Joomla! exodus?

[Terry Arthur]

Hello All,

Apologies in advance for the length of this post.

I get much of my freelance work from sites like elance and odesk and I have noticed a marked increase in the projects to migrate away from Joomla!. I used to get one or two jobs a month moving static sites into Joomla! and now I get and am able to bid on almost none. I see more projects looking to migrate from Joomla! 1.5 to Wordpress than migrations from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 2.5 and this worries me.

Have we lost the momentum we had when Joomla! 1.5 was released? Can we regain it? Did the migrations fiasco hurt us more than we are willing to admit? 

I've  seen lots of wonderful advances in Joomla! 2.5 but few of the clients I work with have any idea about them. Their main concern is that they just can't afford to keep having to pay for migrations and all new extensions.

I hope our desire as programmers to use and provide the latest and greatest advances hasn't alienated the small business user that was in the past my bread and butter and I believe the core of our end users.

Sadly, I'm forced to do more Wordpress work now since the Joomla! work seems to be drying up. I feel and have always felt that Joomla! represented a better solution for most of my small business clients but they don't agree with me any more.

Right now, I'm not sure if the move to 3.0 or 3.5 will involve a migration. Obviously, it will involve buying all new extensions, which is great for those of us who sell extensions but is a deal breaker for most of my small business clients.

So is there a point in the foreseeable future where we will have long term stability or will we always be faced with migrations and purchasing new extensions if we want to continue to use the latest and most secure version of Joomla!?

Thanks for your feedback.

Terry Arthur

[Mark Landry]

Worried too - 

I like using a system that seeks to integrate the fun stuff as much as possible, and am a total Joomla fanatic, but it's a hard sell, especially in the context of Wordpress having such a bigger market share advantage over Joomla.  Is this the beginning of the end?

Terry Arthur

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Mark Landry

markl...@tantomedia.com

720-837-6699

[r...@osdcs.com]

No,

  most people that download and use Joomla for their own personal websites are home users, with very little experience of building a website.

The old J1.5 verison was VERY easy to use.

Now with J2.5 and 3.0 there are SOOooooo many controlls, like ACL, etc that it just scares the users away.

My clients ask me if I've got an old copy of the last stable J1.5 version laying around.

Not my opinion by the way. My clients opinion. I'm a Windows Sysadmin, and the ACL here is an almost identical copy of the old Windows NT 4.0 ACL.

 

---

From: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Terry Arthur
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 12:21 AM
To: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [jgen] Joomla! exodus?

--

[Ole Ottosen (ot2sen)]

Hi guys,

 

You know that you are the ones selling it, promoting it and generally makes the buzz loud, right? :)

Basically it comes down to what we individually and as a group can do for joomla.

 

So if you feel your livelyhood is at stake, then do better in promoting the many positives.

If your clients feel it has gotten more complicated, then do your utmost to explain why it hasnt, and infact is even more easy to use now in 2.5/3.0.

 

If you are told migration is troublesome, then explain how it is easily done.

 

You guys lead and build how the perception people get is to be. Why not contribute to let them have a very positive perception of what joomla is, like so many others have?

 

Share a Piece of you. #jpositiv

 

Best,

 

Ole

[Terry Arthur]

Thanks for the reply Ole,

You seem however to be missing the point I am getting at. 

I am a huge fan of Joomla! and have been for years. I always try to sell Joomla! to my clients and I spend quite a bit of time I don't get paid for trying to education my potential clients about Joomla!'s benefits and features yet what do you propose I tell my potential or current clients when they ask how long this latest migration expense will be good for?

Right now I have only one answer, until the project decides to completely change everything again which could be anytime they feel like it.

I desperately want to root for Joomla! but moving forward so fast is leaving many in the dust and with their only option being to migrate to another CMS that has a bit more concern for end users and their budgets.

The point I am trying to make and the question I clearly asked was:

"So is there a point in the foreseeable future where we will have long term stability or will we always be faced with migrations and purchasing new extensions if we want to continue to use the latest and most secure version of Joomla!?"

Can you provide some feedback on that that I can use to cheerlead for Joomla!?

Terry

[editor]

I have great respect for the Joomla Developers and I would in no way
wish to belittle all their hard work.

However, after the last upgrade/migration from 1.0 to 1.5, Joomla's days
as a serious development platform became somewhat questionable as far as
my little business was concerned. Today, the prospect of migrating all
those sites again, from 1.5 to the latest LTS, fills me with horror and
dread. Trouble is, I cannot charge my customers for it. They see no
benefit - and frankly there isn't any for them, is there? They just want
their sites to keep working.

Joomla is a fantastic piece of kit with some very smart coding. I will
certainly "keep a foot" in the Joomla camp for experimental, unpaid
projects. Unfortunately, in becoming so clever, Joomla really has lost
touch with the requirements of its userbase, in my opinion. Its
ever-increasing cleverness may be of great significance to its
developers but it has little perceivable benefit for my customers. I
feel it would be very dishonest of me to pretend otherwise.

So sadly, unless there is a very comprehensive and reliable migration
tool to assist with the process, we will consider migrating commercial
projects from Joomla 1.5 to Wordpress, rather than the next LTS version
of Joomla, when Joomla 1.5 is no longer supported. In my view, the
current migration paths for Joomla are entirely unsatisfactory in a
commercial situation.

Best wishes, G.

On 06/11/12 18:18, Ole Ottosen (ot2sen) wrote:
> Hi guys,
> You know that you are the ones selling it, promoting it and generally
> makes the buzz loud, right? :)
> Basically it comes down to what we individually and as a group can do
> for joomla.
> So if you feel your livelyhood is at stake, then do better in promoting
> the many positives.
> If your clients feel it has gotten more complicated, then do your utmost
> to explain why it hasnt, and infact is even more easy to use now in 2.5/3.0.
> If you are told migration is troublesome, then explain how it is easily
> done.
> You guys lead and build how the perception people get is to be. Why not
> contribute to let them have a very positive perception of what joomla
> is, like so many others have?
> Share a Piece of you. #jpositiv
> Best,
> Ole
>

> On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 6:43 PM, <r...@osdcs.com <mailto:r...@osdcs.com>>
> wrote:
>
> __

> No,
> most people that download and use Joomla for their own personal
> websites are home users, with very little experience of building a
> website.
> The old J1.5 verison was VERY easy to use.
> Now with J2.5 and 3.0 there are SOOooooo many controlls, like ACL,
> etc that it just scares the users away.
> My clients ask me if I've got an old copy of the last stable J1.5
> version laying around.
> Not my opinion by the way. My clients opinion. I'm a Windows
> Sysadmin, and the ACL here is an almost identical copy of the old
> Windows NT 4.0 ACL.
>

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>
> [mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>] *On Behalf Of *Terry
> Arthur
> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 07, 2012 12:21 AM
> *To:* joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>
> *Subject:* [jgen] Joomla! exodus?

> <mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>.

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[Ganesh Kumar]

I have to agree on this.  But I can't agree on End-of-Joomla.  Migration from one major release to another is a pain. Is there any solution for this in future ??

Ganesh Kumar
Mail: gane...@gmail.com
Mobile: +4915788771699

[Naouak]

As far as I'm concerned, because of these migration of joomla every new major version, we decided to not go any further in joomla. We don't want to upgrade to 3.x because it means updating so much stuff and having so much new potential bugs and problems that we prefer doing our own fork of joomla if we need new stuff.

We decided to use 1.6 when it was out and we got lot of work to go from that to 2.5 that we don't want to live that experience again. If wordpress is currently the best on the market is because, in my opinion, because they care about backward compatibility and try to not break stuff as long as they can.

Naouak, Grade 2 de Kobal.
Site web: http://www.naouak.net

[Mark Landry]

The reality is that hoards of Joomla developers are jumping ship, regardless of whether or not they should.  That will put a significant dent in Joomla's CMS market share and won't give it any advantage in it's battle with WordPress. I think we're in need of some reassurances that the migration process will get easier, and that legit extension developers will be able to keep up.  I don't think we have that at the moment.  Enough people are worried about this to make it a significant issue.

[Allon Moritz]

I totally agree. It is a pain for end users to do LTS upgrades. It is a pain for developers to maintain two branches of the code. For example the eclipse project has a backward compatibility by contract where you can use on the latest version of eclipse plugins you wrote 5,6 or more years ago.

I'm totally happy with joomla and I love it to build web sites with it and I appreciate the move to new technologies. But backward compatibility should be guaranteed. Otherwise developers and end users will run away.

[Terry Arthur]

Here's an axample of what I am referring to on the freelance sites from a job I bid today:

"Attached is as concise of a problem list was we can gather right now. Came from some comments from local friend who is not in position to take on the work. He has only done a couple Joomla sites and does not wish to brush up on it. (Almost all of his work is word press now). "

I was hoping to get some feedback from the folks who make the decisions around here about the question noone has addressed yet:

"So is there a point in the foreseeable future where we will have long term stability or will we always be faced with migrations and purchasing new extensions if we want to continue to use the latest and most secure version of Joomla!?"

Perhaps I am going about this incorrectly? Can anyone guide on the proper way to get this answer please? I desperately need it since I am at a crossroads with many of my clients now that Joomla! 1.5 is no longer supported.

Terry

[Ole Ottosen (ot2sen)]

I hear you Terry, and do understand.

But I do feel that with the now not so new release cycles and known lifetime for a LTS, then we all have a very solid basis to plan ahead and prepare.

Looking at joomla 1.5, it has lived a rather long "internet" life, and has been stable for very long. Meanwhile 2.5 (1.6/1.7) was being prepared, and we all had long time to get ready to 2.5, and decide how we would introduce this to our customers. It didnt jump on us unexpected over night.

Now 2.5 is stable, and while it may not bring value to some customers (or they wrongly think so), there are several large groups of customers/users that now finally can use long awaited features and improvements. Meanwhile next LTS 3.5 (3.0/x) is being prepared, and we have long time to be ready.

 

It is our obligation to prepare our customers and the users of joomla, why it is a good idea for them to walk into the future with us.

If we cant do that, we should do something else IMO :)

 

Ole

[hoochicken]

Hi,
Yes, Joomla! moves fast. And some steps / migrations are hard for developers. Migrating from 1.5 to 2.5 is difficult - not because of the core (thank you JUpdate!), but because of the extensions. It gives me a hard time to adjust existing extensions of mine to the new cms (*sweat). But in the end they always get better and have more features. I am so glad there is Joomla! 1.7/2.5. It is a great step farther away from 1.5. I don't want to miss one single new feature of 2.5.

If the website works and the client is content, there is no reason for migrating. Anyway I rarely see a client use a website more than five years. Afterwards they want a complete relaunch anyway, new texts, new layout, new everything. The old website (including the old cms) is not needed anymore.

I'm glad that the folks of the cms developers don't stick to old ideas and cling to them, until the cms is a fragile wormwork with a patch here and a patch there. They really try to make things right completely and I'm sure they do.

