To fork or not to fork - that is the question

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

Thanks so very much to everyone [thus far] who has volunteered! If you know of anyone that would be interested and capable in #1 - #6 please have them post ASAP. I am not a graphics guy at all and the GUI and Theme area is a must, obviously Smile

. Thanks and I will soon be making an announcement and contacting you Wink

PHP-Portal Project Joined: Mar 05, 2004 Posts: 12

Is the basic layout going to be similar to what we see now as pretty much a "standard" in that it'll have header, footer, left, right and center sections?

I may be able to get involved in the graphics part. Basically what you're looking for would be reuseable "pieces". Not overly taxing for most people. Smile

However, I might like to look at creating a "sheet" of .tga format graphics that becomes the basis of a "theme" rather than having each piece be a separate graphic. Saves space and load time. Just not sure how to pull from the sheet using php rather than a graphics engine. I'll begin looking into this as a possibility. It may help. Otherwise.... reuseable separate pieces is pretty much the best way to go and would be fairly easy for anyone to make their own theme.

Another neat idea is to have it set up so that.... hard to explain briefly.... you have a "default" theme indicated. You have an "optional" graphics set indicated. When rendering the page the program first looks in the "optional" graphics to see if there's a customized logo.gif or this_button.gif or whatever. If there's none in the "optional" then it takes from the "default". Makes ease of customization come very far forward since the user doesn't have to recreate an entire theme, just a few custom graphics.

Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 7:05 am

reikimaster wrote:

Is the basic layout going to be similar to what we see now as pretty much a "standard" in that it'll have header, footer, left, right and center sections?

Yes.

reikimaster wrote:

I may be able to get involved in the graphics part. Basically what you're looking for would be reuseable "pieces". Not overly taxing for most people. Smile

However, I might like to look at creating a "sheet" of .tga format graphics that becomes the basis of a "theme" rather than having each piece be a separate graphic. Saves space and load time. Just not sure how to pull from the sheet using php rather than a graphics engine. I'll begin looking into this as a possibility. It may help. Otherwise.... reuseable separate pieces is pretty much the best way to go and would be fairly easy for anyone to make their own theme.

Exactly the pattern I am after. My vision is that this new portal will offer the infastructure to be a nuke site, a static web site, or whatever. That may be too big and will need to be tightened, but regardless, your approach is exactly the approach for the totality. The theme 'engine', if you will, should allow for easy custimization and the presentation layer should be entirely separate from the logic layer.

reikimaster wrote:

Another neat idea is to have it set up so that.... hard to explain briefly.... you have a "default" theme indicated. You have an "optional" graphics set indicated. When rendering the page the program first looks in the "optional" graphics to see if there's a customized logo.gif or this_button.gif or whatever. If there's none in the "optional" then it takes from the "default". Makes ease of customization come very far forward since the user doesn't have to recreate an entire theme, just a few custom graphics.

Yes, Yes, and YES! This would follow right along with my upgrade methodology. The portal engine will look in the USER path to see if one exists before defaulting to the SYSTEM path.

Would you please send me an email to raven at ravenphpscripts dot com with some profile information on yourself, even a resume if you have one? Please include your location and a phone number where you can be reached. Thanks!

Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 7:50 am

I never cease to be amazed at timing! Somebody already stole my vision http://seagull.phpkitchen.com Laughing

Not really. They've been at it alot longer. I never even knew it existed. It just reaffirms my committment to my vision. I will be reviewing this very closely to see if it is 'my' vision or just similar. I still intend on developing a framework that is as simplistic as can be. We need to build one for the user, not just the programmer Smile

Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 8:41 am

Raven wrote:

We need to build one for the user, not just the programmer Smile

Exactly - thats where ALL cms/portals fall over!

Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 8:56 am

This is interesting - I'll have a closer look later
http://www.sourceguardian.com/ixeds/

Client Joined: Jan 29, 2004 Posts: 624

Thanks for the history, Raven, I love history of everything. Smile

I also love pioneering ventures, so I'm on record as supporting this here venture of yours... alas, I have little enough knowledge of PHP so I can't offer help with the writing of it. Speaking of that is it possible that some of the 'badly written' nuke coding in hacks and mods was deliberate so as to exploit or even create security issues that could be exploited? Just a thought.

Worker Joined: Aug 28, 2003 Posts: 227

Since I can't do anything important I'm willilng to purchase a couple of books or anything if that helps. Just let me know.

Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 9:31 am

Quote:

I never cease to be amazed at timing! Somebody already stole my vision http://seagull.phpkitchen.com Not really.

I took a look at the Seagull thing. I have to say I wasn't nearly as impressed with that as I was with Typo3. However both of these seem to rely heavily on not much more than simple "blocks" of coloring and while it's fast, it ain't pretty. I think the more graphic sites are more interesting. Hopefully not overdone as that simply gets annoying. Typo3 looks like a fairly complete environment, albeit a bit too complex for most people to simply install themselves and go.

Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 9:33 am

I would agree and that's why we will forge on!

Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 11:47 am

southern wrote:

Thanks for the history, Raven, I love history of everything. Smile

I also love pioneering ventures, so I'm on record as supporting this here venture of yours... alas, I have little enough knowledge of PHP so I can't offer help with the writing of it. Speaking of that is it possible that some of the 'badly written' nuke coding in hacks and mods was deliberate so as to exploit or even create security issues that could be exploited? Just a thought.

Anytime you install a hack/mod you need to be cognizant of that very possibility. It's always a trust relationship. Buyer beware. Know your source or know how to read PHP Laughing

Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 11:51 pm

I have purchased a domain name also Shocked

. Thanks to everyone for all the dialog. To those that have added comments along the way and have not already volunteered, please consider the next level of committment and add your name to the list Smile

Worker Joined: Feb 16, 2004 Posts: 164

Hey Raven, Could you PM me the new name - give me an idea for an domain name url for a support site?

Richard

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 3:56 am

Question Raven,

Have you worked out how to make your new project Search engine friendly?
Please could you make it less demanding on servers than Google Tap?
I think a huge plus factor would be to design it specifically to be search engine friendly.

Could you make it so new additions - bolt ons are also engine friendly?

PHP nuke users will flock to your project if you can figure this problem out!

Richard

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 5:57 am

Rikk03 wrote:

Question Raven,

Have you worked out how to make your new project Search engine friendly?

Still way down the line but it will be in the goals.

Quote:

Please could you make it less demanding on servers than Google Tap?

The entire [re]design will have resource usage as a main prerequisite.

Quote:

I think a huge plus factor would be to design it specifically to be search engine friendly.

Agreed that it would be a plus, but the cost will have to be weighed.

Quote:

Could you make it so new additions - bolt ons are also engine friendly?

Am I noticing a theme here Laughing

?

Quote:

PHP nuke users will flock to your project if you can figure this problem out!

We'll see!

Client Joined: Sep 13, 2003 Posts: 6

Sorry for being late with comments, but Ive been busy with "new toys" to our website hosted by you.

Seems like this forked initiative is really needed, but I have my worries.

First, these topics are missing or have problems in PHP Nuke (for me):
1) No documentation at all (well, a book in german are on its way......cant read german so....).
2) Its not easy to do your own themes (where is the manual?)
3) Installations and upgrades can be a mess, not easy to do for a non programmer.
4) Security....see earlier posts, wont repeat it
5) Thanks to a module from NSN I can easily change access to blocks and modules (shouldnt that have been a part of PHP Nuke core?)
6) Language management isnt good at all
7) Speed?

This is or has been good:
1) its free
2) lots and lots of addons available (blocks modules etc)
3) support and help is good, and ofc thats includes yourself and chatserv and many others.
4) for us, having a gaming community, PHP-Nuke has been a success story from the beginning, and we are getting more members and functions every week/month.
5) Raven

My worries:
Its not a small task, looks like a huge project. And huge projects scares me, you need dedicated people from start to the end (is there any end?).
And ofc you/we will need people to help out with support. It must be backwards compatible with PHP Nuke, otherwise it will die (or atleast have software that automatically upgrades your addon to PHP-OP).

But ofc, I'm supporting it, especially when reading earlier posts and seeing the latest versions from FB.

I agree on Plan the Work and Work the Plan, do the design part before coding anything etc. Also listening to users, and having the users in mind for everything you do, will for sure help the project to become a success.

I dont know if you need my help, due to the fact I'm living in Europe and different timezone, but if you do, put me on testing and documentation, and maybe also project/planning reviews. And plugins for gamerz too.

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 1:39 pm

Thanks Wraith! Just briefly, a few comments - more later.

Wraith wrote:

It must be backwards compatible with PHP Nuke, otherwise it will ...

