Joomla, be an easy CCK

[Bomx]

Hello boys and girls,

It's probably my first entrance, so please smash me if my subject was repeated:)

While I work on !J CMS I always find article system wrong, it turns me to use my own components or use third-party things that don't give me enough flexibility.

Did you think about coming closer to drupal, by making articles as flex as possible ? What I mean is: Give developers a way to specify additional fields without plugins, then again I'd like to see a way to choose layout instead of fixed internal rendering system. If I make an override, then all 'blogs' are common, there is no separation. I'd like to see the field that gives me a way to choose my own layout, but does not affect the global config. Finally, more inheritance on menu level.

Article reamore text: This thing is only reconfigurable in article area or global language, needs to be more flexi.

My main idea is to make article system elastic as much as possible, so I don't know your point of view because of J 3.4 being still andlimited for this subject.

[wdburgdorf]

Hello Boy or girl,

yes, well, I think this has actually been discussed a few times. Especially the CCK part. I personally need additional fields in about 2% of my sites. Then I use K2, e.g. - great to have a good choice of extensions. There are also several simple plugins to extend the standard fields, as you say. Perhaps it might be better to have more flexibility built right in, but that might also cause difficulties in other areas. and it would of course make the system more complex, harder to learn, to maintain etc. Me personally: no urgent need.

For all of your other comments: How much have you worked with overrides and alternative templates? I have a feeling that all of the things you mentioned can be easily done with the current system, including various layouts and readmore text.

Not that I believe everything's perfect here. I don't like the default blog layout much. And the way frontend editing works, etc. But then, I have never found it too hard to change, and I trust that these details are going to improve gradually, as they have been very much improved in the past ...

Rather than presenting general criticism (justified or not), you have probably better chances of something moving your way if you home in onto a specific problem, or ideally fix something the way you like it and send a PR ... or support existing PRs/fixes that you like.

Cheers, Ralf.

[Robert G Mears]

@BOMX,

You might find this site useful: J! TUTOR.

Robert

[Anibal]

Hi,

There are many CCK extensions, just to name a few:

• Cobalt
• Fabrik
• FlexiContent (built on top of Joomla com_content)
• K2
• Seblod
• SobiPro
• TZ Portfolio
• Zoo

In addition, current CMS development trend is to reduce the core size, removing optional components, leading to next Joomla 4 (an effort that is starting at this time). So, I guess there is little room to propose a big com_content modification or a new component to be included.

Regards,

Anibal

[Bomx]

Don't take me wrong.

I'm using !J from my own choice, found it the perfect way to achieve goals I was given. What I mean about articles and blog/article overrides is that, I need to push my own plugins to add special fields that are an easy to be modified by clients. K2/Cobalt/Seblod/etc are ccks which needs weeks to learn from its technical area because they want give you too much flexibility, I simply see a way to make articles more flexi, even by an internal mechanism for that. So what I really see is a way to add fields and then go through it by own alsternative layouts, no matter you override menu item nor general layout. I find myself quiet often in need to make my own menu link overrides because of weird needs, on the opposite I like to keep things simple. The next thing which is missing hard is current inheritance level which gives you one global scheme, but on the menu level it will give you headache. I know k2 is great for that, but I'm not talking about my own super-easy extensions that I prepare for short/local community. nor third party things 

I am super aware of that this is a totally insane thing to make all devs happy, but I simply see a potential in that little, underestimated article system which follows me since J 2.5. Finally, the point is to give a way to make own layout/override which uses internal field system and then, give the developer a loose from making plugins. That's my point, I would really choose that way in areas of product pages etc instead of using super extensions that give too much overload (or my own ones). 

At the end, I don't put any critics in that area though blog/category layouts need some love. If I were more into core then I would try hitting the community long time ago.

More over, you want to reduce core size which I really appreciate, but I'm wondering why you put FOF from akeeba which gives devs more overhead:) Just an example.

[Anibal]

Hi,

FOF is an alternative library to develop extensions (not a CCK). FOF provides a default structure with controllers, models, forms and views (that can be overridden in multiple ways).

It is not built on top of Joomla MVC, so there is no additional overhead. Other extensions are based on similar frameworks, like Zoo or Nooku.

Regards,

[Bomx]

Yes, framework on framework as you have well explained:) I see Joomla good as pure MVC with its flaws and advantages, I was just surprised that something went in just side by side. I know Akeeba and their stuff, but when we talk about size (which is 5-6k files which influence servers more than disc space) then in this case I would threat it as kind of...'must have if needed' not built in. In this statement I may fail if there are really many extensions that started to use it. So anyway, I see !J going right way, just wanted to put some feedback upon articles/blogs. 

[Robert G Mears]

Peter van Westen's advanced module manager allows for specifying whether a module displays dependent on device or operating system, etc:
https://www.nonumber.nl/extensions/advancedmodulemanager