Real new Joomla! versions (1.0, 1.5,1.6 and 3.0) are always called Joomla! and may have many things in common with each other. Still Joomla! stays "Joomla!" though the cms is new, but it's only the name. Yet when a commercial cms company sells their cms and when they make it better, much better than before and can't give backwards compatibility, they just sell the better cms version as a complete new cms, new name etc. They make a lot of profit that way, so I don't to point my finger at Joomla! developers:-D

Maybe it will take some time for Joomla! to become really "stable". But that is ok. I get a great cms for no money at all. The price to pay is the work I put into it, I'm more than willing to pay it.
Greetings
Mareike

[Matt Thomas]

This conversation does remind me of one that has been had before:

• Part 1 - https://groups.google.com/d/topic/joomla-dev-general/O-Hp0L6UGcM/discussion
• Part 2 - https://groups.google.com/d/topic/joomla-dev-general/4oTnrqI2kKk/discussion
• A nice illustration summing up what I think you might be after https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-K3XtgaKvddk/T0tp5aVPQaI/AAAAAAAAANg/r-eenhMqiE0/s1600/release-cycle.png

Best,

Matt Thomas

Founder betweenbrain™

Lead Developer Construct Template Development Framework

Phone: 203.632.9322
Twitter: @betweenbrain

Github: https://github.com/betweenbrain

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[Terry Arthur]

Thanks Matt,

I read those discussions as they happened and I have seen that graphic.

However my question still remains unanswered and seems to have been overlooked in all replies as well.

So let me rephrase it:

"Will we always be faced with migrations and purchasing new extensions if we want to continue to use the latest and most secure version of Joomla!?

Terry

[Allon Moritz]

I'm only an extension developer. I do it the way that I have two different (for every joomla release) packages for download. I dont't charge per joomla release. My business model is subscription based. I think most commercial extension developers do it that way.

[Ole Ottosen (ot2sen)]

Yes :)

 

Migrations will likely be easier and easier, and extension providers also make a living and it is only fair they have their development costs covered. Most often very cheap to buy new anyway.

Migrations could even turn into updates, and then again into migrations. All depends on what people bring into joomla and its development.

There is no guarantee. None of us knows what the next super feature suggested would be. Maybe one that could mean a migration needed for a future version, but worth it.

 

In short, no one can say for sure as no individual decide the road ahead. Which is a good thing in my book.

 

Ole

[Russ Winter]

[quote] "Will we always be faced with migrations and purchasing new extensions if we want to continue to use the latest and most secure version of Joomla!? [/quote]

Basically, and in short.....   YES..! on both counts, but only if the extension developers choose to work that way. Many have simple subscriptions that allow for next release support.

But before you jump up and down, this is absolutely no different to paid Drupal, WordPress or Commercial products,  we pay a fortune out each year on supporting all of the above with release, feature, upgrade changes, it's a part of doing the business and should be catered for in your business or pricing models.

As for looking for the Joomla! Project to provide you with the "Elevator Pitch" to obtain work, in my personal view, this is not the projects place and is not possible considering the variety of situations out there and different business models (one size does not fit all) This "Elevator Pitch" should be part of the "Marketing" Section of your Business Planning and Model.

Russ

--
Regards,
Russ Winter

[editor]

There's one highly significant difference between Joomla and other
products such as Wordpress, IMHO.

With our Wordpress-based projects, the last five years has seen near
seamless upgrades with a minimum of hassle or wasted time. Thus
Wordpress-based sites are generally cheap to maintain and therefore
attractive to potential customers.

Sadly the same cannot be said of Joomla. 1.0 -> 1.5 was a nightmare!

In the current economic climate, my customers simply won't pay the extra
cost of maintaining a Joomla site. Why should they, when Wordpress will
do a good-enough job, for a fraction of the maintenance costs?

I'm not looking for an "elevator pitch" either. Just a platform to build
easily extensible, robust and most importantly, easily-upgraded,
low-maintenance sites. Sadly it seems that for a lot of users, Joomla is
falling far behind Wordpress in achieving this goal.

Best wishes, G.

On 06/11/12 20:51, Russ Winter wrote:
>
>
>
> *[quote]* "Will we always be faced with migrations and purchasing new

> extensions if we want to continue to use the latest and most secure

> version of Joomla!? *[/quote]*
> *
> *
> Basically, and in short..... *YES..! *on both counts, but only if the

> extension developers choose to work that way. Many have simple
> subscriptions that allow for next release support.
>
>
> But before you jump up and down, this is absolutely no different to paid
> Drupal, WordPress or Commercial products, we pay a fortune out each
> year on supporting all of the above with release, feature, upgrade
> changes, it's a part of doing the business and should be catered for in
> your business or pricing models.
>
>
> As for looking for the Joomla! Project to provide you with the "Elevator
> Pitch" to obtain work, in my personal view, this is not the projects
> place and is not possible considering the variety of situations out
> there and different business models (one size does not fit all) This
> "Elevator Pitch" should be part of the "Marketing" Section of your
> Business Planning and Model.
>
>
> Russ
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Russ Winter
>
>
> On 7 November 2012 06:03, Ole Ottosen (ot2sen) <ot2...@gmail.com

> * Part 1 -
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/joomla-dev-general/O-Hp0L6UGcM/discussion
> * Part 2 -
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/joomla-dev-general/4oTnrqI2kKk/discussion
> * A nice illustration summing up what I think you might be

> after
> https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-K3XtgaKvddk/T0tp5aVPQaI/AAAAAAAAANg/r-eenhMqiE0/s1600/release-cycle.png
>
> Best,
>
> Matt Thomas

> Founder betweenbrain <http://betweenbrain.com/>�

> Lead Developer Construct Template Development Framework

> <http://construct-framework.com/>
> Phone: 203.632.9322 <tel:203.632.9322>

> <mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>.

> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
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>
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[Andrew Eddie]

On Wednesday, 7 November 2012 05:42:11 UTC+10, Terry Arthur wrote:

However my question still remains unanswered and seems to have been overlooked in all replies as well.

So let me rephrase it:

"Will we always be faced with migrations and purchasing new extensions if we want to continue to use the latest and most secure version of Joomla!?

The short answer is yes this will always be a problem of sorts - because that's the way software works because technology changes (at a rate determined by Moore's Law).  It's not a situation unique to Joomla.  However, I do think the CMS as it stands is on it's "architectural" last legs (though, don't get me wrong, it's not going to die overnight) because it's locked into managing and publishing content to a web site.  We all know the web site is not the focus of attention any more and we need to really think about mobile and smart network enabled devices to be relevant to our future world, even our future selves.

Watch http://karenmcgrane.com/2012/09/04/adapting-ourselves-to-adaptive-content-video-slides-and-transcript-oh-my/ and you'll see what I mean.

To that end, we need to be looking at a new architecture based on a solid web service API to truly manage content (I call this the "true CMS").  You will still face upgrading issues but doing this via upgrades to API's is much easier than how it's currently managed (1.0->1.5->2.5->3.x).  It would also allow other apps on other platforms (mobile, TV's, etc) to be developed within our community.  The doors this type of thinking opens up blows my mind.

How we get there is a different question and a topic for another thread but I think there are enough developers and designers in the community dissatisfied with the constraints the current CMS imposes on forward motion that we could do "something" in 2013.

I know this is probably not the answer you wanted, but it's the direction we need to take to be able to survive in the network enabled world.

Regards,

Andrew Eddie

[subtextproductions]

With the greatest respect, Please Don't Feed the Trolls.

[Evandromar Machado]

Hello all, in my opinion impossible to guess the days / months / years pass and the old extensions have to be compatible with the current framework, the thought that extensions should be forever compatible only with the framework would stay tied and not progressed .

What I can say is that this joomla in all respects far ahead of any other.

[Nick Savov]

Hi Terry,

The migration problems that you're seeing are to a large degree a result
of the old development strategy and also the fact that Joomla 1.0 and 1.5
didn't have built-in core one-click upgrades.

Joomla 1.6 and the new development strategy have, in my opinion, improved
things tremendously. I was able to go from 1.6 to 1.7 to 2.5 with a few
clicks. To go from 2.5 to 3.0 will also be a one-click upgrade for the
core (you just have to make sure that your extensions are compatible).
Check out the Joomla 3 FAQ for more information:
http://docs.joomla.org/Joomla_3.0_FAQ

In less than a month and a half, there are already 900+ Joomla 3
extensions available:
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/advanced-search-results/713323

So is the new development strategy working and mitigating problems? Yes!
Is there room for improvement? Yes! What's it going to take? Everyone
contributing to Joomla to make it better. It will be as good as we make
it. Joomla 3 is already fantastic! However, we can and should improve it
even more.

Wordpress, in my opinion, pales in comparison to Joomla 3. Don't get me
wrong, I think Wordpress has a lot of great features and has a lot of easy
to use features, but in my opinion Joomla is a lot easier to use overall,
more powerful, and more flexible.

In summary, I think the current problems that we're having are due to the
old development strategy and that the new one is working well, as
evidenced by the Joomla 1.6, 1.7, 2.5, and 3.0 transitions. There's
definitely room for improvement, but we're heading in the right direction.

Kind regards,
Nick

[Terry Arthur]

Right? Not sure how something so derogatory can be said with any respect.

On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 4:59 PM, subtextproductions <alonzo...@subtextproductions.com> wrote:

With the greatest respect, Please Don't Feed the Trolls.

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[subtextproductions]

Nick, I agree. I think that WordPress and Joomla aren't even in the same market space. I think of them as being used for very different purposes. To me it's a little like apples and oranges.

[Youjoomla LLC]

My 2 cents , 

We have 80 +  templates and 70+ extensions that are due to update from 25 to 30 

and just because someone has forgotten to include few things from 25 in 30

or decided to remove /change/rename class name  we have to wait and delude our customer who with time become simply 

mad at Joomla. 

Just today I am about to release a module where I have to tell customers that for j3.0 module admin UI will change and 

they should wait for the update.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/joomlabugsquad/whJt86tjWf8/-aTVynrGHuQJ

http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemEdit&tracker_item_id=29569

I am developer and understand completely what it means to finish a project but that is exactly 

why we should stop rushing projects out simply because we said it will be released. 3.0 came out with hundreds of bugs that are still due 

and we are kinda keeping quiet about it. Stable for me means no bugs , or minimal bugs that do not affect UI or framework. 

As for Joomla going down , I started such topic between devs few weeks back and were told that is my imagination and we daily get thousands of new  users 

but I spoke to Dinh from JA and according to my stats since 2010 we are going down big time 

http://www.google.com/trends/?q=joomla,+drupal,+wordpress&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

and loosing customers not because of our products but because they got fed up. 

So yes Terry , you are experiencing same thing as all of us

and we and all extensions / templates clubs are forced to include WordPress in order to survive. 

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5044 17th street N
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33714
-------------------------------
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www.youjoomla.com
Professional Joomla Web Design Services

[Youjoomla LLC]

One more , sorry 

My team is so fed up with constant unconnected changes. 

missing docs about those changes and incompatibility with previous versions.

We have 10 WP themes that were built in 2010 on v2.7 and they still work today 

and that tells me that we should concentrate on WP. 

I hate to admit it  because I am such proud Joomla dev . Started in time of Mambo and simply got stuck with it 

but we have to be honest , the whole upgrade and versions process must change if we want to 

keep Joomla community happy. Look at the Joomla forum , 70% of posts is about upgrade from xx to xx 

Why are we doing this to a simple Joe that just needs a blog , or informational 2 page website?

Regards , Dragan 

P.S. You just got me going Terry :)

On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 5:42 PM, subtextproductions <alonzo...@subtextproductions.com> wrote:

Nick, I agree. I think that WordPress and Joomla aren't even in the same market space. I think of them as being used for very different purposes. To me it's a little like apples and oranges.