Be better, imo Wink

.

Nuke sucks at many MAJOR things. Security, Upgrades, Author support, coding standards, to name but a few. Consider this. When I write a nuke addon today, and I need to access the user table, I have to find code elsewhere in nuke to be my pattern and then it doesn't tell me squat about what ALL is on the table, but what that other addon happens to need. Would you want me to bastardize my envisionment for the future or have you just code something like this

Code:

$userInfo = new userObject();


$userName = $userInfo->getName();

Or consider from validation. I will not even begin to tell you, or remind you, how many various and sundry ways every module writer uses to validate 'stuff'. Why not this instead

Code:

$formIsValid = $formInfo->validateEntireForm('registration');

You, the user, will not have to be concerned AT ALL how it happens. It just does. I'm not down on what you have proposed and I have been and will continue to look at the landscape. I am even considering nuke objects (nuke69, nuke70, nuke71) that will allow you to plug-in your old modules, but, it's only an item for further investigation right now.

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 2:06 pm

Even I can understand that Raven - that seems much better logic to me.

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 6:12 pm

When you consider the "type" of person that is going to be the end user of this CMS then you must consider that search engine friendly URL's should be higher on the list than lower.

I came to nuke about six months ago to solve my Dreamweaver Library objects and templates crisis. Everytime I did an update I crashed my 100 page HTML site.

nuke is a godsend, but understanding mod_rewrite is a problem.

When you look at the "success" of nuke consider that the amount of sites that feature highly in the top 100000 alexa rankings are very few and far between. It's not search engine friendly. Yes googletap is a major advance but it's a hack and new modules or add on's are generally not supported.

The people that could really make the most use of this new CMS are small business owners and one man bands. These people don't want to learn programming or HTML - they just want to publish their news occasionally, offer reviews of their products or services, have a decent contact module and have the whole site administered through a control panel.

If they can add calendars, event timers, marketing modules or simple e-commerce then it would be great - but no one who is going to use a CMS for business purposes will touch it if google will not rank their site for some simple keyword phrases.

Small and medium business does not have the marketing budget to make a success of a non search engine friendly website.

I read somewhere that there is estimated to be over 90,000 nuke sites. Most are in the graveyard because they never got spidered properly by search engines.

The web exists for people to find information. If you build a CMS that has search engine "friendliness" as an afterthought then my opinion is that your project may be technically outstanding but will never achieve the recognition that it may deserve if it is not used by the masses.

There is a huge gap in the market waiting to be filled here. A CMS that you can run "out of the box" and start gaining customers, subscribers or just extra readers. The whole point of having a site in the first place.

Look at the mess of the nukecops forums. Look at the sheer audacity of burzi's "club". Look around you at the huge amounts of open source projects that have failed and are failing.

Look at some of the best nuke add on's. Funny how they also have the best support forums. Emporium by burnwave is a great e-commerce add on for nuke and the support is top drawer - because the guy charges a small fee and can afford his time to the project.

Osc2nuke has failed - osc4nuke (I think) is flourishing - people are happy to pay $50 for something that actually works and they get organised and timely support.

Autotheme is a great product - great support. nukestyles charges a small fee for it's great download mod....

The review module for nuke sucks big time. Tomorrow I am purchasing reviewpost to fill that gap. $99 is a small amount of money to pay for a product that actually works and does the job. I want to publish content, not learn php/mysql to achieve my goals.

It looks to me very much like you are a very talented guy with a bunch of also hugely talented people like Chatserv who have the programming ability to make your vision a reality.

Open source is a good ideal. It does not work very well in practice though. You have already said yourself that you would hate to have the job of running a nukecops style forum - the job is a massive task of support - clearly out of control at nukecops with the same questions being answered over and over again by completely different people.

For the newbie it is a nightmare - and who knows how many people jump straight in with the wrong support answers.

If you are going to deliver us a product which makes a webmasters job the job of publishing content and gaining readership whether for commercial or non commercial ends then please charge us a small fee so that you or someone else can give up the day job and pay a support team to do the job properly.

I am not against open source - I merely see the problems that are caused by the concept. In your own forums you have people getting you hot and bothered because they are demanding code releases - not realising that you are doing it for the good of the community.

Thinking about it you could make the code payable for commercial use - then everybody would be happy.

Please, please, make it search engine friendly so that we can actually use it in vengeance and be found by people looking for the information we are publishing. And please consider the support for the monster that you may be creating.

