New features bonanza

[luminous]

I'll second most of those, but being new around here I am just amazingly grateful for the work that has already been done.  I've already achieved far more than I previously thought possible.

But my (small) list to add to the above is:
1)  Products module - should have an option as to how many rows to show for the categories section in add products.  Default is way to small, currently I am on 45 lines

2)  In all documentation when smarty tags are being discussed at least one example should be provided.  I've spent many hours fiddling around trying to get simple things to work just because of syntax, or just not quite "getting it". 

Give me a few more weeks of learning how things work, and I will try and join the team to do some documentation.  This will be good for me learning more about how things work, and should help others who are lower down the  grapevine in understanding the obvious

[replytomk3]

luminous, welcome to CMSMS. Yep, the developers -for our benefit- want us to figure out Smarty by ourselves and pretty quickly. Certainly keeps away those types who want a free product (CMSMS) to make them a website from which they will make a lot of money quickly - but you'll never hear a thank you from them ever.

[luminous]

That is one thing I don't like.  People taking stuff and not giving anything back.  I don't have a lot of give at the moment.  However, I am prepared to learn and offer assistance where I can.  After all, the more I give, the more we all benefit.  Simply waiting for someone else to do everything is never a good long term plan!

[calguy1000]

reparse all modules and eliminate all inactive ones. Module maintaniners will need to add inactive ones back to the module manager manually. remove all obsolete and unmaintained modules. Make all modules incompatible with each new version unless proven otherwise by an active maintainer

Thanks for volunteering for this... you have to be about the 1000th to suggest it.  A few have even volunteered to do it, then we rarely hear from them on that subject again.

This involves alot of work, downloading and testing every module (not even talking functional testing, just basic testing), checking if the module has been updated in a reasonable amount of time, checking if the module author is still active (or any member of the team), contacting the module author incase it hasn't, and it doesn't work...

And then that work would have to be repeated every say 6 months, and after every release of CMSMS.

And the problem only gets bigger, never smaller.

So once you dig into the project you'll understand why nobody is inforcing 'rules' on the forge.

[replytomk3]

Calguy1000, I have done the initial step before http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/topic,39095.msg185173.html#msg185173.

All the problems I found - I emailed each module developer separately. Some have contacted me back and said they would fix it.

Some bugs were not responded to.

I think it's obvious which modules have bugs listed, but noone took care of them. I think that those should be taken off the module manager list.

[calguy1000]

Regarding the 'text fields for description and keywords'.
a) there is a field for the description.
b) keywords can be done quite easily with 2 minutes worth of work...
    not worth putting in the core IMnsHO (keywords aren't listened to by most of the search engines anyways).

search module: display categories where page located, remove stupid time taken to create page; create new page with search title, etc instead of inheriting old page title and metadata. search module gives error on characters like apostrophe and no results

a) one sentence is not explaining what you want, please provide details so that we can understand what you are thinking.  This rule doesn't just apply to 'I am having a problem' forum posts.
b) the 'stupid time taken to create page' is just a matter of modifying your template.
c) the 'create new page with search title' is just a matter of you reading the search module help.
d) file a bug report about errors, don't make us guess what the problem is, we're not gonna fix anything we can't see.

[luminous]

I know that I am new around here, so presumably this has been thought of before....

How about when the next version comes out it is made clear that all modules in the module manager will be dropped until someone adds them back in?  That way all the common modules that are supported, developed and tested will be added back during the next versions beta testing.

By the time it goes live nearly all the supported active and compatible modules will be in the module manager.  The additional time to tick a box to say that the module is ready for the new version will not be significant compared to the amount of testing that will be done on the actively supported modules.

This is not something that has to be done every single release, but even if it is done once a year it will go a long way to remove modules that simple do not work....which makes it a lot easier for people to get into using this software.

The more people we get onboard the better it will be for all of us? If people are really interested in using this software it should not take that long after they join to become useful.  After all, its only going to be another month or so before I will be able to help with documentation and testing...going to be a lot longer before I can develop.

[Dr.CSS]

The forge has been recently updated to reflect modules that are getting old and may not be supported any longer, such as my fav. Album...

http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/album

[dlen]

How about when the next version comes out it is made clear that all modules in the module manager will be dropped until someone adds them back in?  That way all the common modules that are supported, developed and tested will be added back during the next versions beta testing.

By the time it goes live nearly all the supported active and compatible modules will be in the module manager.

The thread is old but the idea is still not bad.

Other possibilities would be columns with:

- the last cmsms version number for which it works, set by the developers, with a display filter function to show only adapted modules for a given cmsms version
- a user rating
- an automatically calculated total to fixed bugs ratio
- an automatically calculated mean bug fix time index in days

Also of value might be a pay-for-a-bug-fix system or vote-for-a-bug-fix system.

I know this might come across like all demanding something.