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[Nick Savov]

FYI, absolutely no where near 70% of the posts are about upgrading. It's
probably less than 10% and maybe around 5%.

Refer to http://forum.joomla.org/

Kind regards,
Nick

> One more , sorry
> My team is so fed up with constant unconnected changes.
> missing docs about those changes and incompatibility with previous
> versions.
> We have 10 WP themes that were built in 2010 on v2.7 and they still work
> today
> and that tells me that we should concentrate on WP.
>
> I hate to admit it because I am such proud Joomla dev . Started in time
> of
> Mambo and simply got stuck with it
> but we have to be honest , the whole upgrade and versions process must
> change if we want to
> keep Joomla community happy. Look at the Joomla forum , 70% of posts is

> about upgrade from *xx *to *xx *

[Rod Farrell]

I started using Joomla 1.0 which was very much a DIY website framework.  In my view Joomla has "grown up" into a professional website and web application framework.  The fact is that along the way we have left the DIY market to Wordpress but that doesn't concern me.  I have a relationship with a Wordpress development company that regularly sends me clients who's needs go beyond what Wordpress can comfortably fill because they recognises that the platforms meet the needs of different markets.  They perhaps understand Joomla's strengths better than many Joomla developers!

Like everyone else I have issues with the upgrade path for Joomla 1.5 sites especially where component extensions have to be replaced creating Google ranking issues.  Frankly that is a pain but it is the price of becoming more professional.  I have reached the point where I look for paid extensions that more likely to be available in future releases than free ones with little support. 

Loosing the high volume DIY market to Wordpress is a shame.  Perhaps someone should look at creating a "Joomla Lite" admin template that hides the lesser used features of the CMS to make the platform less scary for users but I see this is a different market.

In the end we have to ask ourselves, do we really want a bigger share of the free DIY market or do we want to continue to move up-market?

Rod Farrell
Websites With Purpose
ABN 95769808144
www.websiteswithpurpose.com.au

[Youjoomla LLC]

OK Nick , from everything what was said here that is the only thing you picked up 

To me it is about 70 since the discussions don't only include Joomla core update but extensions 

that need to be upgraded , but sure , I could be going way over the actual number , but none of that 

changes the fact that we are not pleasing the community with the way we are releasing and managing 

updates. 

[Nick Savov]

I value your opinions and comments. However, if we're going to have a
discussion about this, it has to be accurate. Throwing out random
numbers and making mountains out of mole hills doesn't help the situation.

Kind regards,
Nick

[tomfuller]

I know there have been many replies already to this thread.

As an extension developer I just thought I would add a comment - we have experienced a lot of headaches trying to keep up with the many changes to the code BUT - now working on Joomla 3.x I must say I am impressed. I think the pain of getting here will be worth it and I am hoping that the big changes made now will mean we don't have as many major changes to the code in the future.

We will offer our extensions free but also offer very good support for our niche market. I think that is the spirit of open source.

Go Joomla!

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[Thomas PAPIN]

Hard to give an opinion on this thread there are so many subjects.

1- I agree on the fact that Joomla lost in simplicity and so is less attractive for "novice" users. Is this the price of more functionnality ? Not sure, maybe we should have more way to "hide" options (Joomla Lite). With Mambo/Joomla1.0 the only hard point to explain to novice people was the "Itemid". Now, there are ACL, menu item assigned to a specific language,etc.. The good thing is that this can be improved without backward compatilibty issue, now the question is : Are we going on this way with 3.0 ? Do we want to get in simplicity, I think yes ? (open-ended question)

2- About migration:
     1.0 to 1.5 was hard but needed. (The legacy plugin was a great help)
     1.5 to 2.5 was missing a core component for the migration.
     1.6 to 1.7. to 2.5 was excellent !! I totally agree with Nick on this point.
     Now 3.0 is there, I was wondering : backward compatibility issues are behind us, they will be not API changes just for "fun" :) and then the drama : 
     => http://docs.joomla.org/Potential_backward_compatibility_issues_in_Joomla_3.0_and_Joomla_Platform_12.1
     I understand that developpers like cleanup, but why are we removing 2.5 functions from 3.0 when 2.5 is still alive (LTS), just wrap the function or a legacy plugin, that won't break the bank
     Nick you said already 900+ extensions are ready for 3.0!. I will play devil's advocate : ONLY 900. It's good but.. could be really better like 90% of 2.5 extensions. What happen currently in nearly ALL components that what to have some backward compatibility is a set of classes to override the joomla calls and check for the correct API (based on the version). Why don't we have something like that directly into the core ?

3. This is not really the original subject of this post but about "mobile direction", I agree with Andrew on the fact, that we must stop thinking "desktop", the market has changed. Joomla! is missing a great webservice API currently. We need for example REST and RESTful CMS services. The work of the JUX team for 3.0 was fantastic but this is the first step for me. On mobile, it's more about mobile app than mobile website. If you want to start an web app, based on backbone.js, angular.js or whatever javascript app lib, working with Joomla is not easy.
Anyway, this could be done without backward compatibility :-)

4. Final point, a hard point for extensions developpers is to have a good layout compatible with 2.5 and 3.0. It would be great to add the protostar template and bootstrap on 2.5.X to simplify the transition for people starting a new website on 2.5 now when they will upgrade to 3.0.
Youjoomla LLC have released a good plugin and template (with override). It will be great to add this to the core. That's just an idea :-)

2012/11/7 tomfuller <tomfu...@gmail.com>

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[Rob Joyce]

+1 on that.

It really needs to have a "simple" mode for the novice users to get back the userbase.

AND the client base.

[Mike Hamanaka]

I disagree, why does anyone have to upgrade their core and their extensions for their already established Joomla site.

Are these the same people who buy a new car every 12 months, because they can't be seen in last years' model.

Possibly the original website consultant recommended the wrong system to start with if their customers are requesting to migrate from J! to WP.

I have told this to many people, it is really not the CMS that you choose, it is the mentors that you have access to and what they have knowledge in.

Mike Hamanaka

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 12:20 AM, Terry Arthur <eclect...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello All,

Apologies in advance for the length of this post.

I get much of my freelance work from sites like elance and odesk and I have noticed a marked increase in the projects to migrate away from Joomla!. I used to get one or two jobs a month moving static sites into Joomla! and now I get and am able to bid on almost none. I see more projects looking to migrate from Joomla! 1.5 to Wordpress than migrations from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 2.5 and this worries me.

Have we lost the momentum we had when Joomla! 1.5 was released? Can we regain it? Did the migrations fiasco hurt us more than we are willing to admit? 

I've  seen lots of wonderful advances in Joomla! 2.5 but few of the clients I work with have any idea about them. Their main concern is that they just can't afford to keep having to pay for migrations and all new extensions.

I hope our desire as programmers to use and provide the latest and greatest advances hasn't alienated the small business user that was in the past my bread and butter and I believe the core of our end users.

Sadly, I'm forced to do more Wordpress work now since the Joomla! work seems to be drying up. I feel and have always felt that Joomla! represented a better solution for most of my small business clients but they don't agree with me any more.

Right now, I'm not sure if the move to 3.0 or 3.5 will involve a migration. Obviously, it will involve buying all new extensions, which is great for those of us who sell extensions but is a deal breaker for most of my small business clients.

So is there a point in the foreseeable future where we will have long term stability or will we always be faced with migrations and purchasing new extensions if we want to continue to use the latest and most secure version of Joomla!?

Thanks for your feedback.

Terry Arthur

--

[Naouak]

When You update regularly your content, add new features to make your site lively, you generally need to upgrade as soon as possible.

It's even more true with support being already planned.

There was big problems on the migration between 2.5 and 3.x and my concern is that for me, it looks like it's because of the separation of CMS and framework. I mean how can they just create totally different classes replacing currently most used classes. Some stuff were depreciated in 2.5 (like database error handling) and the new way of doing it was broken.

In my humble opinion, separating cms and framework was one of the worst decision the joomla community took.

[Viktor Iwan]

Not to mention that current Joomla 3.0's MVC is running on 'Legacy' Class... sooner or later, is about to change.
Part of me agree that, Innovation in joomla is great, but another part of me wish that these "innovation" stop for a while, and let developer focus on earning and branding.. :)

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[Marius van Rijnsoever]

Joomla has not had any growth in usuage in the last year, despite intensive developments. Drupal gained an additional 1 million websites and wordpress gained more than 2 million new websites. This confirms the sentiment from a lot of joomla developers that user preference atm goes to other platforms. (see links below for very accurate data)

http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/WordPress

http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/Joomla!

http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/Drupal

The platform and CMS separation was an excellent plan and allows joomla to be used for a whole range of applications. The main issue for both developers and end-users in my opinion is lack of backward compatibility and short support for updates. Minor updates work great but every major upgrade has lots of silly renaming of classes and deletions of api calls, which breaks most extensions and templates.

Its important to fully understand why very few new joomla sites are created. As from a developers perspective it is great to see very fast progression of the joomla code an features. Is it bad marketing from our side, people being put off by the prospect of having to spend thousands every few years on updates or are people not looking for the features in joomla and are looking for other functionality?

Thanks marius

joomla monogomist (dont use any other platforms)

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[Niels Braczek]

Am 06.11.2012 22:39, schrieb editor:

> In the current economic climate, my customers simply won't pay the extra
> cost of maintaining a Joomla site. Why should they, when Wordpress will
> do a good-enough job, for a fraction of the maintenance costs?

To be honest: If your customers are not able to afford a couple of bucks
every three years or so to keep their site safe and up to date, they
should drop their business. For everyone else, the website is part of
the business model and thus bringing money in, a part of which of course
is used to maintain the site.

Regards,
Niels

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[Niels Braczek]

Am 07.11.2012 10:47, schrieb Marius van Rijnsoever:

> Joomla has not had any growth in usuage in the last year, despite intensive
> developments.

Might be correct, might be a result of Joomla!'s ability to get disguised.

> Drupal gained an additional 1 million websites

Can't be correct. From your 'very accurate' source (builtwith.com): "We
know of 550,910 sites using Drupal"

[piotr_cz]

I must say I noticed the decline in awareness of Joomla among my new
clients, too.
It's like: We'd like a website and we've been told Wordpress will do
it or we are already familiar and happy with it.

My basic Joomla selling points are:
- Much more functionality, so extendable (think about future).
- Sorry, I'm not working with WP, one can excell with just one
platform if want to do it seriously.

But sometimes simplicity is more important.
Recently I toyed with WP and must admit it's much simpler to use and
many times could be just enough to use.


I don't think Joomla will ever beat WP (or blogspot accounts) in
number of installs and I'm fine with that. But seems the J! trend is
not stabilized, but going downwards very fast.


Don't know if simplicity and migration troubles are the reason (please
submit your opinions/ experiences). I'd say it is, so let's share
ideas how to tackle it.


Recent situation: the web administrator working with J! for first time
said he can't stand this Joomla thing, it's is just too complicated,
too hard to find anything in it. They would use Google sites if could
set up for subdomain :).


Let's disable/ hide some stuff
------------------------------
For example: let's have an ability to hide language related option. I
need it for 25% of projects and it's great, but having all options
available means loosing simplicity. Setting just a new menu item for a
novice is too much.

