World of XOOPS Newsletter, edition 2
Date 2004/3/11 14:30:00 | Topic: World of Xoops (WOX)
| WOX Newsletter -World of XOOPS, edition 2- You're reading the second issue of the World of XOOPS Newsletter, where the XOOPS Core Team informes you about their work, and give you an overview of the recent additions to the XOOPS system, done by our great community. This month has been another busy month for the XOOPS Community. This also shows in the statistics of our websites: XOOPS.org welcomed it's 15.000th member a while ago, the XOOPS.org website gets an average of over 7000 unique visitors a day, and the core development project on SourceForge.net pops in and out of the top 20 most active websites. Once again, it proves that the XOOPS Community is alive and kicking! Quickly click 'read more' to see what XOOPS has brought you this month!
In this issue: 1. Herko's Word 2. Site of the Month: fyn.dk 3. YAXS - New Sites Using Xoops2! 4. New Modules 5. New Themes 6. New Hacks 7. Calling all Module Developers! 8. Giving back to the Community 9. XOOPS Tip of the Month 1. Herko's Word It falls to me as XOOPS Core Team Leader to report to you what we have been up to in the past month. The most important event was that myself and two of the core developers -Bunny and Skalpa- met up at the FOSDEM event in Brussels at the end of February. There we discussed and plotted out the future development of the XOOPS system. With the change of Core Development leadership from Onokazu to Bunny, the XOOPS project merged with the Zang project (see the comments of WOX nr. 1). This meant that the future development of the XOOPS system needed to be redevised, bringing with it the ideas and development of the Zang project. The meeting in Brussels focussed on this future development of the core system. The next step in XOOPS development is one big step away from the old *nuke heritage and legacy. Thus, the core development team will start working on a new XOOPS3 system. This system will be an advanced version of XOOPS2, and will be based on a new architecture, and will combine new ideas with XOOPS2 and Zang code, making it more flexible, versatile, stable and like nothing you have ever seen before (unless you have seen the perfect CMS). In developing XOOPS3, the developers will take into account the wish-lists of the community. But this does not mean that we have left the XOOPS2 system to die. On the contrary. We have made a list of features that can and will be added to the XOOPS2 core, without having to change the system too much too deep, giving you the opportunity to fine-tune your XOOPS sites and modules. We're also starting a module development forge of our own, where module developers can meet eachother and share their knowledge and ideas. Also, we invite the developer community to report bugs and submit hacks to the core development project on SourceForge.net, thus helping our developers to improve the system core. The hacks and bugfixes and reports will be reviewed and implemented if possible and appropriate. So XOOPS's development is coming into an exciting phase where everything is open and possible, as well as the XOOPS2 development becoming more open and public. Stay tuned for more reports and information about the future development in later newsletters! Herko 2. Site of the Month: fyn.dk This month's Website of the Month is the Danish http://www.fyn.dk website. I talked with the lead developer for the portal, Michael Wulff Nielsen, and asked him to introduce himself and his team to the community. Michael: My name is Michael Wulff Nielsen (Nick: naish), I am 26 years old and I live in Denmark. I am part of a 3 man team that works fulltime on building websites using XOOPS. The other team members are Jannik (Nick: bitkid) and Rene (Nick: izzlazz). Herko: You have your own company? Or is it part of a bigger enterprise? Michael: No, I am employed by Fyens Stiftstidende A/S (http://www.fyens.dk), Jannik and Rene are employed by Portal Fyn Aps (http://www.fyn.dk). Though Portal Fyn is partially owned by Fyens Stiftstidende. It's a long and complex story ;) Herko: I see. You recently delivered the portal website for the Danish Fyn region. Can you tell us about that site? Michael: Sure, Portal Fyn (http://www.fyn.dk) is an attempt to collect all local/regional information there is about Fyn (region in Denmark) on one website. We are using XOOPS2 as a basic platform and adapted it for our purposes. We have built a few custom modules which we plan to release in the near future. Herko: Why did you choose XOOPS2 as platform? Michael: Several reasons. But first and foremost was the fact that the XOOPS core code seemed relatively stable and well written. Since we never planned on using that many XOOPS standard modules we didn't even look at them. We wanted a flexible core that would provide the most basic forms of functionality e.g. - User management. - Advanced theming system - Cache solution - Adaptability Now 6 months later we can look back and say that as a platform XOOPS wasn't such a bad choice after all. We found some areas lacking, blocks management most noticably, but overall we are very pleased with our choice. What has disappointed us, is the basic modules. Some of them are not using templates everywhere (e.g. newbb), this is a big showstopper when you need to adapt the forum to a new look. Herko: What can you tell us about the custom modules you have developed for this site? Michael: Okay, here is a short list of the modules we have developed. - fsArticle, an advanced article module that is fully templatized and extremely flexible. Think wfSections, just much more advanced (and complicated I might add). - WebYellowPages, an expandable "Yellow Pages" module built specifically for danish purposes. - fynMenu, a tool for building "Tigra Menu" drop down menus and much more - Databender, a module designed to pull headlines and newsitems from other sites. This uses a perl backend. Outside of modules we have built a WYSIWYG-editor for