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

Hi
I am just a beginner in the world of XOOPS myself so I can only offer a modicum of help with your situation. But I want you to know that there are a lot of people here who are very knowledgeable and will do their best to assist you.
I hope I'm not out of line by taking the time to respond to a few of your statements.

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A lot of users are still on older versions of XOOPS and have been for a long time. Give yourself some time to learn more before considering updating to the latest version. And give the more experienced users that have updated time to work with the new version and therefore discover any problems that may creep up.

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The developers have decided to keep the core separate from the modules thereby facilitating easier and more frequent updates. Imagine having to rework the core code everytime a new module is developed.
The WIKI is a new development within XOOPS ORG and as such is a work in progress. But there are some great people working feverishly to make it a formidable resource here. It's a community (you and I) resource that will probably be a work in progress for some time. There are; however, numerous sites that have good documentation and links for information regarding modules and XOOPS usage which, if I'm not mistaken, are included within the WIKI in the form of links.

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I am not familiar with the membros_online module but I have found that by using modules that have a good support system, ie; modules that are supported by the developer through their own sites with a forum that has a multitude of threads relating to the module, there will be fewer problems that can't be solved.
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My hope is that with a little more experience and time with this CMS your rating will be more favorable. XOOPS is a learning experience and definitely not a challenge that can be conquered overnight--not in my experience--but it does everything I need it to do and that's something I couldn't get from the others.
I'm just a user like you but the nice thing about XOOPS is the fact that it is community driven and we are all here to help each other.

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In general I agree with your feedback - we need to provide a version for the first time user with the basic modules.

Something what Barroca just recently did with this pack:

http://www.XOOPS.org/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=90

You can read the whole story here: https://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4082

We had few packs done by Mithrandir, but I think, it was done for another version of XOOPS:

https://xoops.org/modules/core/viewcat.php?cid=9

but most of them should work for the 2.0.X version as well. Please note that some of them might be outdated, and some new recommendations are here:
http://xoopsinfo.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=3517

I hope, we'll see soon a packages based on the above list.

You can also read this document called "Guide to essential XOOPS Modules"

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.

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And I very much appreciate the fact that you took your time to provide us with feedback!

I agree with your points, and hopefully we as XOOPS community will be able to make your suggestions become a reality soon.

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Since XOOPS decided some versions ago to delete the official included modules, you can conclude XOOPS doesn't have any official modules anymore.
So as to question 1...... no official modules, no automated module installer/updater.
As for question 2: actualy this is related to question 1. Because modules are scripts made by some great ppl, but ppl come and go, lot of modules aren't updated anymore. The xoops.org depository is a disaster (see the lot of topic about this) but still,...nothing has been done.
However you can take a look at xoopsaddons.com

As for the rest you are absolutely right, which is a pitty considering Xoops. The CMSystem as provided is absolutely none newbie friendly.

IMHO:
I do not feel your assertions are all together correct in relation to the fact that XOOPS is an Open Source CMS. It has come to me by experiencing XOOPS for several years now, however cumbersome it may sometimes seem, it is the very thing that seperates it from the other open source CMS(s) offered out there. I have checked out the others and believe me when I say this-although they appear to have things in order, looks can be deceiving.
To be honest with myself first I had to realize I was very excited about XOOPS and when I started it did come with modules but it was my own excitedness and expectations which got me the most frustrated. In hindsight the modules which came with XOOPS I wanted to change anyway for others that were offered. And what I ended up doing anyway was uninstall them all (except the system module) then used the XOOPS Search to find what I wanted making sure I downloaded the most recent version of the module I wanted and asking question pertinent to that specific module. And with the veracity of helpfullness that can only be found at Xoops.org I was and have always been helped.

FIRST what I didn't do, because of my knowledge, excitedness and expectations, I didn't read the F.A.Q.s and I didn't bother reading the documentation. For example-I too had what I thought were problems with the Modules and Installation of the modules, only to find that there wasn't anything wrong at all, I had indeed uploaded it but I hadn't installed it so it just sat there doing nothing that I expected it to do.

SECONDLY: I didn't use the XOOPS Search! As per numerous suggestions written in the F.A.Q.s, Forums, and Documentation. I now realize from being around a little while that sometimes questions don't get answered in a forum because they have already been answered many many many times. Generally even then-someone comes to the rescue. Another great thing only found at Xoops.org.

Thirdly: Module updater and Installer. This would be a wonderful thing to have and an excellent feature in most software that is not Open Source! However, since the XOOPS Core is under great revisions, and no matter how you look at it XOOPS is Open Source-therefore many if not all modules other than the XOOPS core System module, are from 3rd Party community contributors. So by virtue of the very thing that makes XOOPS great-it would be very difficult to create one as you suggest and still remain Open Source! But I know I would be happy to try it out should you develop such a module. :)

Fourth: As far as I know, XOOPS does not write the standard. Other than the XOOPS core, which is constantly being updated to keep up with the standards of the World Wide Web, PHP, Mysql, etc. Whos standards do you suppose XOOPS should adopt? Mine? Yours? W3C? Firefox's? IE's? Operas? Linux? Windows?

Fifth: I would like to say Welcome to the world of XOOPS Whoops and Happy New Year!

Quest

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.

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Yes, under design.

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Agreed. If is too hard for a non-experienced user to find proper modules. This is also being considered and some technical solution has been designed together with 1).

All thou http://www.xoopsaddons.org is in a lot better shape than the repository here on xoops. It still has all the dead links that point to dev.xoops for the modules (Not their fault). It is hit and miss there as well.

User should be warned about the archive's of old modules that haven't worked in years.

I think XOOPS should have a (currant active module dev link section). So user can go straight to the dev's site.

This way the new users can be routed to known working modules.

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Edit: I was just on the addons site. It looks like they have fixed alot of the broken downloads. Bless them!!!