Ok I've been using XOOPS for around a year, and I'm beginning to get very itchy feet with all the nonsense that's been going on - I'm particularly looking at Joomla which appears to be leaping forward with update after update, plus if you take one look at the kind of websites that are made you can see they really are 'next-generation' cms...

I've recently had to reinstall my entire site after downgrading to 2.0.13 from 2.2.3 after finding out that 2.2.3 was not the most 'stable' version and so you'll need to downgrade in order to upgrade to 2.3 whenever that's out. The 'downgrade script' basically trashed my site, deleted database entries and wiped a load of data. Nice.

Unsurprisingly I'm getting to the end of my tether now - does anyone know of any advantages that XOOPS has over joomla? At least that might ease my itchy feet! ;)

Thanks!

It is ashame and I am sorry to hear you didn't back-up your site before trying the downgrade.

I too recently felt uneasy about the XOOPS version issues. So much so that I went back and began to research my options as I had done before ever choosing xoops. One question I had in my mind (and you may identify with this) was "Why did I ever choose XOOPS in the first place?"

I had heard of joomla but never checked into it, while looking into my fantastico I discovered Joomla was there now too. I set out on the arduous task again of looking at phpnuke. postnuke, drupal, mambo, etc. and then finally joomla. After doing this (which was probably the third maybe in fourth time in a year)I discovered that although XOOPS currently has some aggravating problems (Mostly Created by the S.O.B. who hacked it and trashed the site docs and other things) it doesn't have as many more as you may think. In fact it doesn't even have as many as the others.

Here is what I discovered:
On the service of these other cms offerings apprear to be fancier, more colorfull and exude the appearance something spectacular. Which is not an uncommon practice in sales and marketing.
However in checking in to the modules, instructions, and so on and so on I figured out the to my original question stated above.
What I am saying is not to knock, put down or otherwise anyone elses hard work! Some of what they have done looks great! And I applaud them.
Now why XOOPS (for me)? There are more modules, particulary for which you can get help from developers and more module choices per most category. The modules are not mixed between some legal turmoil and take offs from another type of cms for which you could never be sure... The module repository, support forums, downloads, etc are indeed far superior at XOOPS than those others. Although the docs are currently missing for XOOPS (do to the butthead who hacked them) when they were there they were more easily understood, not as voluminous etc. (hacker obviously knew that too).
All in all if you really investgate it you will find that XOOPS is far better and supperior. And I am looking forward to the release of the 2.4 version.

Just my opion.

Quest

hi Quest,

Yeah it sounds like your motivations towards XOOPS were similar to mine - though the reason I'm asking is that I just had a look over there today and they really have removed a lot of the things that swayed me to XOOPS a while back.

-They're now registered properly as an open-source software company
-Their components section is superb -http://extensions.joomla.org/

Have a look - it's like a hit-list of the annoyances of XOOPS - ie look in 'wysiwig editors' section and you'll find neatly arranged (and working!) versions of the most recent wysiwig editors - look at the documents section and you'll see a range - there's an online 'magazine' module that let's you break out of the template and arrange elements however you want for a magazine look (look at the examples) and so on and so on.

The trouble is I think of the hassle and number of requests it's taken for any sort of movement in having a news article that can even display images in the category listings (ie like the XOOPS homepage question that has been asked a thousand times) and after months and months of these questions we get a limited hack from smdcom that limits us to four categories...

It's these sorts of comparisons that really make my feet itchy - it seems most of the issues that affected joomla have disappeared whereas XOOPS has just kinda stood still.

So I guess what I need to hear is any actual reasons why XOOPS is better - for example are the modules unstable in joomla? (mind you XOOPS ain't the greatest! probably bad example ;))

Is XOOPS more secure? Though, again from your post if the homesite is getting trashed by hackers then that doesn't really bode too well!

I think in terms of the look of website, joomla is two or three years ahead of xoops, but I'd like to know if there's some 'under the bonnet' advantage XOOPS has? Is it quicker?