There could be a switch in global configuration to show/ hide extra
sfuff.
Also having too much options makes it hard to discover how Joomla
works at all.
And there could be options for different setups during install. Say
I'll need only com_content, so let hide all others components and some
other extensions.


Second user during install
--------------------------
Once user installs Joomla, (s)he's faced with complete administration.
What about option to create 2 users during installation: Super admin
and User (of Manager user group or option to choose one)?
Most of the time we have to create new users anyway. This would save
the hassle to find how to do it in the administration, set up proper
user group and so on.


Media manager
-------------
This one must be revamped, and the sooner the better, no question
about it.
Were there any efforts recently? I've read few discussions and ideas
that's it. I'd like to participate.


Other things already done
-------------------------
Simplified install
Bootstrapped Administration UI (has it's quirks but helps)
Different sample data sets












BTW: I have few websites that need an upgrade from 1.5 and I wish I
would not have to. Ususally the reason is that some of the extensions
don't have 2.5 version.

[Miguel Tuyaré]

Hi, 

Among other reasons, this was the one that made ​​us rethink Joomla and create a fork called Jokte! 

Joomla is a great CMS, for me the best, but not good for Latin America.  The digital divide that we suffer, poor access to new technologies, the large amount of native peoples that have been forgotten for decades and your languages, low economic resources available, etc., etc., have given rise to this empowerment, Jokte!

The migrations involve high costs for collective groups, even for small businesses, which eventually go to another CMS like Wordpress. In short, the Jokte fork tries rescue Joomla for Latin America, but following another line of development more versatile, without radical changes or very complex.

I think developers should rethink the compatibility between versions, otherwise the exodus is increasingly growing. I love Joomla, follow him, but my focus today is about developing Jokte!

Regards

Miguel Tuyaré 

[Matt Thomas]

One common sentiment that I'm seeing is the desire for simplicity. I still think it would be worth it for the project to take a serious look at Square One and possibly even adopt / resurrect it - https://github.com/square-one/square-one-cms. Many of my clients, including large organizations (a.k.a. enterprise users), are slowly moving away from Joomla due to its ever increasing complexity.

Best,

Matt Thomas

Founder betweenbrain™

Lead Developer Construct Template Development Framework

Phone: 203.632.9322
Twitter: @betweenbrain

Github: https://github.com/betweenbrain

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[Terry Arthur]

Thanks for the feedback everyone,

I hope we can end up with something positive coming from this and not just a long emotional thread.

Wordpress and Joomla! may have been an apples to oranges comparison a year or more ago but now there is almost nothing Joomla! can do that Wordpress can't do too.

@Tragan  just by the numbers the migration related posts are ~7%, but that is counting only that specific category. When questions from other categories are added it could top 10% easily.

@Matt Right and good point but I think the main concern found here is the constant breaking of backwards compatibility at times for no valid reason.

Here's some actual data to prove we are losing ground:

A search for Wordpress jobs on elance brings 1,796 results

A search for Joomla! jobs brings 368 results

Time for us to wake up or else

The release schedule is far to frequent and unless we skip a full numbered release before breaking backwards compatibility we will just end up being a CMS of, for and by developers.

I am really dismayed that none of the core developers of the CMS have weighed in here. Seems as if they only respond to their little click and everyone else is deemed a troll.

Just for the record, I field questions in the forum, add to the wiki and work on the bug squad as I am able so I am not some finger pointer who talks but does not act.

Terry

[Andrew Eddie]

On Wednesday, 7 November 2012 19:47:54 UTC+10, marius wrote:

Joomla has not had any growth in usuage in the last year, despite intensive developments. Drupal gained an additional 1 million websites and wordpress gained more than 2 million new websites. This confirms the sentiment from a lot of joomla developers that user preference atm goes to other platforms. (see links below for very accurate data)

http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/WordPress

http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/Joomla!

http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/Drupal

Interesting, but I'd always take information like that with a grain of salt.

 

The platform and CMS separation was an excellent plan and allows joomla to be used for a whole range of applications. The main issue for both developers and end-users in my opinion is lack of backward compatibility and short support for updates.

Really? The codebase was essentially stable from Mambo 4.5 through to Joomla 1.5.  There was a major breakable between 1.5 and 1.6 (not unrealistic after a period of more than 5 years) and from there it's been pretty smooth again since and within the confirms of the development strategy (3.0 was actually a place where much could be broken).  Remember also during that time PHP itself has changed markedly.

 

Its important to fully understand why very few new joomla sites are created. As from a developers perspective it is great to see very fast progression of the joomla code an features. Is it bad marketing from our side, people being put off by the prospect of having to spend thousands every few years on updates or are people not looking for the features in joomla and are looking for other functionality?

Yes, it's reasonable for people to expect to have to budget for upkeep of a website.  As for how much that is depends on the website.

Regards,

Andrew Eddie

[Andrew Eddie]

Square One is just a distro, and there's more to "fixing" Joomla than stripping out extensions - though, it's not a bad start. Distro's are an untapped distribution channel that I think the community could leverage to bridge the gap between the current architecture (being for a Web Publishing Tool) and a new architecture that is about delivering content to the internet independent of the device consuming the content.  The thing is, they will never really take off unless either they are officially listed somewhere, or the project itself makes it so they can be included on the downloads page (and there are a few strategies I can think of by which that can be done).  The reality is the current CMS tries to do everything for everyone and that's an unreasonable expectation (ultimately leads to bloat).  It would make complete sense to me to have at least one official "lite" distro that is targeted at the current WordPress marketshare (though, personally it would be more interesting for me to start building Joomla "Next" around that premise).

Regards,

Andrew Eddie

[Matt Thomas]

I couldn't agree more Andrew. An official lite version of Joomla, that is extendable, would certainty be very appealing to a good number of users. Would it be realistic to consider building that using UCM? That could be a nice win-win to help push UCM adoption and usage. Just thinking out loud ;-)

Best,

Matt Thomas
Founder betweenbrain™
Lead Developer Construct Template Development Framework
Phone: 203.632.9322
Twitter: @betweenbrain
Github: https://github.com/betweenbrain

Composed and delivered courtesy of Nexus 7.

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[Nick Savov]

Hi Terry,

You're welcome! I'm glad to be part of the discussion and I'm learning a
lot from people's feedback. Thanks for starting it!

I really feel that you should add a clarification to "there is almost
nothing Joomla! can do that Wordpress can't do too." which is "with custom
coding or in some cases a plugin" (and I love plugins!). Joomla has
options; Wordpress has a lack of options.

For example, how do you hide the title on just one or two pages/posts?
How do you reorder posts? Reorder categories? Assign widgets on a page
by page or post by post basis? Assign a widget to a footer? Assign a top
menu and the same footer menu to a page? It's either custom code galore,
plugins galore (sometimes with awkward restrictions), or a combination of
the two galore. These are just off the top of my head. I'm sure there
are more obvious ones. Then again, I'm not a Wordpress expert (just a
novice), so don't quote me ;)

With Joomla, on the other hand, click a few buttons and checkmate.

As to numbers on elancers that doesn't necessarily mean we're losing
market share. What were the numbers like 2 years ago? Also, other sites,
such as freelancer, the percentages are different.

Kind regards,
Nick

wrote:
>> One common sentiment that I'm seeing is the desire for simplicity. I still
>> think it would be worth it for the project to take a serious look at
Square
>> One and possibly even adopt / resurrect it -
>> https://github.com/square-one/square-one-cms. Many of my clients,
including large organizations (a.k.a. enterprise users), are slowly
moving
>> away from Joomla due to its ever increasing complexity.
>> Best,
>> Matt Thomas

>> Founder betweenbrain <http://betweenbrain.com/>�

>> Lead Developer Construct Template Development

>> Framework<http://construct-framework.com/>

>> Phone: 203.632.9322
>> Twitter: @betweenbrain
>> Github: https://github.com/betweenbrain

>> On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 8:53 AM, Miguel Tuyar�

>> <miguel...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> Among other reasons, this was the one that made us rethink Joomla and
create a fork called Jokte!
>>> Joomla is a great CMS, for me the best, but not good for Latin
America.
>>> The digital divide that we suffer, poor access to new technologies,
>>> the
>>> large amount of native peoples that have been forgotten for decades
and
>>> your languages, low economic resources available, etc., etc., have given
>>> rise to this empowerment, Jokte!
>>> The migrations involve high costs for collective groups, even for
small
>>> businesses, which eventually go to another CMS like Wordpress. In short,
>>> the Jokte fork tries rescue Joomla for Latin America, but following
another
>>> line of development more versatile, without radical changes or very
complex.
>>> I think developers should rethink the compatibility between versions,
otherwise the exodus is increasingly growing. I love Joomla, follow
him,
>>> but my focus today is about developing Jokte!
>>> Regards

>>> Miguel Tuyar�
>>> El martes, 6 de noviembre de 2012 14:20:55 UTC-3, Terry Arthur escribi�:

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[Andrew Eddie]

On 8 November 2012 08:23, Matt Thomas <ma...@betweenbrain.com> wrote:

I couldn't agree more Andrew. An official lite version of Joomla, that is extendable, would certainty be very appealing to a good number of users. Would it be realistic to consider building that using UCM? That could be a nice win-win to help push UCM adoption and usage. Just thinking out loud ;-)

No, you don't have to do that - start simple, though it would take a bit of time to set up.  Thinking out loud too, I'd take these steps:

1. Strip down a "Joomla Core" version to the bare minimum (Platform, Content, Menus, Users, etc) and put that in a new github repo.

2. Create Phing (or Hudson) scripts to create the "build" and delta's (just clean up what we already have for the full CMS - just put them in a repo too some people know what happens).

3. Treat every other extension suite like a 3rd party addon and give it its own repo.  For example, put com_banners, it's modules, language files, etc into a new repo.

4. Create build scripts for those individual extension suites so they can be installed manually as required (I and others have many variations on this theme).

5. Create of distro build script that can merge Joomla Core with a "list" of extensions.

6. Work out a strategy for sample data that can be included in each component.

Doing that does some interesting things.  On the Platform, the growth we are seeing is due to the fact that you can achieve a lot quickly and see a result.  For example, you can add three or four API calls to JGithub in an evening, or maybe spend a week on a new package.  Send a pull request and, bam, you are done and satisfied you've made the world suck less.  That's not so easy with the CMS because the whole monolith is sort of in the way.  Break up individual extensions and you can potentially increase the interest and innovation because now you can see what you are doing (for example, component developers don't store their code as a part of a fork of the whole Joomla CMS).

Another thing it would do is foster more consolidated efforts on extensions.  What I mean by that is you don't have to have 10 different free extensions doing the same thing on the JED - people can just work together on the official one (much like Drupal does, but without the "there can only be one" attitude).

It also makes it trivial (hopefully) to add new extensions to the stack.  Each extension suite would need to have a stable master branch but that's not difficult to achieve.  The JBS would take responsibility for the core and the overall strategy, but the other extensions could have teams of owners and they manage the bugs for those extensions.

In the future, you build a UI so people can dial their own distro stack.

But for now, that's where I'd start and it's just a matter of putting the build scripts into Hudson so you can just push the play button to get it rolling.