XOOPS, based on HTMLArea. This works on both Mozilla and IE and is a drop-in replacement. Herko: Will all these modules and 'drop-ins' be released to the community? Michael: Yes, most of them. We have already provided the core XOOPS team with some of these modules for evaluation. We do not plan to generally release our YellowPages module as it is worthless without a database that costs about $30000. Should anyone however want the code for it we will gladly provide it anyway, but it really is quite useless on it's own. The fsArticle module is the first one scheduled for release, however in it's current form it requires a patch to the XOOPS core in order to function fully. Also we have no default templates for the module. I can't give any specific release date since I don't know when our development plan gives us a few days of spare time for polish work. I hope that it will be real soon now. We are currently debating whether to release the module as-is or polish it first. As for the other modules we will release them when we find time. Something that is in very short supply. If somebody is very eager to lay their hands on our modules they can send me a private message via XOOPS.org and I will mail them the appropriate code. But the code CAN AND WILL BREAK your xoops site. So everybody has been warned now. If you wish to see the modules in action you just have to go to http://www.fyn.dk and enjoy. Herko: Thank you and we hope to hear from you and your team a lot more  Michael: Your quite welcome. Just as we hope to continue being a part of the XOOPS community! 3. YAXS - New Sites Using Xoops2! Blue Horizons, added 3-05-2004 A.C.S. Badminton, added 3-02-2004 Dreambox, added 3-08-2004 Eikke, added 3-02-2004 Fino, added 3-11-2004 Gatto Nero NG, added 3-09-2004 GuitarGearHeads, added 2-29-2004 Novell Forge, added 2-13-2004 PC Overload, added 3-02-2004 PPC Networks, added 3-06-2004 Pressure Lab, added 2-08-2004 Red Hour 3-07-2004 Zortal, added 3-08-2004 Mindhealth, added 04-03-2004 Eirenicon & eZAppraiser, added 04-03-2004 The Grimoure, added 6-02-2004 4. New Modules If you have a module, and want to add it to the XOOPS Module Repository, please contact Francis via PM, and tell him about your module. ANd of course a big thank you to all the developers out there who produced these wonderful modules! Agenda-X 2.0.1 AntiDoS-P 1.1 Articles module for XOOPS2 Avatar Maker Camportail Checker Module for Xoops Checker XML files for Xoops 2.0.6 Checker XML files for Xoops 2.0.6RC Jargon File 1.0 LAN Party Module for XOOPS2 Module IRC MS-Weather News-Block no-ah extendable content module (kStore) Novell's Forge Modules Registration Keys Shoutbox Soapbox Stockbox Stories Module, Replacement for News Top 10 xlink 1.1 Beta xDirectory Xoops Brasil Modules Pack v2.0 zip format XOSC osCommerce Module Beta 0.2 XP-Weather Easy French 1.0 XoopsGallery XoopsTV version1.0 Book Lists version 0.8 XMAIL 1.10 Tips and Tricks Module 5. New Themes 7dana-Soft and Admin-X/Admin-X-clean (XOOPS 2.0.6 version) CB Black CB Blue CB Pink Shino_One pour Xoops V2.X Shino_Two pour Xoops V2.X 6. New Hacks E: Use hacks at your own risk! They may render your XOOPS system unuseable or may prevent you from upgrading! agendax bd flatview year hack Chess Diagram Duplicatable hacked Tiny Content 1.5 ExibeGrupos - of User Groups Internet Explorer 5.X CSS Hack for XOOPS 2.0.6 Members on-Lines - Hacks New XoopsCode : [siteimg] RoKeys ShortURLs for Xoops ShortURLs 0.2 for Xoops ShortURLs 0.3 for Xoops URL Rewriting Mod for Xoops Wap Module-AgendaX 2.0RC Mod XOOPS Multilanguage Have you made a hack for the XOOPS core (not any of the modules!)? Please submit your hacks to the core system to the XOOPS Patch Tracker on the SourceForge.net project pages. 7. Calling all Module Developers! This is a general call to all module developers out there. We have set up and opened a XOOPS Module Development Forge website, where you can develop your modules in the presence of other module developers. The Dev Forge site is a SourceForge.net clone, meant for XOOPS Module Development projects only. Membership is restricted to developers, but when you're a member (by being part of a development project -maybe your own modules?), you get access to the developer-to-developer forums, security releated information, and you can share your experience with the other developers, as well as learn from them. So sign up now with your own module development project! 8. Giving back to the Community As you can see in the 'Make a donation' block, the number of people donating money is growing and growing. We would like to take this opportunity to thank them publicly for their continued support: our 10 Anonymous Donateurs, thomasjo, coterian, dwilson, kevinv, munkus, tadashi, dunkgreen, tuff, davidd, zack, kjs222, herko, Jan304, gstarrett, YourHelp, Philroy, ozboof, ronhab, sunsnapper, Panos, dlh, pygmeae, philou, yoshi, jamesmac, glenn, awreneau, gnagis, sirTanksAlot, deepsoul, madfish, porkie, chappy, alexon, bd_csmc, dr3vil, dreamgear and dobephat, thank you! You can recognise the donateurs by their 'Friend of XOOPS' rank. You can join their ranks by making a donation using the PayPal button on the xoops.org website! All donations are put back into the development of the system and the maintainance of the xoops.org websites. 9. XOOPS Tip of the Month If you get a 'Blank screen of Death', try to log in to your admin section (by going directly to admin.php, or -if you still have to log in, by going to user.php first, and then to admin.php), and go to the system admin -> preferences -> general settings page. There, set the Debug Mode to 'php-debug', click Go! at the bottom, and return to the part that gave you a blank page. Now you should be getting an error report of what is causing the page to break. If you can't fix the issue yourself, report the errors you see on the xoops.org forum, or your local support site, and we'll help you solve the problem!
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