JoomlaWorks

20 comments

• westb 18 Mar 2011
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  I was really happy to find this. After several months of looking at Drupal I came away frustrated with the architecture, but amazed by the community - truly an engaged and engaging group of people. If you haven't done so it's worth a look at their code of conduct at http://drupal.org/dcoc" rel="nofollow">http://drupal.org/dcoc ( a direct adoption of Ubuntu's). Another contrast is looking at the project code - as mentioned several times - Joomla the code is very much lacking in comments. As a contrast you should take a look at some Drupal code, a stark difference.

  I'll throw in my opinion after spending only a few days looking at Joomla.

  - Architectural foundation of Joomla looks awesome - with the caveat about code comments. With Drupal, on the other hand the archetecthure is well .. a tough learning curve with lots of it's own unique and not always intuitive lexicon.

  - With all the Joomla hype about community and volunteers it's difficult to see evidence of an open source project with respect to core development - that concern is how I found this post - to the extent that there is a community, it does not appear to be developer driven. Joomla looks positioned to be an excellent "off the shelf" system with plenty of room for value added service providers to make a living from support and customization. It's a subtle but but significant distinction when we look at who's driving the bus and what the culture of the product community is.

  - At first I was puzzled by the copyright notice in all the source code by Open Source Matters, inc. Looking at the somewhat messy history of Mambo it is interesting that Joomla was spun off from the commercial side of Mambo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo_(software)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo_(software), My reason for looking into this is that Joomla has a commercial aura. Not a value judgement - just an observation. I can say that somehow looking at the board of directors of Open Source Matters with its origins and structure does not leave me with the same feeling of confidence I have - for example - with Connonical sitting behind ubuntu, or even IBM with apache.

  So here's what is bothering me a little. It seams that the people driving the system and making stragic decisions have the value added service provider as their core constituant - to the extent that they have errected onerous barriers to entry for core developers. As pointed out above, it could be soooo much better with a vibrant engaged community of core developers.

  Just sayin. Joomla, Koomla, Poomla, JoDrupLa ....

  
  
• Fotis Evangelou 12 Jun 2010
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  @Ron I'd definitely think twice before jumping on the other side :) The Joomla framework is far superior compared to other CMS' frameworks ;)
  
  

  
  
• RonWM 12 Jun 2010
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  I love this discussion. It's the same thing I have been saying in my own circle for a long time. I've been using Joomla for the last 3 years and the initial love is gone. I have grown to become quite frustrated with the speed at which features are added. I am also frustrated with the lack of (good quality) documentation for developers - which also puts me in awe of fact that so many great extensions have been developed for Joomla.

  I think that the Joomla team should concentrate on making sure that the Framework is easier to use by developers. Make contacts, banners, polls, newsfeeds, and weblinks installable extensions as torkilj said. The Joomla core team should allow other developers to develop these instead, while they concentrate on the framework.

  So strengthen the framework, set standards for development, and allow the community to do what it does best: develop great Joomla extensions.

  I don't care that a comments component is not in the core, it is not a core functionality as ACL and unlimited nested categories are.

  The only other CMS I use professionally is Plone, and they do a great job of identifying what should be core functionality and what isn't. Still, there community is not half as big as Joomla's community is (in my own estimation). If the Joomla team follow their approach, Joomla will undoubtedly become the best all-round CMS to work with.

  Joomla has helped me put a good amount of money in my pocket over the years, but sad to say I'm now looking over in the Drupal camp for a possible new home as a PHP CMS user/developer. But as always, the grass is always greener on the other side...

  
  
• torkilj 18 May 2010
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  I agree wholeheartedly; For instance, Joomla should make contacts, banners, polls, newsfeeds and weblinks installable extensions rather than core components. They are creations from an era long gone.

  I would love to see this as a milestone for 1.7. Less dead weight gives us more time to focus on what is important.

  Search has it's place in a CMS and framework, but not in it's current form.

  
  
• Fotis Evangelou 17 May 2010
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  In my opinion, Joomla should remain spartan on end user features and offer a very strong framework for developers to build web applications with it. That way, we get to see more features released sooner than a new Joomla distro. ;)
  
• torkilj 16 May 2010
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  As long as the #Joomla core is not providing new features, K2 will still be in high demand, no? ;) #jos
  
• Fotis Evangelou 15 May 2010
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  You do have a point to what you say Torkilj...

  
  

  
  
• torkilj 15 May 2010
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  Fotis: As you said, feature-wise not much has happened in the core since the Mambo days. Well, except that the codebase changed and a framework was introduced. So why should this not be a post to bash the core team? Who's responsibility is this lack of progress, if not the core team?

  I think the model for which development is now being done, is an obstacle in itself. With two developers being paid and the rest of all the project participants being volunteers, what does this do with accountability and motivation for those not being paid for their efforts? Paying one guy and not the other is basically like saying "his work is worth more than that guy's". This goes not only for the code production of the project, but for all contributors in all working groups.

  Paying a developer also gives the developer an economic incentive to try to hold on to his/her position; A job puts food on the table of course, but being a lead developer for a major project like this also gives your own business extra attention and credibility. This should have a nice effect on the amount of orders you get in and the fee you're able to charge for your work, so holding on to the position becomes imperative.

