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Ive been using Xoops on and off for about a dozen years. I used it in the past for a number of projects, both personal and for clients. I ran a 500+ member hiking group (before meetup.com existed) that had an event schedule, photo gallery and forum - worked beautifully well. Before Sharepoint came into its own, I've set up a half dozen intranet sites for clients to do basic project management and scheduling, forum, etc.
After a six year hiatus, I wanted to check it out again for a small side-job that I was working on and I am sorely disappointed. From what I am seeing so far, there are some face lifts to the themes and the installer is a bit more friendly (although still lacking) but functionally, xoops devolved!
Attempting to do what used to be a rather simple thing - set up a photo album that requires user logon to view.
I've used MyAlbum-p module for this exact thing about 8 years ago. Now, it's useless. Can't lock it down. Removing the sidebar shortcut for autonomous users simply hides the URL, but those are simple enough to guess and search engines will troll them within days of publishing. I could probably fix that, but the module itself is jacked! The album page with thumbnails looks like crap - way too busy and there is no intuitive way to see the actual full-size image! When clicking the thumb, the page goes to full-screen comment window (very 1999). In a few minutes of clicking, I could not figure out how to get it to show me the actual image. One would think that a photo album module would be at least good at showing photos, but no...
I downloaded two more modules. ExtGallery, which supposedly is 2.5-compatible, was a joke! You cannot upload images until you create a Category and then an Album. Zero instructions on how to do either one, but the category was simple enough. Then I spent 40 minutes clicking around the unfamiliar interface. If my life depended on it, I could not find how to make an f'n Album. Suspect the button is missing - great programming guys!
Third module was not any better. The whole evening wasted on amateur code that obviously nobody wants to work on anymore. I know, I got what I paid for. But it's a pity because it was simple, open and functional; no longer.
After a six year hiatus, I wanted to check it out again for a small side-job that I was working on and I am sorely disappointed. From what I am seeing so far, there are some face lifts to the themes and the installer is a bit more friendly (although still lacking) but functionally, xoops devolved!
Attempting to do what used to be a rather simple thing - set up a photo album that requires user logon to view.
I've used MyAlbum-p module for this exact thing about 8 years ago. Now, it's useless. Can't lock it down. Removing the sidebar shortcut for autonomous users simply hides the URL, but those are simple enough to guess and search engines will troll them within days of publishing. I could probably fix that, but the module itself is jacked! The album page with thumbnails looks like crap - way too busy and there is no intuitive way to see the actual full-size image! When clicking the thumb, the page goes to full-screen comment window (very 1999). In a few minutes of clicking, I could not figure out how to get it to show me the actual image. One would think that a photo album module would be at least good at showing photos, but no...
I downloaded two more modules. ExtGallery, which supposedly is 2.5-compatible, was a joke! You cannot upload images until you create a Category and then an Album. Zero instructions on how to do either one, but the category was simple enough. Then I spent 40 minutes clicking around the unfamiliar interface. If my life depended on it, I could not find how to make an f'n Album. Suspect the button is missing - great programming guys!
Third module was not any better. The whole evening wasted on amateur code that obviously nobody wants to work on anymore. I know, I got what I paid for. But it's a pity because it was simple, open and functional; no longer.
