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The growing issue of over simplification.

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Comments

  • @mkr, @UnderDog: If there are other software that may work better for your community because it has the features it needs, then why not use it? Is it because Vanilla handles everything better but just needs more time to grow?

    Add Pages to Vanilla with the Basic Pages app

  • @ddumont

    Here is the code:

    /** * Add voting css to post controller. */ public function PostController_Render_Before($Sender) { if (!C('Plugins.Voting.Enabled')) return; $this->AddJsCss($Sender); } public function ProfileController_Render_Before($Sender) { if (!C('Plugins.Voting.Enabled')) return; $this->AddJsCss($Sender); }

    My question is why we need adding voting resources to this controllers?

    Next question - how I can get parameters passed to controller?
    For example, I don't need Voting plugin in categories/all .

    I much prefer careful rewrite fo core plugins integrating their JS and CSS to current Minify approach (that do not easy load on your server anyway).
  • ddumontddumont ✭✭
    edited February 2011
    @tester13
    The voting plugin was designed to have every category participate in voting.

    If you are interested in turning the feature into something that only happens on certain categories you'll probably need to supply them with a patch. Or just fork the plugin and provide it here, but I think they'd appreciate a patch.

    I do something similar in my code to turn 1 category into a blog:

    public function DiscussionController_Render_Before(&$Sender) {
    if ($Sender->CategoryID != C("Plugins.NillaBlog.CategoryID"))
    return;

    $Sender->AddCssFile($this->GetResource('design/custom.css', FALSE, FALSE));
    }
    public function CategoriesController_Render_Before(&$Sender) {
    if ($Sender->CategoryID != C("Plugins.NillaBlog.CategoryID"))
    return;

    $Sender->AddCssFile($this->GetResource('design/custom.css', FALSE, FALSE));
    }
    In my preferences I let the admin specify the ID of the category they want.

    But like I said, I would like to see improvements over how we can specify if a CSS or JS file should or should not be included in a concatinated base (al la minify)

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  • My question was why we need Voting resources in profile and discusiion posting as I do not see any Voting real presence in this controllers views :-)

    As for your example - it only prove my point.
    We need global function or method like GetViewsOptions returning array of parts in URL after view name.
  • Another piece of open source software I use frequently is Textpattern, and I believe that their approach to simplifications and richer functionality through plugins has been successful.

    I especially like that they have packaged plugins in a way that they are installed through an admin console (no filesystem access needed) and stored in the database. This makes sites very portable, mostly just need to move the database.

    This is philosophical, and may not fit well with the Vanilla philosophy, but I personally think the Textpattern approach to skinning/theming a site seems to work better for a simple with many plugins. For Vanilla the plugins seem to generate content which you then have to find and apply CSS styles as appropriate. With Textpattern CMS, for the most part, the plugins extend an xhtml-based tag library so you control where/when the plugin outputs its content by leverage its tags.
  • ShadowdareShadowdare r_j MVP
    edited February 2011
    Textpattern is okay but I personally don't really favor their template system.

    Add Pages to Vanilla with the Basic Pages app

  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    vBulletin uses a database-driven template & plugin system. It made me hate my life every time I had to use it.
  • I am a little scared if I have to use a lot of 3rd party plugins (20? 30? wow...). Since most of hacking/cracking action out there exploiting the weaknesses of the plugins... Not the core, ;-)

  • I know we're on the right way here. Database-Driven template system sucks bad. I've come off a CMS that used it and we had problems with Cache, Putting templates in the Database, etc, etc.
    We're even moving away from BBcode and using HTML again.
    The thing is, are we keeping it too simple or do we need more things in the Vanilla core. Or do we want to handle every single thing with plugins?

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  • I am fully with @Linkcoln on vBulletin.
    I prefer simplified Vanilla approach. I just want to see evolution of it, making it easier to replace any part of original code.
  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    @n4is3n Most of the security is baked into the framework. It's pretty hard to screw up a plugin so bad that you create a security flaw. Also, look for 'approved' plugins to see if they've been reviewed by the staff. There will be more of those in the future as we have more time to do code reviews.
  • @Lincoln review my plugin!!!! lol :P

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  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    edited March 2011
    I don't have the power to approve plugins (even my own), sorry. I'm a core developer, but not employed by Vanilla.
  • Ahh I see. I was only kidding anyway :) The vanilla team is hard at work and making a great product. I know they will get to it when they can.

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  • When you think about it, couldn't plugins approved for the transition into the core app just be located on a different page. They would still function as a plugin, and could still be disabled, its just a change cosmetically on the plugin page.

    simplification is great, though users having 10 - 15 plugins is anything but simplistic. There needs to be a balance between a plugin and a core feature.

    what if, any plugin included in the download is located on a separate page (core settings page if you will) or something along these lines. This would be a fair balance. Any plugin that is thought to be important enough to be included in the main downloadable package should be just as important for a core feature. Thus, having some form of a cause and effect approach.

    or, limit the amount of included plugins to 2-3.



  • If there's anything that needs to be added to the core of Vanilla, it's a simple WYSIWYG editor for posts.
    Sure, there is cleditor and tinyMCE but both are on their own and are not integrated enough with Vanilla. (Eg. No quoting/referring, image upload+embedding, user-referencing)

    While I love how simple and modern Vanilla is, I believe it's very important to have an integrated posting experience akin to that of Facebook's. (I know fb's is not a wysiwyg but it's easy to post images and refer to users)
    I'm not suggesting the classic features of boldifying, italicising, numbered lists and etc since those are frankly unnecessary for Vanilla's design and are already supported via HTML for the advanced user. I'm not asking for a re-invention of BBCode.
    I'm just frustrated at how everything's simple apart from the posting itself.

    I think this is an example of when certain features should be in-built since such an integrated experience should be part of Vanilla, not an add-on to Vanilla.
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