<sigh>

I did do what you say. Thanks. As I said-looks good.

I don't know the answers to your very good questions. Why? Looks are deceiving and I myself don't have time to fall for looks. No more than I have time to fall for a debate or tactfull bashing of any of the open source content management systems out there. My comments were not and are not specific to any one cms.

Sounds like you want me or someone else to go on over the that cms and try it out for you then get back to you about whether it works like they say or not.

BTW: If you do a search and look around I am certain there were some previous discussions on that cms and XOOPS in which you probably can find some of the answers. If you want all of them though I think you should just try it.

I anxiously await the findings of your discovery.

I develop for both, and others...but unless you are a developer, the differences can't really be appreciated. Suffice it to say that you have more initial work in planning a proper module for XOOPS that in the long-run should equate to more stable code. In Joomla, you have less up-front planning because everything is encapsulated, but you have longer debug times getting everything to work the way you want.

Joomla was Mambo -which didn't have a "huge" user base compared to others. Since becoming Joomla, it seems larger, but appearances could be deceiving. The biggest thing I notice on the surface is there is a lot more commercialization of extensions. It seems to be 50/50, but there are a lot of cool things out there to purchase, not download for free. My opinion is, Joomla is solid, and yet another CMS. Is it worth jumping over and working - don't know, that's an individual decision. The only reason I play with so many CMS's is because I am a developer first, CMS zealot second.

Okay, you brought up security. First and foremost, no PHP based CMS is without security worries. I monitor logs on a very frequent basis watching what folks try to do on my servers. Any PHP based CMS will suffer the same fate - global polution, POST-Payload injection, SQL injection, etc., etc. Unfortuantely, it is a catch-up world for most CMS. Further, for the average site sitting on todays shared environments - you can only do so much! That's why it's important to pay attention to what is going on in your logs.

Okay, enough of that - I have seen an equal amount of injection occur under Joomla and I see in XOOPS - PHPNuke get's the prize though! You want to know what the number one injection hack to any site is? BCC injection in your contact page! Number 2? SQL injection to try to steal account info - specifically administration info. Number 3? I call it /tmp ownership - but basically the script-kiddies love to try to run "wget" "curl" fetch" and "stat" on your server to copy and run commands from your server. It could be worms, it could be email exploits so they end up relaying off your site, it could be rootkits...ah, the life of a server master!

Anyway, as with anything, there are all kinds of outside influences. Don't make decisions based on the superficial. Are you really tired of the perceived bickering amoungst creative folks, or are you just ready to throw this girl away for a new one?

Good Luck with your decision!

Hello,
I am very new. When I tried Joomla last month it worked horribly in the browser IE and the pages looked like puzzles. They would vary when refreshed. There was a suggestion I read about changing browser which would be great for me but what about the visitors. I since recently changed to XOOPS and am trying to implement it. As long as I can see the pages I feel at least I have a shot at making it work.
Anyway, this is my humble and very green opinion.

Thanks for the very interesting replies guys & gals!

I think that's the difficulty - there's an awful lot under the bonnet that is impossible to see until you've really used a cms properly - and then it's usually too late!

Joomla's apparently got a 1.1 release coming very soon which is meant to move it totally away from it's mambo-base and redress many issues - there's a bunch of folk raving about it anyway.

And XOOPS has the similar 2.3/2.4 releases coming up!

So I guess I'll just wait and see who delivers the greatest goods and go with my instinct then! ;)

Use Drupal. You will see soon that you were only loosing time with those CMS's like Joomla, Xoops, ...

The fustration surrounding the future of XOOPS is a real killer. I'm tired of it myself. But, I'm not writing the code or the modules.

My biggest concern is now that I've upgraded several sites to 2.2.4 it seems that this is a dead-end path for Xoops.

Maybe I need to spend a few more hours a day reading posts as this has probably more fully been addressed somewhere.

As support communities go though, I've seen none better than what we have right here. As long as the Core and Module developers are working hand in hand (which seems to be the case) then there's no way I'm jumping ship.