On the topic of UCM, well, the reality it shifts you from "extension" building to "content" building.  You only have one content component but you'd need to have the ability to add new content types in a sensible way.  I'm still trying to work out how that would be possible but I think that's something for "Joomla Next", not the current CMS architecture (especially given the fact it would make most existing extensions redundant).

Regards,
Andrew Eddie
http://learn.theartofjoomla.com - training videos for Joomla developers

 

[r...@osdcs.com]

I don't think you need a new lite VERSION

Just a User Interface that is easier to use for newbies.More like a lite MODE.

Then once they're more experienced, change to full MODE

---

From: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Eddie
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 5:46 AM
To: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?

--

[elin]

 The real issue is the two completely contradictory desires expressed in this thread (and in every one of the sky is falling threads that pop up every few months),  on the one hand never to change (and to still be supporting the extensions model (and actual extensions) developed for 1.0  and  on the other to be forward looking and ready for the post cms,  post web world that we're facing.

Elin

>> Founder betweenbrain <http://betweenbrain.com/>�

>> Lead Developer Construct Template Development
>> Framework<http://construct-framework.com/>
>> Phone: 203.632.9322
>> Twitter: @betweenbrain
>> Github: https://github.com/betweenbrain

>> On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 8:53 AM, Miguel Tuyar�

>> <miguel...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> Among other reasons, this was the one that made us rethink Joomla and
create a fork called Jokte!
>>> Joomla is a great CMS, for me the best, but not good for Latin
America.
>>>  The digital divide that we suffer, poor access to new technologies,
>>> the
>>> large amount of native peoples that have been forgotten for decades
and
>>> your languages, low economic resources available, etc., etc., have given
>>> rise to this empowerment, Jokte!
>>> The migrations involve high costs for collective groups, even for
small
>>> businesses, which eventually go to another CMS like Wordpress. In short,
>>> the Jokte fork tries rescue Joomla for Latin America, but following
another
>>> line of development more versatile, without radical changes or very
complex.
>>> I think developers should rethink the compatibility between versions,
otherwise the exodus is increasingly growing. I love Joomla, follow
him,
>>> but my focus today is about developing Jokte!
>>> Regards

>>> Miguel Tuyar�
>>> El martes, 6 de noviembre de 2012 14:20:55 UTC-3, Terry Arthur escribi�:

>>> joomla-dev-general+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

>>> For more options, visit this group at
>>> http://groups.google.com/group/joomla-dev-general?hl=en-GB.
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[Michael Babker]

A lite version is actually a pretty darn good idea.  How many of the extensions shipped with the core are you NOT using on a given website?  I'll tell you right now that I'm only using com_categories and com_content component wise, 4 of the core modules (there's 24 shipped), and I won't get into plugins but I know I've disabled many.  Point is, there's a lot of dead filespace on my site with files I'll never use.

With a lite version, you ship the bare bones, and install what you need on top of the package.  It makes updates easier and helps to isolate the various components.  Ever tried fully uninstalling com_contact on a 2.5 site?  You'll kill com_content because of a database table it's looking for.

That said, the UI is a work in progress, and I think in some ways is better with 3.0 than 2.5.  There's still room for improvement in a lot of areas.  Collaborate and improve on them I say.  The comment was made earlier about the core CMS developers not chiming in; well, I can't speak for them, but I personally don't answer a lot of e-mails because I'm using my time for more productive matters (and I've got plenty of code on GitHub ready for testing and inclusion in the CMS to prove it ;-) ).

[r...@osdcs.com]

The whole discussion started about users having to constantly upgrade and the costs for those upgrade services etc... having a new LITE version will complicate and increase the load even more.

If there is to be a lite version, then perhaps the system can just LIST the modules,plugins etc that are in the full version and just show an "Install" button in the list that will quickly download and install it like the Jomres system does.  Vince from Jomres has made a VERY nice system for that.  It allows the user to see a complete list of whats available, right in the system, without having to go looking for it.

---

From: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Michael Babker
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 6:13 AM

[Michael Babker]

As did Square One, and the language installer code is based on what Jeremy worked on for Square One and mentored Javier to implement for the core CMS as a GSoC project.  So, that possibility already exists if someone's willing to do the legwork to basically strip down the CMS to bare bones and implement a way for the extensions to be stored in VCS and updated as needed.  Best part, you truly wouldn't have to make a full release for certain components.  If a bug is debilitating enough in one of the extensions, simply push an update for that extension.

[Matt Thomas]

For anyone interested in a lite version of Joomla, I highly recommend that you take a look at Square One CMS. Essentially, Jeremy has already accomplished much of what has been described. Other than making some nice UI improvements, Jeremy removed all of the non-essential core extensions in such a way that they can be easily re-installed from a remote server. Unfortunately, he was not able to continue with the project, so the remote install may not work anymore, but the code is still available on Github and I'd venture to guess he'd be happy to share his build scripts with the project or anyone wishing to continue with it.

Best,

Matt

Sent from my phone that uses an open source operating system.

[Paul Orwig]

Lots of great ideas here!

+1 from me on these that have been mentioned in this thread:

• Joomla "next" with a web services API that's focused on delivering content in different formats to different devices
• UCM
  
• More support for distributions (I'd like to hear more ideas from Andrew and others about strategies for that)
  
• Lite version of the CMS that ships with minimum extensions
  
• UI that might allow users to pick and choose what extensions to include in their individual Joomla installation package ("a la carte" like Bootstrap or jQuery UI).

 If there's interest, what's the next step? Propose one or more new working groups for some of these?

Thanks,

paul

[Rob Joyce]

In addition to the install button, I'd add a system check tool that when clicked, would check with the main system if updates are available for extensions, and if they are, provide an update button for users.

 

Just a thought though.

[Matt Thomas]

Paul,

A lite version of Joomla 2.5 could be quickly realized as Jeremy's work on Square One is current as of Joomla 2.5.7. He has even offered to "pass the torch" to anyone that is interested, and I'd imagine that this would extend back to the core project.

I'd say that this would be a quick win for the project, and a great incubator for future versions / distros.

Best,

Matt Thomas

Founder betweenbrain™

Lead Developer Construct Template Development Framework

Phone: 203.632.9322
Twitter: @betweenbrain

Github: https://github.com/betweenbrain

[Andrew Eddie]

On 8 November 2012 10:51, <r...@osdcs.com> wrote:

The whole discussion started about users having to constantly upgrade and the costs for those upgrade services etc... having a new LITE version will complicate and increase the load even more.

It doesn't have to depending on how it is done.  If "lite" means a reduced number of extensions, but still on the same core platform as the CMS, it's not a problem (in fact, if you read my points, you'll should realise that the current CMS is just a "heavy" distro).

As for constantly upgrading, it really does depend on what you mean.  If once in 5 years is constant upgrading, I think that's a little unrealistic.  Once a year, once every 6 months (about the same frequency as you'd put your car in for a service)?  And does constantly upgrading mean the CMS core or custom extensions? (The more extension, the more you have to update obviously)  Does it mean the labour of logging into your site once every two months to click the "update" button? (In which case I'd say your website is not going to be that useful)

So many variables, but what I and probably others are suggesting is just cut down on the initial payload of Joomla, not reduce its capabilities (and that has flow on effects for maintenance for the project, aka JBS, and also users).

Another option is to just consider a single core version of Joomla (forget "lite" and "heavy" altogether), and just have the CMS ask you what else would you like to install (presumably from a search list from the JED - imagine extension playlists, hehe - and then you can do magic like wiring that up to the VEL, etc, but I digress).  Delegate com_banners, com_contacts, com_newfeeds, etc to the community.  Maybe that's a better strategy than the project trying to manage distro's.

[Matt Thomas]

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:25 PM, Andrew Eddie <mamb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Another option is to just consider a single core version of Joomla (forget "lite" and "heavy" altogether), and just have the CMS ask you what else would you like to install (presumably from a search list from the JED - imagine extension playlists, hehe - and then you can do magic like wiring that up to the VEL, etc, but I digress).  Delegate com_banners, com_contacts, com_newfeeds, etc to the community.  Maybe that's a better strategy than the project trying to manage distro's.

+1

[Rob Joyce]

I don't like the idea of linking this to the JED at all.

I think we should be keeping the CMS and JED seperate.

Yes, the lighter payload is what I was referring to with keeping the LIST of core items as it is now, but instead of them actually being in the payload, when they aren't, have the option to install them.

-----Original Message-----
From: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Matt Thomas
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 10:28 AM
To: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?

--

[Terry Arthur]

I think leveraging Jeremy's work would be a wonderful way to thank him and not allow all his hard work to go to waste

I'd like to volunteer to do as much of the leg work as I am capable of

I am not confident I could pull it off with out some guidance though

anyone willing to help me along?

Terry Arthur

--

[Andrew Eddie]

Hi Paul

Given JWC is coming up, I think a lot of this is best done with the aid of a white board.  I'm not sure if plans are already made but I'd devote a few hours to a couple of focus groups:

1. Joomla - fun vs competitive - is that a question of being fun AND competitive (in other words we want to write cool software but also be the best at it), or fun (lets just write cool code, we don't care if nobody uses it) OR competitive (let's be the best at any personal cost).  In other words,for example, we are capable of tapping into Wordpress's marketshare, but we'd need to deliver a solution that looks simpler without compromising power.

2. Distributing Joomla - One version to rule them all?  Square One approach (yes please)?  Many project supported distro's (too many headaches and moving parts).  Install from JED (and can we just open up the JED to serve templates while we are at it pleeeeese???)?

3. Joomla Next (I can't think of a better code name) - we have a swanky new platform and we should be building the next generation of content management systems on it that don't care about the device you are using (web services, supporting app's, etc and so on).  In fact, Joomla 4 could just be the UI layer on top of Joomla Next :)  Seed sown, hehe.

Skype involvement would be cool for those of us that can't make it.  Such sessions could birth working groups if there is sufficient interest (I know there is for #3).

Regards,

Andrew Eddie

Regards,
Andrew Eddie
http://learn.theartofjoomla.com - training videos for Joomla developers

[Andrew Eddie]

On 8 November 2012 13:36, Rob Joyce <r...@osdcs.com> wrote:

I don't like the idea of linking this to the JED at all.

I think we should be keeping the CMS and JED seperate.

You would still retain the ability to install from files, just like we do now, but you'd have another option "Search the JED" with the Joomla Administrator.  Search -> find what you like -> install it (if it's non-commercial; solve the commercial extensions another time).  It would be like considering your site as an iPhone or Droid device.  Open the App Store (extension manager); browse it; read reviews; install stuff.  Think "integrated experience".

Regards,
Andrew Eddie

[Rod Farrell]

OK, I will put up my hand and confess to introducing term "Joomla Lite" into this conversation.  What I really mean is The standard Joomla install with a "Lite" admin template hiding the stuff novices are not likely to use to make the interface less threatening.  Everything is still under the hood, just not in the face of the novice.  Even better you could assign different templates to different users.  Please don't go down the path of crippling a perfectly good cms.

Rod Farrell
Websites With Purpose

[Michael Babker]

Nobody wants to cripple the CMS.  There's several good ideas floating around, just in this thread, that can be used together to improve the overall experience.  The "lite" admin interface to get rid of a lot of the toggles and buttons and things that might scare users; give them the basics and nothing more.  The "lite" distro which has just what the CMS needs to actually function, with the option to pull in as many of the extensions currently in the core as you want.

