A general point on the end here - I have also looked at dozens of CMS for my new project and have eventually chosen Joomla. Why ? Theming seems a little more flexible and the onbaord WYSIWYG editors are nice, and the end user need polish, which this gives in abundance.

However, there is a lot missing. There is no decent forum module for Joomla. If you look at their website, they use an external forum component, which is not searched form the home page. How good an advert is that? Documenation is next to non-existent, and despite their massive forums, very few people contribute as much or as well as they do on the forums here. There is NO Access Control in Joomla, it's yes or no. And learning to do the basics took a hell of a long time.

I also had a long look at MaxDev, and got nowhere fast, despite them having a very freindly community over there.

So in answer to the question above, XOOPS is falling seriously behind in a lot of areas, and a lot of effort needs to be spent to get it up to speed. At the same time, it's also head and shoulders above the field in other areas, leaving other systems seriously struggling to catch up. The phrase that springs to mind is "horses for courses" - the XOOPS developers have a particular mind-set and ethos that gets particular priorities done first. You can have all the modules you want plugged into a system, but unless they work well with the core, you're just building biiger problems for yourself later.

Like many here, I am frustrated in the dead end that was the 2.2 tree and there has been no real core progress for what seems like a long time. But I work in algorithm development and know that sometimes you have to try things until they don't work, then start again. The things I need are on the list, and I know they will arrive eventually.

In short, I'm not a module Dev (PHP is on my long list of things to learn), so for the moment I will leave that to the experts. XOOPS isn't the best system out there because there isn't a best system out there - but it's a d*mn good place to start from and it's always the first thing I evaluate for any new project and will be for quite some time.

Keep up the good work guys (just a little bit faster, OK ?)

2.3 is currently under advanced development.

2.2 users are not in a dead end, as the forthcoming 2.4 version can be updated to from 2.2

David, All,

Believe it or not, my thread was meant to be supportive, but I guess it did not come across that way. I though the official recomendation was still to use the 2.0 branch for all production work ? This does in effect leave 2.2 a withered arm, even if it does have an upgrade path.

I have aldo downloaded 2.3 RC1, but it fails to even install on my system (WAMP), though I do not have a live linux system I can install this on and the folder structure seems radically different.

I know 2.4 is due and am waiting for that to upgrade existing sites. It won't answer all my needs but then nothing does.

Thanks again to all the Dev teams for their efforts.

Gareth

I know how you mean... I quite like 2.2 myself, but I am glad that the features of it will appear in 2.4 ... although I'm keeping with 2.0.x on my live sites until 2.3 reaches stable.