed.... because the primary developer on FckEditor hasn't been around too much, and nobody else has picked up that ball yet.
With regards to the house. "A Finished House" is again different to everybody you ask. Some people will want an empty house with no baseboards or trim so that they can do it themselves. The next person will want it completely painted, finished, polished floors, and furnished just so before they'll call it "Finished". We're always fighting a losing battle this way.
and again, with regards to Module Manager..... no people can't upload a folder, or resolve dependencies, or even find the module in the forge sometimes. that's why these modules were written to attempt to appease the masses, and to rectify issues that a large portion of the userbase were encountering. People with unix expertise, or experience with permissions, or who can download a file and upload it via ftp recursively like us have no difficulty with the .tar.gz method of installing modules.... the masses do.
I was also slightly put off by some of your comments regarding modules not being core. I understand what you are saying, but from a users point of view, they will upgrade to 1.0 when it is stable and expect things to work. This will not only put people off upgrading, it will make CMS seem much less attractive.
To a point I agree with you, but we cannot take responsibility for everybody's modules. I've already taken responsibility for more modules than I wanted to, and it prevents me from writing the modules I want to write. To a certain extent, there is gonna be some things that will break when people upgrade to 1.0 because some of the modules they're using aren't compatible with 1.0. We've tried to encourage all developers to release new versions of their modules, but not everybody has responded. There isn't much more we can do.
Also, our attempt is to make the CMS core as small as possible, and allow for a wide array of third party addons. We want to keep the number of modules included in the core relatively small, but to also include a core set of features that most of the users will want or need (not everybody needs a blog), to this end News is included, comments is not (It's akrabat's module, and I've kinda taken it over recently). Similarly, ModuleManager is in the core, but ModuleRepository is not. Album is not, and the new file manager module for the reasons listed abovfe, but FCKEditor is.... because I guess the masses require some sort of wysiwyg (groan).
I'm sorry to rant on like this, but I've put a lot of time into using, writing for and testing CMS Made Simple. I don't think we are anywhere near a first version till we iron out the problems outlined above and focus our efforts on the deficiencies. CMS Made Simple would then truly be a really good CMS, perhaps the best.
Russ
p.s. Piratos has also made quite a few comments in an earlier post, some of which I think also need to be addressed with some urgency.
There are no problems with people ranting in a reasonable way like this. It gives us a chance to respond and to illustrate to some people what our concerns, issues, priorities and difficulties are. This is a volunteer project, we don't get paid for working on CMS, and alot of us attempt to have lives outside of the computer room (it's not working that well for me at the moment though). This makes it extra difficult for end-users who wonder why the features that they think are important aren't getting addressed.
We're still trying to look into the search thing, but I just did another fresh installation from SVN (that's three this week) on LAMP and it worked fine for me. Others have had no difficulty either. it's weird.
Piratos' issues are largely about memory requirements.... 8mb is the bare minimum that will get you by with CMS 1.0, and the minimum will probably change to 12 or 16 at a later date, but there isn't much more we can do. We've gone through alot of code to minimize the memory requirements, but are hitting a feature/memory limit wall. He says things like "Events.... who need them". but the developers that have used the new events functionality really like it, as it allows decoupling of modules, smaller code footprints, and custom workflows. Also, we have implemented a large portion of his recommendations, particularly related to indexes, etc on the database tables. Ted also spent considerable time verifying the svn base was correct based on one of his recent rants. Everybody is being considered.
Hopes this helps.
Now.... back to my weekend.
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