Regards
Tony
http://www.storebuilder.co.uk

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 6:43 pm

Tony,

Well articulated - I appreciate it. I have every intent on doing my best to keep it search engine friendly, which means different things to different people When i said to weigh the cost, I simply meant that the answer may not be as obvious as it seems. GT helps to make a site search engine friendly. But, there is a cost in performance depending on the volume. So, do I encourage perpetuating the degradation of performance (rhetorical)? Also, Opensource != Free. Do I intend on producing free code that anyone and everyone can take, hack, resell? Don't know yet. For sure it will be Opensource. I am confident that I will receive support money as I go along because I receive a certain amount now. I make almost nothing on my hosting business. I intended it that way quite honestly. I charge a little more because I offer up support that is not usually so readily available. I started it as a service to the community to help provide a stable, reliable, supportive hosting environment. I have expanded my service to a super server, at my own cost. I am hoping that my hosting business will grow and will help to fund this endeavor. Through that and the donations of those who believe in this project, it will be free. But, I will probably use some other license than GPL. Quite frankly I don't want to see someone offering to package my ideas in there $10/month offerings Wink

But, whatever license I choose, it will always be customisable, at no cost, to the people who use it.

Diatribe ended Smile

. Can I put you down for some role associated with this project? Thanks for the donation, btw!

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 8:14 pm

Can we wait for 7.2 to see if any of the bugs reported in 6.5, 6.9, 7.0 and 7.1 actually got fixed? I mean 7.1 had more bugs than the sci-fi channel

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 8:28 pm

The coup des gras for me is FB's latest direction which, by the way, changes constantly and always has and more than likely always will. The future waits for no man and PHP-OpenPortal is my future unless it gets derailed somewhere along the line, which is not expected.

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:05 pm

re: Searchable urls in general.
I have used Google Tap (Mod_Rewrite) and have been just as amazed at how many junk urls it feeds google especially. Not that the good results don't show up too.

That method works great otherwise and is proven effective for sure in getting S/E's deeper into sites. But it is not easy for the average user without a doubt when it comes to adding equally important areas to their site via normal module installation. WE ALL KNOW THIS DELEMA!

Now I also use Oscommerce where there is an internal engine that writes short urls but I haven't seen significant evidence it is effective because my site isn't buried deeply in layers of catagories. I'd like to hear from people who do have success with this or a simular technique. I have to think its a lot cleaner then mod_rewrite and less "Cost" to the server. But here again you have to hack files to add more urls to the engine. So usability it rates about the same as modrewrite and from all the evidence I've seen it described by many osc users as less effective then using mod_rewrite.

So personally I think Raven's right on the mark here to keep it in mind but not put a lot of resources into it at this time.

I really like froogle. I wish all search engine submission was so controlled. But... I'm sure we will never see free submission reach that level of ease in the wild so to speak. Once a month I upload a new txt file with any changes or just let it ride can't beat it.

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 11:50 pm

(Raven) --- Yeah, but that's a ways off.. I mean we're talking 0% complete here. When do you think that project will actually be complete?

I just got here from running a $20,000.00 MS solution (though the word 'solution' is more of an oxymoron than anything else).

Using true Steve Ballmer math, I spent 8 hours a day patching the bugs, 8 hours a day keeping hackers out the MANY MS security weaknesses of Exchange, IIS, SQL Server, Portal Server and the Windows Operating System, 8 hours a day re-indexing, 8 hours a day clicking "Restart Virtual Server" only to continuously get SharePoint Portal Server errors resulting in emails from MS saying "We've never seen that before" and then 4 hours a day arguing how when the bug fix I just implemented by using their instructions causes a new crash that they've "Never seen before" it goes on the same helpdesk ticket as the last one and doesn't equate to me owing them more money. The funny part of this came during my last outage on February 24th.

I had been out for a week while they were "analyzing the problem". I had just spent another $250.00 on the latest helpdesk inquiry. My rep calls and reminds me that my Open License has just expired and that I'll need to pay them $3,500.00 to update my licensing for the next year.

"HAHAHA", was my reply. I did add a couple of swear words and the word "you" a few times in there, but you get the idea!

I'm really hoping that my NEW solution (PHP-Nuke) never feels like that.

With the exception of GT (which I think is just no solution at all and needs to be rethought completely) I think Nuke is far superior to anything else that I have seen, at least so far anyway.