That being said, and a lot of the folks writing code will agree (or have already said so in this thread), I really think the CMS doesn't have much shelf life left in its current architecture.  For the CMS to really keep growing and introduce some other cooler things that folks have been asking for is essentially to start fresh, in my opinion.  Rewriting the CMS to use the newer application and MVC structure while keeping the current functionality honestly isn't that difficult (I'd know, I and the folks contributing to creating a product good enough to replace the Joomlacode tracker are doing just that, and pretty darn good I think), but in doing so, we open the door for more.  It's difficult to leverage some of the newer Platform code in CMS 3 because it's still tied in pretty well with the legacy application structure, and the new MVC isn't really built out with support classes (think JModelAdmin) suitable for our community's developers.

So, we have to hit a good middle point, and I think we can get the best of all of these ideas into one Platform application.  A slim distro that lets us pick and choose what we want on our sites (while not sacrificing functionality; if you really want all of it, here's a package just for you), a "basic" and "advanced" type UI, and built on a Platform flexible enough that we can really push the code to its untested limits?  Count me in for that!

From: Rod Farrell <rodfa...@xvdg.com>
Organization: Websites with Purpose
Reply-To: <joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2012 11:16 PM
To: <joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?

[Rob Joyce]

Yes, I was meaning with a LITE admin "look" too.

But to further the issue, I'd lighten the load too.

We're not wanting to cripple it. I think the idea would be NOT to have another version, just a lighter payload that the user could extend at will and click of a button.

Having a new version LITE would just complicate things even more.

-----Original Message-----
From: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rod Farrell
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 11:17 AM
To: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?

[Nick Savov]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned thus far is Joomla's ACL, which could
easily allow us to "hide" components, etc, based on role-based user
groups. It's not a "lite" version in the sense of removing components
from the install, but it does provide a nice way for developers / site
builders to customize the backend specifically for their clients to not
overwhelm them with too many options that they simply don't need.

Kind regards,
Nick

> OK, I will put up my hand and confess to introducing term "Joomla Lite"
> into this conversation. What I really mean is The standard Joomla
> install with a "Lite" admin template hiding the stuff novices are not
> likely to use to make the interface less threatening. Everything is
> still under the hood, just not in the face of the novice. Even better
> you could assign different templates to different users. Please don't
> go down the path of crippling a perfectly good cms.
>

> *Rod Farrell
> Websites With Purpose*

>
> On 8/11/2012 1:25 PM, Andrew Eddie wrote:

>> http://learn.theartofjoomla.com <http://learn.theartofjoomla.com/> -

[Michael Babker]

There wouldn't be a separate lite version per se.  It would essentially be how things are packaged.  You could have the lite package with the bare minimum, or the full package with everything.  In terms of distributed packages, that's the only change (well, our install SQLs would have to be correct for each package too, but that's a fairly minor thing).  I don't see us having Joomla! CMS 3.5.2 and Joomla! Lite 3.5.8 being released, ever.  It'd be CMS 3.5.2, and you download the package suitable to the project you're working on.

From: Rob Joyce <r...@osdcs.com>
Reply-To: <joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>

Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2012 11:32 PM
To: <joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?

[Paul Orwig]

@Andrew - Thanks for the whiteboard suggestion along with the 3 areas to brainstorm about! I think the JWC program is pretty much set, but I believe there will be some PWG sessions and maybe some of these ideas can get explored further then. I'll make it a point to talk to PLT folks about these ideas when we meet before the JWC to find out how they might best be discussed in the JWC program.

@Terry & Michael - Thanks for your interest to help with some of these ideas too!

@Matt - I'll be sure and talk to Jeremy at the JWC about how the work he's done with Square One ties in with some of the ideas that have come up in this thread.

I think a lot of stuff that's both fun and good is going to be coming in 2013...

paul

[Mark Dexter]

Someone would have to look at the auto update with respect to a "lite" distro. At present we update based on a single archive, not individual components. Mark

[Nick Savov]

Extensions >> Extension Manager >> Update (same with discover) can handle
15+ extensions at once (well one after the other, but you select all then
click Install), so it should be doable.

Kind regards,
Nick

>>> *From:* joomla-de...@googlegroups.com [
>>> mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com<joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>]
>>> *On Behalf Of *Rod Farrell
>>> *Sent:* Thursday, November 08, 2012 11:17 AM
>>> *To:* joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
>>> *Subject:* Re: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?

>>>
>>> OK, I will put up my hand and confess to introducing term "Joomla Lite"
>>> into this conversation. What I really mean is The standard Joomla
>>> install
>>> with a "Lite" admin template hiding the stuff novices are not likely to
>>> use
>>> to make the interface less threatening. Everything is still under the
>>> hood, just not in the face of the novice. Even better you could assign
>>> different templates to different users. Please don't go down the path
>>> of
>>> crippling a perfectly good cms.
>>>

>>> *Rod Farrell
>>> Websites With Purpose*
>>>

[elin]

As far as  I know we already have a number of things planned at JWC focused on development, including PWG meeting times  every day and code times every night.  We have a CMS4/UCM slot for one of them. Obviously since it seems as though the original UCM package hasn't been rebased in 11 months, we have a lot of thinking to do, but there certainly is no lack of planning for that at JWC and as anyone who read my post-JAB report on the UCM/CMS4 meeting there there is a lot of thinking going on.

Elin

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[Gary Jay Brooks]

I can tell you from experience that life in Joomla land is most amazing.  You have to learn how to sell your product and how to target the market.  Yes, the market for Joomla is changing.  Small and mid size, and even fortune 500 companies love Joomla. Mom and pop shop on the corner can use Joomla but might lack finding advise to guide them in the right direction.  The stat I found and trust is 20% of the market is now using Joomla. (Source - http://www.opensourcecms.com/general/cms-marketshare.php)  I might advise you start to sell your services to people who have long standing larger internet properties that care about success.  Joomla is a product of success and vice versa. If you can learn how to sell success then you can sell Joomla, find business who value developers work and sell to these companies I see no value in "online bidding sites" nor do I give them any creditably in the value of CMS market place.

Joomla went the business route, but still concentrating on usability.  3.0 is incredibly easy.  "Create a Menu" and "link it to a content item". How hard is that?  Joomla is a platform of success. I would much rather give a client a Range Rover then to ship them away with a Ford Escort for similar cost. With Joomla they at least have the option of growing into the future. You can not always say that about competing systems.  If your out shopping the bidding sites (Get a Coder sites), your going to find the low cost people out shopping for lost cost deals and easy to use platforms. I call these people Flea market companies.  Anyone going from 1.5 to Wordpress have no clue what they will be missing and my guessno budget to even think about going to a serious business system.  If I'm to compare apples to apples, comparing the Joomla market place to what you see on bidding sites is like saying the flea market is the measure of golds value. 

You do not always need to upgrade to the next version of Joomla.  In fact many times I discover what the internet property is about and then I consult on needs basis. I do not advise them to push to next version "just because".  From the start I  advise you keep secure and use less extensions. I advise almost zero extensions in a site. Wordpress almost forces you into this simple method. At some point if your life you should consider the move to the next best version, but its a logical business decision you make.  I know sites still making millions a year and using Joomla 1.0.  I know many large companies still using IE6 makings millions of dollars and not blinking an eye.  Think about your business model before you jump ship to a new version of anything.  Measure the value on moving to the new version.  Joomla is not the exception to this business 101 rule.  Nobody needs to upgrade, its not like the earth will end if you do not upgrade. As a business owner I choose to upgrade because I want to use the new features or I see some value.  For example multi-language. "Man that's cool feature that its built into the core of Joomla" I could put value and have a logical reason why I need to upgrade my platform.  Developers can give better advise and concentrate on making dollars building out the brand of the company, adding content, or building better long tail SEO campaigns, and less concern about what version of Joomla your on.   

my 5 bucks of advise. 

  

[Naouak]

Is it me or we are missing the main concern of the start of this post : migration ?

You got all cool ideas. I personally don't agree with all of those (I don't want UCM for example). But the main problem is that we have large migration every new major version and that most of the time it's because extensions are broken by these.

What most people ask for is backward compatibility to be sure that what we are doing can live longer than 2 years.

We have in my company, something like 50 internals major extensions. A broken back compatibility is 50 hours of work at least of fixing lot of stuff just because of backward compatibility.

50 hours means 2 week of work for a single person.
3.0 comes with even more frustrating change that means 50 hours of weird non-motivating job just because some thought that renaming was a good thing to do.

If you really want you user to stay, think about stability before trying to revolutionize joomla.

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[Andrew Eddie]

On 8 November 2012 16:01, Naouak <tar...@gmail.com> wrote:

You got all cool ideas. I personally don't agree with all of those (I don't want UCM for example). 

UCM is an architecture, not a thing like a component (you don't get to not want it - the system either runs on it or it doesn't).  However, it would be yet another migration which is why I think it's better to start a new CMS type rather than force it into the current CMS series.

Regards,

Andrew Eddie

 

[Gary Brooks]

Limit your extensions installs and select extension vendors that have "companies" associated. Typically these are paid commercial extensions.  I personally do not advise working with free extensions that have no support, development life-cycle, or development team behind them.  Many companies in Joomla land are very successful and keep up with the versions, elect to use these extensions only. A seasoned Joomla developer should pre-plan for the future and think less is better. 

My advise is to stay away from extensions as much as you can.  Migrations will be much easier.  

Gary Brooks 
garyb...@cloudaccess.net
Phone:  +1-231-421-7160 Ext: 7161

Direct Office: +1-231-421-7161
Skype id: garyjaybrooks2000
Fax:    313-899-7032
Web:    http://www.cloudaccess.net
Address:  10850 Traverse Hwy, Suite 4480 | Traverse City, Michigan 49684

[Thomas PAPIN]

*  I agree on the fact that it will be better for the "LITE", than the "Full" release should just contains some "quick install button"(Joomla official repo, like app store)  or  "Unpublished button" (components should be there but hidden).

In other words, the "components" and "modules of the CMS should be deliver as standalone extension.

At the joomla installation, it could be great to have the choice to select "Lite" or "Full" or "Advanced" (advanced to select manually the extensions to install)

And on another thread they was a discussion on "Import/Export Configuration (Users,Contents,etc...)". These two features could work also together.

The more difficult part is when you don't want to remove/hide a component like com_banners but when you want to hide"multilanguages" or "ACL" options

* Back to the first subject upgrade: Andrew you said: " (3.0 was actually a place where much could be broken)"

   On my opinion, it would have been better to start breaking things on 3.0 but keep"deprecated" functions and "deprecated" classes in a "legacy lib" and remove this only on 3.5 (the other LTS) as much as possible.

   You said also about another subject but that can be applied here: "What I mean by that is you don't have to have 10 different free extensions doing the same thing on the JED"

    In third party extensions, you have a "class" that is in charge of checking the joomla version and redirect to the correct functions, this could be done only 1 time in a legacy plugin.

2012/11/8 <r...@osdcs.com>

[Radek Suski]

I don't think a LITE version is good idea. It would be confusing at least.

I think it would be much better to have the possibility to choose which extensions are going to be installed within the installation process.

Something similar many Linux distributions are offering.

