1
finalfiler
Cutting out the Geeky stuff!
  • 2003/11/16 3:13

  • finalfiler

  • Documentation Writer

  • Posts: 111

  • Since: 2002/1/19


Over the last couple of weeks I have familiarised a couple of small business acquaintenance with XOOPS as an option for the web sites.

While interested and positive, in the end XOOPS was rejected, mainly because of what they referred to as 'the geeky stuff' - the number of reads, popular etc comments appended to posts, news items, downloads etc..

I realise that it is possible to edit the source to eliminate the offending captions, which is what I am doing at the moment, but in the medium term surely it will be useful and likely to expand the audience for XOOPS if this stuff could be switched off in each module's preferences?


Ta



2
regen_r8
Re: Cutting out the Geeky stuff!
  • 2003/11/16 4:22

  • regen_r8

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 101

  • Since: 2002/5/23


I've been running up against the same bias. While the basic features of XOOPS are strong and I really like this tool, some of the features are less suited to the ministries and non-profit organizations that I work with the most.

I think that with XOOPS 2.0 that much of this can be edited in templates of each module, and saved as a base template set. Still the posting forms are less maleable.

Also, as features are added to the core (i.e. templates, notifications), simply wrapping a script or module from a different cms does not adequately integrate it with a site for most sophisticated organizations.

--
When the decision was made to separate the templates from the themes back in January, there should have been some thought to having the modules ship with some alternate templates.

I've just grown accustomed to hacking modules and the core until it does what I want. Unfortunately this makes it much more time consuming to take a release.

Cheers,

Rich

3
Bunny
Re: Cutting out the Geeky stuff!
  • 2003/11/16 13:46

  • Bunny

  • XOOPS Advisor

  • Posts: 57

  • Since: 2002/10/21


Similar here, although number of reads etc. are easy enough to remove from the templates. What put some of my potential clients of XOOPS was the message icons, smilies, non-intuitive bb-code formatting etc.

To turn these off, you have to hack deep into Xoops, which is risky if you want to be able to upgrade later, so I had to use a different CMS for those customers.

4
Per4orm
Re: Cutting out the Geeky stuff!
  • 2003/11/16 14:29

  • Per4orm

  • Documentation Writer

  • Posts: 145

  • Since: 2003/11/14


I have to agree, although this is the same with most Open Source CMS systems. As mentioned previously, it is relatively simply to edit out the number of reads etc from the module templates, but it would be nice to have the ability to switch such options off within the module administration. What we have to remember is that for lower traffic sites, seeing that an item has only had 2 reads can be off-putting to potential new users.

As for the smilies... I personally find bright, animated smilies offensive in more corporate functions. The only way I've found around this so far is to go into the smilies option at deselect the smilies that were selected to "appear in form".

At the moment I'm having to heavily customise my XOOPS installation to be suitable for the use I have in mind... although this does hold one major advantage - it won't look like "yet another XOOPS site" when it goes live!

5
Mithrandir
Re: Cutting out the Geeky stuff!

Well, could you bring up an ordered list of items, you (or your customers) don't like and which should (in your opinion) be toggleable in the modules administration.

So far:
- Smilies
- Forum topic reads
...

6
sunsnapper
Re: Cutting out the Geeky stuff!

Or, perhaps you can share your cleaned up template set when you are finished so others who want less info in the template can use it.

7
Draven
Re: Cutting out the Geeky stuff!
  • 2003/11/16 18:45

  • Draven

  • Module Developer

  • Posts: 337

  • Since: 2003/5/28


Quote:

regen_r8 wrote:
When the decision was made to separate the templates from the themes back in January, there should have been some thought to having the modules ship with some alternate templates.


This is precisely what I will be doing with most of the XOOPS Certified Modules (Think old "core" modules). It will also be the resposibility of the new Package team to assemble XOOPS site packages (incl. templates , modules, functions) to suit different needs. Basically we'll be starting with something like News site, Magazine site, community site, etc. The beauty of this is the modules, well the templates mostly, can be designed to suit the sites needs (eg, turning of read counts).

but it would be nice to have the ability to switch such options off within the module administration.


Duly noted. Thanks.

At the moment I'm having to heavily customise my XOOPS installation to be suitable for the use I have in mind... although this does hold one major advantage - it won't look like "yet another XOOPS site" when it goes live!


My personal goal for XOOPS has always been to try as best as possible to seperate us from other "Nuke" looking sites. I've made a few minor suggestions to the core team that will greatly help the "skining" ability for XOOPS in the future. Skalpa was so kind as to put those in the next version and made a few improvements of his own, so stay tuned.

8
finalfiler
Re: Cutting out the Geeky stuff!
  • 2003/11/17 12:36

  • finalfiler

  • Documentation Writer

  • Posts: 111

  • Since: 2002/1/19


Quote:

MithyT2 wrote:
Well, could you bring up an ordered list of items, you (or your customers).
So far:
- Smilies
- Forum topic reads
...


Itś been a while since I looked at the source of XOOPS. Itś come some way and what I want to do is turning out easier than I thought. I think Iĺl do my hacks and feed them back to the group.

That said, an emerging model may be the Enterprise-X module.

Essentially, I advocate that News postings should only show the title, date published and text, since most businesses would not want to indicate who of their staff published the item. Same with Section articles, FAQs etc.

Nor should there be an indication how many times an article has been read.









9
malexandria
Re: Cutting out the Geeky stuff!

Glad to see that people are starting to agree with me on this. I've been posting and lobbying about this for a year now. Hopefully we'll get it with the 2.1 series :)

10
Wingz
Re: Cutting out the Geeky stuff!
  • 2003/11/17 13:34

  • Wingz

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 71

  • Since: 2002/8/23


One of the things I've been looking for as I drifted from PhpNuke to PostNuke (before the self-immolation) and XOOPS for the past year or so - is the potential to have the core of the system as spoke, and then 'hub off' with nucleii of module components. For instance the entire site might be automobiles, with one common guestbook, one news system, one classifieds module etc; but GM, Ford and other marques would have their own gallery, forums (to encompass different models), sections and downloads. I dunno if that makes sense; but I keep looking .


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