What is different about Nuke is, I would pay for a good stable version that included support. I would also pay for security updates and scheduled improvements (can anyone say bi-monthly updates and semi-annual upgrades?).

So where is this solution? I think there is a LARGE community of USERS that would actually pay for it! I'm not talking about webmasters that love spending 40 hours a week just working on stuff, I'm talking about webmasters that want to load it up and just watch it run!

When the author concentrates efforts in that regard (instead of efforts on a "Club" to bring in $120 a year on stuff that doesn't get fixed EXCEPT by someone else), or when someone else like Raven & Chatserv join forces to produce a "fork" that is what people want, I think someone won't have any problems making money. Not to outdo anyone, but because people WANT to buy something like that.

After looking, I can tell you that there isn't anyone selling it, and there should be! The real trick would be to get a group of people together that include every aspect of the application. Themes design, backend coding, mods and blocks, custom application integration, security.... etc... The players are here (heck, I can think of 6 names that would make the perfect team) I'm just not sure that they would team up to do such a thing.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 1:38 am

For the record:

Noone has joined forces with me. Some prefer to work in the background rather than in the foreground. At this point, several have come forth to work in the documentation and testing area. One has volunteered to help with the GUI (presentation layer). Some have already donated finalcial support.

You might want to look at Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! or Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! if you haven't already.

The project will never be complete Smile

. It will [hopefully] become mature. You probably mean when will there be substance to look at to the point that it is useable. I can tell you that it will be weeks into months, but not years. Nuke will continue on in one form or another. I will continue supporting nuke as long as I can. Here is some interesting reading. This was the thread that caused FB to shut down his forums. I had made a copy just minutes before he unplugged last year. The final posts where he stomped his feet and closed down posting and comments never got recorded.

http://www.ravenwebhosting.com/public/downloads/nuke6_6_discussion.html . Of particular interest, nukelite (FB) uses his threats (as usual) when people start voicing displeasure over the (then) new club rules on releases. From the link above and note especially his threat/promise/prediction as to the future (highlighted in red)

nukelite wrote:

Re: PHP-Nuke 6.6 Released (Score: 1)
by nukelite on Sunday, May 25 @ 22:49:31 EDT
(User Info | Send a Message) http://phpnuke.org
What's wrong with you people?

You don't want the Club, you don't want the commercial license, you didn't donated when the donation page was created... no here, no there... no nothing. In the deep I'm starting to feel stupid. I'm here to maintain, as best as I can, this whole project... first for fun, but now it's my 100% time job... did you know that? so, for what am I doing this? With this kind of reactions I don't know what to think.

At NukeCops there is something that surprised me, saying that I'm violating the GPL license. This is absurd and hope you guys think about it and fix what you have done.

So, for the people who thought that I'm in violation with the GPL I need to point you to THIS PAGE [www.gnu.org] where you can read ALL and ANYTHING you need to know about what you can and can't do using the GPL license. I'm NOT in violation of the GPL license. And YES, anyone can charge a fee for the download [www.gnu.org].

I can't believe how many people just misunderstand the GPL... and not only that, but then they claim to defend the free software movement... what you're doing is a big permanent damage to the community, to the GPL movement.

Anyway, it's time to move some stuff. I'm really bored to read this kind of things all the time and know that since I'm bored with this situations because they affect me (yes, I'm human) is the main reason for me to start working on some other stuffs, something I'm already doing. My idea is to sell (yes, to sell) the whole project to anyone (person or company) that just doesn't care about all this complains and continues it. Now you know how bored am I. That is the result of so many complains, flames, insults, etc. that I receive daily. Anyway, I'll be here while this doesn't happen... but for sure a reorganization of my priorities should be done... but don't worry, you'll not notice anything... this is a personal issue that will not have a visible public impact.

So... continue to complain, to flame, to insult... it contributes to the changes I need.

And, please... STOP complaining about the Forums, and this includes Members List and Private Messages modules, THEY AREN'T MINE and the code is too big and complex to dedicate my time to understand and fix it.

If you don't agree with my manner to do the things, just go away from here, as far as you can. And for those who understand the whole thing and defend it... THANKS a lot and enjoy your stay.

Notice a theme/pattern here? My point in all this is that if you think nuke is any more safe/stable than mine or anyone else's - forgeddaboutit! He would sell in a moment and never give the community a second chance.