Regards,

Sent from my iPad

[Andrew Eddie]

On 8 November 2012 17:46, Thomas PAPIN <thomas...@gmail.com> wrote:

* Back to the first subject upgrade: Andrew you said: " (3.0 was actually a place where much could be broken)"

Just to be clear, I meant that a point-zero release allows for breaking changes, but we tried not to do that as much as possible (from the Platform point of view).

 

   On my opinion, it would have been better to start breaking things on 3.0 but keep"deprecated" functions and "deprecated" classes in a "legacy lib" and remove this only on 3.5 (the other LTS) as much as possible.

That's exactly what we did with the /legacy tree in the Platform.

 

   You said also about another subject but that can be applied here: "What I mean by that is you don't have to have 10 different free extensions doing the same thing on the JED"

    In third party extensions, you have a "class" that is in charge of checking the joomla version and redirect to the correct functions, this could be done only 1 time in a legacy plugin.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean.  My point was if there where repositories under http://github.com/joomla for quasi-offical extension suites (and the definition of that would be fairly broad - there is at least one person looking after each extension), there is a possibility of attract collaborative effort on one extension rather than a half dozen or so people all rolling the same thing.  For example, on the JED there are a number of extensions that support Disqus and the other popular distributed commenting systems - we really only need one because there is more or less only one way to do that.  I know it's a bit Drupal-esqe but I think a blend of our approach (freedom to do what you want) and theirs (encourage a single point of collaboration) would benefit.

Regards,
Andrew Eddie

[piotr_cz]

This is indeed a great feature and I'm using it for new users with
backend access, but it took me long time to figure it out (and
understand complete ACL philosophy). I'm using Joomla! since version
1.0.

If we'd take a fresh Joomla guy that wants to try out the product,
after installation (s)he'll login as super administrator and be
exposed to full functionality which is at least overwhelming. (S)he
might think: this is too much for what I need.

Solution then is to add new user for everyday work like in linux
systems (in Manager user group) and setup appropriate components
permissions (Access Administration Interface).

But IMHO it's too much for first time user.

[piotr_cz]

I agree, installation is IMHO best place for this.

But I'd keep the umbrella over extensions that would be kicked out of
core (like com_banners), and not propose other ones at this place.

These would be available to install from the Joomla installation,
without redirecting to JED site.

The ground is more or less prepared, but as somebody mentioned there
are some cross-dependencies. Nils Rückmann started a thread that could
help: 'Preparing ground for extension dependencies Options':
https://groups.google.com/group/joomla-dev-cms/browse_frm/thread/2e18c952f91cbe2e

On Nov 8, 8:54 am, Radek Suski <suski.ra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think a LITE version is good idea. It would be confusing at least.
> I think it would be much better to have the possibility to choose which extensions are going to be installed within the installation process.
>
> Something similar many Linux distributions are offering.
>
> Regards,
>
> Sent from my iPad
>

> On 08.11.2012, at 08:46, Thomas PAPIN <thomas.pa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > *  I agree on the fact that it will be better for the "LITE", than the "Full" release should just contains some "quick install button"(Joomla official repo, like app store)  or  "Unpublished button" (components should be there but hidden).
> > In other words, the "components" and "modules of the CMS should be deliver as standalone extension.
>
> > At the joomla installation, it could be great to have the choice to select "Lite" or "Full" or "Advanced" (advanced to select manually the extensions to install)
> > And on another thread they was a discussion on "Import/Export Configuration (Users,Contents,etc...)". These two features could work also together.
>
> > The more difficult part is when you don't want to remove/hide a component like com_banners but when you want to hide"multilanguages" or "ACL" options
>
> > * Back to the first subject upgrade: Andrew you said: " (3.0 was actually a place where much could be broken)"
> >    On my opinion, it would have been better to start breaking things on 3.0 but keep"deprecated" functions and "deprecated" classes in a "legacy lib" and remove this only on 3.5 (the other LTS) as much as possible.
> >    You said also about another subject but that can be applied here: "What I mean by that is you don't have to have 10 different free extensions doing the same thing on the JED"
> >     In third party extensions, you have a "class" that is in charge of checking the joomla version and redirect to the correct functions, this could be done only 1 time in a legacy plugin.
>
> > 2012/11/8 <r...@osdcs.com>
> >> The whole discussion started about users having to constantly upgrade and the costs for those upgrade services etc... having a new LITE version will complicate and increase the load even more.
> >> If there is to be a lite version, then perhaps the system can just LIST the modules,plugins etc that are in the full version and just show an "Install" button in the list that will quickly download and install it like the Jomres system does.  Vince from Jomres has made a VERY nice system for that.  It allows the user to see a complete list of whats available, right in the system, without having to go looking for it.
>

> >> From: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Michael Babker
> >> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 6:13 AM
>
> >> To: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
> >> Subject: Re: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?
>
> >> A lite version is actually a pretty darn good idea.  How many of the extensions shipped with the core are you NOT using on a given website?  I'll tell you right now that I'm only using com_categories and com_content component wise, 4 of the core modules (there's 24 shipped), and I won't get into plugins but I know I've disabled many.  Point is, there's a lot of dead filespace on my site with files I'll never use.
>
> >> With a lite version, you ship the bare bones, and install what you need on top of the package.  It makes updates easier and helps to isolate the various components.  Ever tried fully uninstalling com_contact on a 2.5 site?  You'll kill com_content because of a database table it's looking for.
>
> >> That said, the UI is a work in progress, and I think in some ways is better with 3.0 than 2.5.  There's still room for improvement in a lot of areas.  Collaborate and improve on them I say.  The comment was made earlier about the core CMS developers not chiming in; well, I can't speak for them, but I personally don't answer a lot of e-mails because I'm using my time for more productive matters (and I've got plenty of code on GitHub ready for testing and inclusion in the CMS to prove it ;-) ).
>
> >> From: <r...@osdcs.com>
> >> Reply-To: <joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>
> >> Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2012 7:03 PM
> >> To: <joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>
> >> Subject: RE: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?
>
> >> I don't think you need a new lite VERSION
> >> Just a User Interface that is easier to use for newbies.More like a lite MODE.
> >> Then once they're more experienced, change to full MODE
>

> >> From: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Eddie
> >> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 5:46 AM
> >> To: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
> >> Subject: Re: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?
>

> >> On 8 November 2012 08:23, Matt Thomas <m...@betweenbrain.com> wrote:
> >>> I couldn't agree more Andrew. An official lite version of Joomla, that is extendable, would certainty be very appealing to a good number of users. Would it be realistic to consider building that using UCM? That could be a nice win-win to help push UCM adoption and usage. Just thinking out loud ;-)
>
> >> No, you don't have to do that - start simple, though it would take a bit of time to set up.  Thinking out loud too, I'd take these steps:
>
> >> 1. Strip down a "Joomla Core" version to the bare minimum (Platform, Content, Menus, Users, etc) and put that in a new github repo.
> >> 2. Create Phing (or Hudson) scripts to create the "build" and delta's (just clean up what we already have for the full CMS - just put them in a repo too some people know what happens).
> >> 3. Treat every other extension suite like a 3rd party addon and give it its own repo.  For example, put com_banners, it's modules, language files, etc into a new repo.
> >> 4. Create build scripts for those individual extension suites so they can be installed manually as required (I and others have many variations on this theme).
> >> 5. Create of distro build script that can merge Joomla Core with a "list" of extensions.
> >> 6. Work out a strategy for sample data that can be included in each component.
>
> >> Doing that does some interesting things.  On the Platform, the growth we are seeing is due to the fact that you can achieve a lot quickly and see a result.  For example, you can add three or four API calls to JGithub in an evening, or maybe spend a week on a new package.  Send a pull request and, bam, you are done and satisfied you've made the world suck less.  That's not so easy with the CMS because the whole monolith is sort of in the way.  Break up individual extensions and you can potentially increase the interest and innovation because now you can see what you are doing (for example, component developers don't store their code as a part of a fork of the whole Joomla CMS).
>
> >> Another thing it would do is foster more consolidated efforts on extensions.  What I mean by that is you don't have to have 10 different free extensions doing the same thing on the JED - people can just work together on the official one (much like Drupal does, but without the "there can only be one" attitude).
>
> >> It also makes it trivial (hopefully) to add new extensions to the stack.  Each extension suite would need to have a stable master branch but that's not difficult to achieve.  The JBS would take responsibility for the core and the overall strategy, but the other extensions could have teams of owners and they manage the bugs for those extensions.
>
> >> In the future, you build a UI so people can dial their own distro stack.
>
> >> But for now, that's where I'd start and it's just a matter of putting the build scripts into Hudson so you can just push the play button to get it rolling.
>
> >> On the topic of UCM, well, the reality it shifts you from "extension" building to "content" building.  You only have one content component but you'd need to have the ability to add new content types in a sensible way.  I'm still trying to work out how that would be possible but I think that's something for "Joomla Next", not the current CMS architecture (especially given the fact it would make most existing extensions redundant).
>
> >> Regards,
> >> Andrew Eddie

> >>http://learn.theartofjoomla.com- training videos for Joomla developers

>
> >> --
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> ...
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> read more »

[piotr_cz]

I'd be careful with Wappalyzer stats.
It's an browser addon for people who want to see some technological
background about websites/ webapps, so most probably installed by
experienced web developers. To overemphasize you could have results
like 40% of users are browsing web using Opera on Linux, because
research is about just specific user group.

Maybe it's time that Joomla have a Marketing group like companies do,
that will make research on market demand, consult top extension
developers and prepare some marketing strategy for future.

Growing (or at least stable) user base is extremely important; at
least one reason is that new developers/ contributors usually start as
average users. Having a CMS platform for developers will sooner or
later lead to an isolation.

On Nov 8, 6:57 am, Gary Jay Brooks <garybro...@cloudaccess.net> wrote:
> I can tell you from experience that life in Joomla land is most amazing.
>  You have to learn how to sell your product and how to target the market.
>  Yes, the market for Joomla is changing.  Small and mid size, and even
> fortune 500 companies love Joomla. Mom and pop shop on the corner can use
> Joomla but might lack finding advise to guide them in the right direction.
>  The stat I found and trust is 20% of the market is now using Joomla.

> (Source -http://www.opensourcecms.com/general/cms-marketshare.php)  I

[Thomas PAPIN]

Yes sorry my mail was not clear.
I totally agree on the quasi-official extensions suites.

My remark was about "legacy". You said: "That's exactly what we did with the /legacy tree in the Platform."

Based on this page: http://docs.joomla.org/Potential_backward_compatibility_issues_in_Joomla_3.0_and_Joomla_Platform_12.1
They are "removed classes", "renamed classes", lot of functions removed and renamed. Should have been great to have a "legacy" extensions to allow 2.5 extensions to work in 3.0 environnement.

In a lot of components there is a class to abstract Joomla function to be able to check Joomla version and use the correct Joomla function.
I was wondering, if there was a way to improve that.

Nick said 900 extensions already ready 3.0!, but this is a small number in fact regarding the JED. But maybe this is linked to the fact than people wants to use bootstrap css markup in their extensions so update for 3.0! is a little longer.

2012/11/8 Andrew Eddie <mamb...@gmail.com>

--

[Michael Babker]

900 extensions may be small for the JED, but it's about 9% of the total number listed.  Not too bad after not even 2 months as a stable release.