  All in all this model becomes an obstacle for innovation and development speed in my opinion; People who are skilled and "hungry" and want to bring this project forward, are being effectively stopped and are unable to contribute. If you, the lead developer, make it hard enough for people to contribute, they won't bother, and if people stop contributing then the project seemingly has no choice but to keep paying you to code.

  Or paying you not to code? For comments, ACL and nested categories were all part of stable, production ready code that was already being sold and used in live sites back in 2008 by jXtended, and donated to the Joomla project in January 2009. And now, announced the day after feature freeze, comments have been taken out.

  http://jxtended.com/blog/company/89-jxtended-investing-in-joomla-16.html" rel="nofollow">http://jxtended.com/blog/company/89-jxtended-investing-in-joomla-16.html

  Isn't it time to just say "okay, we tried and it did not work", and now let some fresh blood with vision, ambition and new energy step in and take over some of the heavy lifting? As Fotis said, we are just people, not machines.

  
  
• gobezu 11 May 2010
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  thank you for this excellent idea although i see that the issue raised by @ewoutw is one which is of a real headache

  but since this blog entry is breathing pragmatism all over it let me suggest this

  k2, jseblod cck, resources, flexicontent and zoo - why don't you pull your resources together and develop the ultimate joomla cck and simply try to commit it to the 1.7

  another real concern is the maintenance and development of the joomla library where koowa having taken such a leap from current joomla library and offering so much more flexibility in terms of development and yet we know how that is not even being considered, at least as far as the readings from the various discussion group entries

  
  
• Amy Stephen 11 May 2010
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  Fotis - +1 This is how Drupal does it. Individuals/teams create and then maintain / further develop the modules for each release. And yes, it spreads the load and builds ownership. Now, they are positioning for more distributions on Drupal.org. That is made easier by the centralized repository of shared code and distributed support structure.
  
• spletodrom 11 May 2010
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  This is definitely some positive direction of thinking, also I'm glad to see retweets from core devs about posts like this lately :)
  
• adamfoerster 11 May 2010
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  Some times I think the best thing for Joomla would be a fork. . .
  
• websiteinabox 10 May 2010
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  Would have to agree concentrate on managing the development let others do the work :)
  
• ewoutw 10 May 2010
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  Too much is never good but sometimes discussion is good - you've just sparked a good one :)
  After the leaders decide who takes what portion of the development, I'd like two discussions. One is a sort of white paper process like we've seen before (how will that work with timed releases?). The second is a bit more discussion between the developers selected for a portion. Just like you probably do within your team, but then it is a discussion between the developers of the best 3rdpp alternatives to that portion of the core who hopefully are all volunteering and selected for the task together. Otherwise it's just moving selected third party extensions into the core. Mind you sometimes that wouldn't be a bad idea...
  
• Fotis Evangelou 10 May 2010
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  @ewoutw My belief is that if you wanna get things done fast and professionally, you need to code more and discuss less. The leaders orchestrating this will still be the core team and of course it's up to them to decide who could undertake portions of the development work. Once that is done, why should there be more talk? Were you asked for the features of com_content? Obviously not. But you perhaps had the chance to vote the features somewhere. The core team will then pick who is capable to deliver the code ;)
  
  
  
• ewoutw 10 May 2010
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  This is very similar to what my thoughts have come to. But if there are enough developers who would want to contribute in this way, then I see a risk of progress being criticised by competing developers. Since just before the NL Joomla days my thought was that it would be great to put the developers of competing products together to create something they are all happy with - leaving them free to offer their own software as a step up. What if you worked with the people of FlexiContent and jSeblod CCK in this way? K2 and the others might still be better than the result but no doubt the result would be a good component. Perhaps it would also lead to some unexpected advantages like some open Joomla standards for CCK content storage. The bottom line is: the project would need some clever way to select developers for a particular part of the code, and I think part of the cleverness would lie in making people work together.
  
• RobertsWeb 10 May 2010
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  Excellent post Fotis and ultimately could tie in with what a lot of other folks are thinking Joomla should become. Both inside the core and out. Monday is busy for me here, so I will have to keep this short, but again great idea.
  
• Fotis Evangelou 10 May 2010
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  Let me add 2 things:

  First, we have already witnessed modular development with the design of the default templates by RocketTheme, Robert Deutz & Angie Radtke, JoomlArt.

  Secondly, if core component/module/plugin development is given to approved third parties, then we could see Joomla with an automated updater for core extensions, thus make the entire update process simpler and faster. In other words, I would not have to go to joomla.org to update my com_comments component. The third-party developer would make the update available via joomla.org and directly into this automated core updater. ;)

  
  
• philiplocke 10 May 2010
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  What a great post - well done Fotis ;-)
  Simple really & would create an even better community feeling & belonging!
  
• anotherguy 10 May 2010
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  I completely agree with this perspective. After working with the Palm WebOS community for the last few weeks, I have been pondering how plausible it would be to change to this very system for Joomla. The Joomla core can be an excellent framework to allow developers to release extensions that fill in many of the empty spots found in the current releases, while also letting the core team focus on stability, speed, the user-interface and experience.

  Apple doesn't build a ton of features into their products, they built a UI andpowerful OS and then opened it up for others to develop with. Palm's webOS took this a step forward by making their development process sooo much simpler (uses html, js and css - languages we are already used to).

  I would love to see the Joomla team focus on the UI, UX, Documentation and distributing extensions. That would totally change the game that we play in, and put Joomla on top.