Thanks phppp, you are very kind.

I have filled in a bit more detail and added one more point. The additional point is not really a concrete proposal as such but it outlines what I believe to be very interesting consequences of adopting the portability and easy installing/updating ideas.

Basically, as I argued here, there is a happy half-way house between centralisation a la Microsoft and an anarchy.

I draw an analogy with Linux (more specifically Ubuntu).
Like Xoops, it also involves distributed development of heterogeneous software but crucially it is focussed by proper version control and dependencies, to the point of having an easy installation and an excellent automatic updater, despite being arguably a lot more complex than Xoops.

Not to put a too fine point on it, if we can pull the same thing off here, we will have a big and beautiful All Singing All Dancing Web Based "Linux"!. Of course, it won't be Linux but it can, in principle, do most things.

I agree with phppp. That is what I meant in my post #8:
"Nor do I agree that having an installer is necessarily synonymous to having official modules."

I am very glad to hear that the specifications (or standards, as I called them) are in hand already!

phppp, maybe you would like to post a link here to the forum where the specs are being discussed, if it is public?

As the person who started this topic, let me attempt to sum up a little.

It may well be that I was looking for an easy way where there is none. I know that I am prone to complaining too much, so thank you for taking it in good spirit.

I don't mind innocently stirring a can of worms about the module repositories and everyone chipping in about that. You all have every right to do so and it is kind of relevant to my original post. The way I see it, I respect you all. I do not think that anybody had intentionally set out to be disagreeable or unhelpful or anything like that.
Wizanda's post made the nature of the problem clear. Here is a helpful guy with the best interests of XOOPS users at heart (and far from a beginner) and yet he is feeling left out and left to his own devices. By all accounts, he is not the only one. Is this because XOOPS admins are nasty and mean people? I don't think so either. I see this entirely as an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of your decision to wash your hands of ANY reponsibility over the modules. Of course it leads to fragmentation and misunderstandings!

I am not questioning your wisdom in adopting a distributed development model and letting users choose their own modules. However, there ought to be a happy half way house between total central control over everything on one hand and total anarchy on the other hand. You are currently heading for the latter.

Coming back to user's perspective: anarchy is not good for users. In all the above helpful posts I did not see any overriding organisational or technical reasons, that would hold, as to why you could not have an automated module uploader/updater or at least a centrally maintained list of modules known to work with the latest version of Xoops. (I still think that the former is a much better solution for not a lot of extra effort and may even be easier in the long run).

I realise that two weeks hard work by a technical expert can achieve miracles and may make the current XOOPS work but I think most new users would prefer an easier alternative, if there was one.

Thank you for the nice welcome. I wish a very Happy New Year to all of you too!

I agree that the Forum here is good, as is borne out by the quality of the replies I am getting. Definitely a plus for Xoops! Thank you to all of you who have replied to this newbie.

Here is my brief reaction to the specific four points raised by Quest.

1) Yes, it is more fun to plunge in and see it working and it is my default modus operandi too. However, when confronted by the dead module I did read as much as I could but it still remained dead. (Another module installed since in the same way works fine and yes, I did check for any extra files/instructions). I don't want to dwell on this, I guess I just learnt that there are broken modules about. However, something ought to be done to ease the newbies' pain and the likelihood of the very first module being dead.

I am much encouraged by the fact that there are experienced members of the community like Mamba who understand this and agree that it is a priority.

2) Search is definitely a useful tool. However, there ought to be more prominent warnings redirecting new users from xoops.org repository to xoopsaddons.org

3) To quote Shine: "..... no official modules, no automated module installer/updater." This may be a statement of the current fact but I cannot agree that this is how it should remain. Prediction is difficult, especially about the future :), but I would hazard a guess that either XOOPS gets a decent installer or, in the long run, it dies. Nor do I agree that having an installer is necessarily synonymous to having official modules.

4) The answer lies in module developers voluntarily adhering to some minimal intallation standards which such an installer can use. It is not beyond the talents of this community to define some such standards about depositories, versions, documentation, destination directories, simple interface(s) and simple tests to be passed. It need not be too onerous. It seems that I was misled into thinking that oo in the middle of Ooops was refering to "object oriented". At the moment, it only seems to depict a pair of breasts? :)

I generally dislike too many standards and find myself surprised to be on the side of having to argue for standards against experienced computing professionals.

Thank you for your comments. Please don't get me wrong. I am a great supporter of open source community software development and I think XOOPS has a lot of potential. That is why I am offering my feedback, for whatever it is worth.

I had also written to the general feedback section of the forum with more reasoned arguments about the beginner's experience.

Briefly, I can see that XOOPS may work well for the community of developers but with regard to ordinary users, you need to improve in two ways:

1) Have an automated module installer/updater as soon as possible. This should be your number one priority.

2) Have some central means of enforcing quality standards on the included/offered modules. At the moment it is just too easy to come across broken ones, which shatters the confidence of new users.

In order to become an active member of the community, one has to first be able to become a confident user. You seem to have lost me at this first hurdle.

1) The initial installation succeeded. At this point I was optimistic but the feeling soon passed.

2) I have had XOOPS for only a week but I have already had to upgrade it before even working out how to make it work.

3) There is nothing installed except the system module and it takes a long time to find the documentation on how to remedy this. There appear to be many empty wiki pages scattered around the place which confuse the documentation search trail. The requirement to search documentation and do additional manual uploads/installs to get ANY functionality is definitely beginner unfriendly.

4) The first module I tried uploading, membros_online, does not show up in my modules admin. I had put it in the modules directory, which now has two folders: system, and membros_online. I understood from my reading that this was the right place for it? At this point I am stuck and I cannot proceed any further with Xoops.

5) Despite reading voluminous forum about SSL problems, I failed to make the SSL login work. I could not find any clear instructions anywhere as to which file to copy into
mysite.org/secure/ SSL enabled directory, or what else to do.

6) Your forum confirmation email and password reminder had arrived in my spam folder. This added a few more hours of frustration while waiting for it to arrive.

Rating so far: 1/6