The code that was removed between 2.5 and 3.0 is code that was marked for removal by deprecating it during development of 1.6.  Most of that was the code that makes it impossible to use the native code and support 1.5 through 3.0 in a single extension package.  All of that code has replacements either in the Platform or via native PHP.  Those removals shouldn't be a shocker.

The legacy tree is a newer concept that started during Platform 12.1.  It lets us move classes that we're planning on either getting rid of, rewriting, or moving to a downstream user (Platform to CMS ownership) to an area indicating that those classes, as written, will cease to exist at some point.  If you notice, JError and JRequest live in that tree and were given another year past their originally scheduled removal.  The best part is that if you don't want to use those classes in a Platform application (think outside the CMS), you don't have to even load them in.

From: Thomas PAPIN <thomas...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, November 8, 2012 5:36 AM
To: <joomla-de...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?

[subtextproductions]

Thank you Elin, well said.

[subtextproductions]

If that's all you need, why don't you just write a new admin template. Strip out all of the "confusing" options that you feel are not necessary and that your client doesn't use. You could also strip away layers of complexity easily by making your clients "Editors" or "Authors" instead of Super Admins. If your clients are confused by ACL, don't show it to them.

[brian teeman]

I suspect its not the clients that are apparently confused

[Terry Arthur]

wow great contribution thanks Brian for your valuable input

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[Andrew Eddie]

On 9 November 2012 05:07, brian teeman <joom...@googlemail.com> wrote:

I suspect its not the clients that are apparently confused

Well I certainly am regarding that comment. Care to expand on what your point is?

Regards,

Andrew Eddie
http://learn.theartofjoomla.com - training videos for Joomla developers

 

[brian teeman]

On Thursday, 8 November 2012 21:05:54 UTC, Andrew Eddie wrote:

On 9 November 2012 05:07, brian teeman <joom...@googlemail.com> wrote:

I suspect its not the clients that are apparently confused

Well I certainly am regarding that comment. Care to expand on what your point is?

Happy to Andrew 

The suggestion earlier was that Joomla is too hard for users and that the interface is too complex and a response was that by using the ACL features and/or administrator template overrides it would be relatively simple for a web site builder to hide the complex stuff. 

My "tongue in cheek" response was that for many so called professional web site developers even that is far too complex a task. 

Joomla is a product of its own success and thats also its biggest problem. The true professional web site developers want and create ever more powerful and complex solutions and yet Joomla has historically set the barrier to entry so low that anyone who can use a mouse can build a site with Joomla. Unfortunately many of those people do not have the required skill and do not appear willing to spend the relatively small amount of time to learn. Instead they bemoan that work doesn't land on their doorstep.

Personally I have never been busier with Joomla related work and as Andrew and others can testify I am definitely not a skilled coder. Perhaps it's because I actively seek work and dont wait for it to appear or for "Joomla's Marketing Dept" to give it to me.

Regards

Brian Teeman

[Terry Arthur]

@Brian I must disrespectfully disagree with you. I started this discussion and I don't appreciate your presuppositions and implications which are based on absurd hasty generalizations. Why even comment if it isn't going to move the discussion forward in a positive way. Are you so insecure that you have to attack and put down anyone not as "professional" as you? 

When a client pays me to Joomla! work I don't get to dictate the complexity. They have needs, requirements,  wants and most importantly A BUDGET that dictates what is built not my aspirations to create an "even more powerful and complex solution".

I'm glad you are getting more Joomla! work than ever and I hope that continues for you but to insinuate that others aren't getting as much as they used to is due to the fact that they are sitting around doing nothing is not only unkind but also ridiculous.

There are a lot of great ideas here and if you can't contribute in meaningful way then please just stay silent?

Terry Arthur

Brian Teeman

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[brian teeman]

Terry you might have started the thread but there have been far too many other people commenting for anything to be directed at anyone specific. You generalised that joomla work is drying up because you see less of it on elance and odesk and I disagree. In fact it could be argued that the massive usability and functionality improvements in the last 2-3 years have resulted in less work being submitted on elance and odesk as the type of client who posts their is now able to do the work for themselves

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[Niv Froehlich]

Forward progress.  Backward compatibility.  Ease of migration!

I'm thrilled that this discussion is taking place and the solutions that are being recommended.

1. As a business owner, come back to me in 6 months or a 1yr and tell me that the web site you just designed for me is out-dated and there are going to major costs associated with just bringing it current is bad business for all involved.  My response would be find me another developer. 

While you are attempting to explain to me the virtues of putting aside huge budgets and attempting to explain the 'software life-cycle,' I'm looking through my Rolodex for somebody who can recommend another web developer.

2. As a Joomla! Developer (and newbie to Joomla!), while I have experience working with clients, managing complex web projects and some development experience (trying to learn and improve all the time - feeling overwhelmed just like so many others out there), the thought that my work will be outdated and I'll be investing an enormous amount of time and energy to stay current and keeping my clients current is daunting.  Yes, it comes with the territory - but isn't Joomla! supposed to make our lives easier?

I feel like I have far more on my 'learning curve radar' than I can possibly handle or get around to - please don't tell me that a major time commitment (scarce resource!) is going to be focused on migrating and updating, for each client, every year or so.

I'd much rather spend that time developing my skills and contributing to the Joomla! Community and Project!

[Youjoomla LLC]

I have followed this post since beginning and kept on thinking what happened and why did everything change from simple Mambo->Joomla website to what we have now

and what else beside upgrades issues is contributing to Joomla downfall.

Few things come to my mind:

1. Developers added more 

2. Developers added more 

3. Developers added more 

4. Developers added more ...

and I am one of them. 

Look at the  base template that comes with Joomla. You have 3-5 params in backend.

Look at default module , same 3-5 params 

Look at component content , couple params more. 

Compare  , default , template/module/component  to ANY  3rd party extension including mine. 

100's of options and if anyone would have shown me those when I started with Mambo, I would have picked any other CMS. 

So it is not only core fault that everything got so complicated. Think about it , all extensions/templates clubs have min 100k + members that use their products 

and all of us give them products with so many options that a novice user does not care about. We code and code and think that they should simply " understand" what we do. 

But I had no clue what CMS is 10 years ago , just like today's Joe don't care about. He wants simple website and we are making it complicated. 

Partially because we want , and partially because we have to keep up. So maybe we should just educate them little better. 

About  " Joomla Lite"  nice idea , but wait until the new user installs K2 , VM or any hot extensions , or if they install any free template ( which is the first thing they do )  based on any of our frameworks. 

They will get lost again and they wont blame 3rd party dev's but Joomla core. 

So all this tells me that we are where we are because we could not stop adding stuff in , and it is just in our nature to do so. Heck, we are developers right :).

I sure hope something would change and we all would get back what we had 2-3 years ago and if I  can contribute to anything you gals/guys have in mind , please let me know. 

Dragan

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 5:09 PM, Terry Arthur <eclect...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Best Regards
Dan Casky
Youjoomla Customer Service
+1727-388-6653
5044 17th street N
Saint Petersburg ,FL
33714
-------------------------------
Youjoomla LLC
www.youjoomla.com
Professional Joomla Web Design Services

[r...@osdcs.com]

Sorry to be off topic, but I've seen a couple of times mentioned here that there are now a ton of legacy classes Eg JViewLegacy.

 

Can someone please point me to instructions on what to use in their place so that my extions will be future compatible and not have to upgrade my extensions yet again.

This is getting to be a real pain. During the development of the component I'm working on. 1.5 years now. I've had to upgrade it from 1.5 to 1.6 then 1.7 then 2.5 and now 3.0

what a PAIN. It's a HUGE component that I'm developing and to have to continue to upgrade it takes time.

I have to find all the new method names that are hardly well documented.  (my grump for the day)

 

So, please advise.

 

Rob

---

From: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:joomla-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of subtextproductions
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 11:52 PM

To: joomla-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [jgen] Re: Joomla! exodus?

If that's all you need, why don't you just write a new admin template. Strip out all of the "confusing" options that you feel are not necessary and that your client doesn't use. You could also strip away layers of complexity easily by making your clients "Editors" or "Authors" instead of Super Admins. If your clients are confused by ACL, don't show it to them.

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[Mark Dexter]

If you have custom classes that extend JModel, JView, or JController, you should change these to extend JModelLegacy, JViewLegacy, or JControllerLegacy. Just a simple search-replace. If you do this, your extensions will work in 2.5.x and 3.x and likely after that (but not guaranteed for 4.x). Mark

[Rob Joyce]

I know that and I've done that.

But this is my question. if they are Legacy then that means they've been marked for removal in fiture versions.

What are they being replaced with and is the code already available for use.

[Andrew Eddie]

This is really getting off topic; best if you start a new thread (or search for other conversations); but here's the short answer.

On 9 November 2012 16:18, Rob Joyce <r...@osdcs.com> wrote:

I know that and I've done that.

But this is my question. if they are Legacy then that means they've been marked for removal in fiture versions.

Yes, but when they are removed from the CMS is undecided as far as I'm aware.  The CMS hasn't even weened itself off them yet so until it does you won't have to worry.

 

What are they being replaced with and is the code already available for use.

It depends.  If you are using classes like JControllerForm etc and building components the changes are transparent.  You might want to take advantage of JModelDatabase to replace JModelLegacy.  You probably aren't going to use the new JControllerBase anytime soon.  You might experiment with JViewHtml a little but probably only if you are building custom applications (that is, things other than the CMS).

As for upgrading components from 1.5 to through to 3.0, there is actually a lot of good documentation out there for what to look out for. For example, Google "joomla 3.0 backward compatibility issues" or similar and you should quickly find stuff.  I personally spent many days preparing a very extension document and videos for the changes between 1.5 and 1.6 (http://docs.joomla.org/What's_new_in_Joomla_1.6) - that was available about six months before 1.6 was released.

Regards,

Andrew Eddie

[Nick Savov]

We *don't* have a large migration every major version, though! Have you
seen the upgrade path from Joomla 2 (major version) to Joomla 3 (major
version)? It's a one-click upgrade for the Joomla core. Please see the
Joomla 3 FAQ:
http://docs.joomla.org/Joomla_3.0_FAQ

In short, going from Joomla 2.5 core to 3.0 core is relatively easy. Click
a button and you're done.

As to extensions, if your extension was written for 1.6-2.5 originally,
there's very little that you have to do. I think most needed changes were
marked as deprecated in 1.6:
http://docs.joomla.org/Potential_backward_compatibility_issues_in_Joomla_3.0_and_Joomla_Platform_12.1

I'm not a great developer and don't understand much about development, but
looks like Joomla 3 made the transition relatively very smooth. I had
more errors/warnings in my extensions when striving for PHP 5.3
compatibility, than I did to get Joomla 3 compatibility. One module (that
was written in Joomla 1.6 and hadn't been changed since), worked in Joomla
3 without doing anything. For another one, all I had to do was change
"DS" to "DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR" and it worked.

So I don't see going from 2.5 (major version) to 3.0 (major version) as
being a large migration or anything close it. It's a one-click upgrade
for the core and extensions developers are going to have to do a little
work (or in some cases no work) to get compatibility.

If I can do it, other more capable developers can easily do it.

To top it off, you get about 3 years of support per major version, so you
only need to update internal extensions about every 3 years. So I guess
you got your wish of longer than 2 years :)

I hope this clarification helps! Check things out for yourself and I
think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Kind regards,
Nick