What to change/remove from RavenNuke(tm)?

Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 7:16 pm

montego wrote:

Establish a core set of API's and framework for accessing those API's for accepting input and producing output and leave everything else as a "plug-in". However, unfortunately, that means "re-write"... Sad

Sounds like Xoops talk there... Wink

About the future forums and bridges. I appreciate the integrated forums the more I experiment with bridges. Sessions really are just the beginning. Bridges work well if the forums the primary function of the site. But if the content side of the site is also interactive just fixing links, profiles shared resources in general becomes a nightmare. Then update something and bork the logins...

Just random thoughts there but I'm in favor of full integration.

Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 9:06 pm

As long as I don't find any problems with the UTF-8 conversion people will still be able to use the current bb2nuke or the phpbb3 "bridge". If someone wants to take it further than that they are more then welcome, but I may jump off a bridge if I attempt that on top of all the other stuff I have to do Wink

Posted: Sun Dec 19, 2010 9:34 am

As someone who has been trying to develop a few addons for RN, that often have theme-specific styling, I've found the large number of themes included in RN to be somewhat of a hindrance. Especially when IMO, many of them have a "dated" appearance. I have to ask myself (and you) is anyone even using these themes??

3D-Fantasy, Anagram, DeepBlue, ExtraLite, Kaput, Karate, Milo, NukeNews, Slash, SlashOcean, Sunset, Traditional

I would guess many of these themes were originally designed 7+ years ago, and the web has changed dramatically in that time..

Posted: Sun Dec 19, 2010 9:49 am

I agree that the large number of themes is a hindrance. Especially considering the TREMENDOUS duplication in code that's in them and the "outdated" nature of the code.

Unfortunately, many of the themes are in use. Part of the problem is that site admins give users the ability to choose their own theme and thus lose control over how many are used. Often, without looking at PHPMYADMIN, a site admin would not even know which themes and how many are in use on his site

In addition, where I have set up sites for others but they "sort of" take over administering them, they might use one of the themes you listed as a base (default) for the site. They go entirely on appearance and might take a theme over the others just cause of the color scheme or something like that.

So, we are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place I think. If we remove them from the distribution the forums are likely to fill with complaints. If we don't, then we are stuck maintaining obsolete code. Incidentally, in terms of the history, when I did work on the themes a few years back (2007 I think) they were already 7 years old and it was obvious from looking at the code that they had been cloned from one to another over time. Even the same errors were repeated from theme to theme in a way that would not happen if they were created from scratch.

Maybe (assuming we ever get going on a release schedule again) we could take an approach similar to what the PHP folks do with deprecated code in the next couple of releases. Put the obsolete themes in a "obsolete_themes" directory so they would not be immediately available on a site. Then give instructions that if you "really" need them you could copy them over from "obsolete_themes" to "themes" but beware that they will not be present or supported in the 3.0 (new technology) release.

Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2010 6:17 pm

spasticdonkey I agree with you 100% and do really appreciate fkelly statements, especially the last one, we can (MUST?) do something like that...

And there're so many themes in the standard package and most of them are obsolote, old and/or extremely ugly, so I'm also in favor of reducing the amount of themes to a max of 5 modern and appealing styles. Also i have always supported the idea of a central place where users can get/preview more styles and addons to extend their sites.

Site Admin Joined: Aug 22, 2007 Posts: 1775

great idea with the old themes.
this is the first thing what i delete after a fresh install.

my little wishes:

exchanges as much as possible all tables from the core-modules for lists or div-containers with a minimal and clear css style. its for designers a easy way to set his own styles to the core css styles. with addCSSToHead is the way open to set styles to many pages.

more connectivity to social networks.

a online backstory or a project status list of the RavenNuke developement, to show upcomming changes in the next version. designers and developers can prepare his own themes and modules to the next version, if comes changes on the core-files or -functions. for example as pastebin or a twitter feed or a wiki or contentPlus sites with rss/xml feeds to comparse in a new admin function. this forum is very cool moderated but its a forum. you must search with the right keys before you found the solution. without the right keywords you need many time and you can't never see all details. i can understand you will support here the core files only but i think a overview to new addons its a must have. a little RN (ajax)-xml-comparser with the feeds of the new changes and the supported addon sites ... if was a dream of me Smile

greetz

Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2010 11:40 am

Raven wrote:

RN v2.40.01 will [hopefully] be released by tomorrow (Monday).

Hmm, I'm currently running "rn2.40.01" .. what year is this anyways??

Smack

registered · Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2010 12:02 pm

That was posted on Mar 07, 2010. I agree that some of the themes could/should be moved out of the core. If someone wants to include them they can.

Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2010 12:05 pm

nuken wrote:

Mar 07, 2010

Ok, missed that, never mind than.

Bang Head

Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2010 12:24 pm

Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:41 pm

We can do the same for modules, create a Deprecated folfer and drop everything we plan to stop supporting or simply remove from core for one or another reason

registered · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 10:55 am

Separate downloads anyone? Smile

Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 11:16 am

montego wrote:

Separate downloads anyone? Smile

Are you trying to say that we can ship only core and essentials modules/themes and provide them as separate downloads?

If that's what you're inferring then I'm totally into it, as that will drastically decrease downloaded package.

Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 11:58 am

Well, I actually love the other ideas put forth by Kevin better where someone could come in, select the core, and then also select what "add-ons" (like themes, blocks, modules) and then the final download is "assembled". But, I know that is HUGE. No-one has time for that, so, yes, core system and then an on-line "marketplace" with known vetted themes, blocks and modules for download pleasure. Smile

registered · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 2:42 pm

It makes sense! joomla for example only has three templates with it's core.
Ravenice, Fisubice and DeepBlue while old probably be best, since deepblue is the original/default theme for nuke????

jc

Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 8:55 pm

@montego, then yes... I love the idea. Ship core with essentials modules and revamped selection of themes. Then provide two separate extra downloads called, let's say, legacy themes and legacy addons... Mmmmm, just saying!

Apperance is a strong point when getting a first impression, so that my eagerness to revamp the selection of themes...

Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 9:34 pm

One or two new themes as default package makes a lot of sense. FB did have a good idea of giving each release a smart new look. (Ok they weren't all that smart looking...) Marketing!

I was really looking forward to seeing the all CSS theme mentioned in an earlier thread but I think the development got stalled. Probably wouldn't be real hard to mock up something though. I've been working on a site with ZenCart and some of the CSS themes for that are really easy to modify. Some of the cruft of OSC remains having to create themes for individual blocks seems less of a feature then it is a burden.

But anyway complete new looks can be as simple as creating a hand full of new images for a theme.

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 1:31 pm

@jestrella,

The best way, IMO, to accomplish this is to design an installer that will handle all aspects of a block, module, and/or theme install including the necessary DB either installs or upgrades. If it is designed right, the installer could look at each "package" that is included and know what to do...

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 3:20 pm

Just a practical note in case we don't have the resources to do a full-fledged installer overhaul. If we are going to eliminate themes from the core distribution we probably should write a little utility as part of the installer that checks the users table for each user's default theme and either:

(a) gives the admin a warning so he can deal with it or
(b) changes any default theme in the users record that is not in the distribution to whatever the site default theme is.

Otherwise we are going to generating errors "behind the scenes" that an admin may not even know about until the users complain.

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 6:40 am

montego wrote:

Well, I actually love the other ideas put forth by Kevin better where someone could come in, select the core, and then also select what "add-ons" (like themes, blocks, modules) and then the final download is "assembled". But, I know that is HUGE. No-one has time for that, so, yes, core system and then an on-line "marketplace" with known vetted themes, blocks and modules for download pleasure. Smile

I have been thinking about this for some time now as an off-shoot to something I'm developing to allow secure, remote 'upgrades' of my CA modules....
Maybe it might be better to have one single 'core' application but give the core application the ability to auto-download/install add-ons?
There are other benefits as well such being able to automagically update NS IP2Country data or 'share' other data like bad emails addresses from registering or blocking known spammer IP's.

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:20 am

put into the wishlist for the next RN:

MySQL charset: UTF-8 Unicode (utf8)

for all sections... Smile

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:33 am

UTF8 is definitely coming in RN 3.0, but we are pushing it hard to release version 2.5 shortly!

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 3:12 pm

jestrella wrote:

UTF8 is definitely coming in RN 3.0, but we are pushing it hard to release version 2.5 shortly!

good news!

Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2011 2:52 am

Quote:

As someone who has been trying to develop a few addons for RN, that often have theme-specific styling, I've found the large number of themes included in RN to be somewhat of a hindrance. Especially when IMO, many of them have a "dated" appearance. I have to ask myself (and you) is anyone even using these themes??

3D-Fantasy, Anagram, DeepBlue, ExtraLite, Kaput, Karate, Milo, NukeNews, Slash, SlashOcean, Sunset, Traditional

Goog point spasticdonkey

Almost nobody use those ugly themes.

.I suggest Themes which has the same design as joomla with bigger fonts. That will be amazing.

.Themes which we can change colors and administrate through admin panel. Get rid of simple blocks and make theme together in one.

Example: A Gallery module with Last forums in the botton...etc..

Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2011 8:20 am

@unicornio

Sounds to me like you're mixing different aspects of Ravennuke together.

You say

unicornio wrote:

Themes which we can change colors and administrate through admin panel. Get rid of simple blocks and make theme together in one.

Example: A Gallery module with Last forums in the botton...etc..

First... themes, blocks & modules are all separate areas of the CMS. A theme is for displaying the content (blocks & modules) in a desired way. In order to have a theme controlled by the admin panel... you'd have to have a STANDARD theme with multiple .css files to choose from in the admin panel for displaying the color scheme one would desire. That .css would have to be coded by someone and added to a list housed in the database in order for you to choose it from the admin panel.

The last part of what you say

unicornio wrote:

Example: A Gallery module with Last forums in the botton...etc..

Is entirely up to the "module" developer.

I.e. If I wanted to show the last forums as part of a gallery module... I'd write the code in to do so. However, this is the choice of the module developer and really has nothing to do with the "core" of Ravennuke itself.

"Core", defined by websters

Websters wrote:

2. the central, innermost, or most essential part of anything.

As defined... Ravennuke CORE should provide a method for displaying content easily on a page. (i.e. modules.php etc) As was discussed elsewhere... A CMS does require some modules as part of the "CORE" that should be included in order to make it an attractive CMS to use. (i.e. news, rss, downloads, links.... the standard stuff the majority of people would use daily)