Project Categorization will be coming to J!Forge

[kenmcd]

Thanks to all for the compliments. 


Even with the planned changes to add categorization to JoomlaForge,
many projects are not on JoomlaForge (and never will be).
Thus JoomlaForge will never be the complete CMM resource.
JoomlaForge is a good place to manage a multi-person project and host files.
JoomlaForge is still primarily a developer tool (and a good one).

Categorization will definitely help find projects (I am soooo sick of the search button).
To update the CMM list, I have been stepping through page-by-page (easier and only way to find everything)

Many projects are managed on the pages of their authors for various reasons:
- ease of management, updates, etc.
- marketing
- control (over layout, usability, etc.)
This is not going to change.

Hard to integrate JoomlaForge with any other site (opening links in a frame is a pain)

Even with categorization JoomlaForge is not likely to be easily browsable.
SourceForge and GForge browsing - both need a major usability injection.

Search is an inefficient way to distribute information on one major subject.
A human can filter and organize information far better - mostly we call this invention "book"

Joomlaya is making an effort at better CMM browsing - look at the "Jump to" drop down box.
Guys - please put this outline on an easy to scan page!
Users would be able to see the outline easier.

My attempt at this "scanability" is the Categories listing in the first post of the CMM list.
Ideally this would link (jump) to the individual section below.
(anyone know how to put anchors in a forum page? have had no luck)

With some improvements (and an editor  ), Joomlaya may make the CMM list unnecessary.

Until then . . . off to work.

[jdstevenson]

Even with the planned changes to add categorization to JoomlaForge,
many projects are not on JoomlaForge (and never will be).
Thus JoomlaForge will never be the complete CMM resource.
JoomlaForge is a good place to manage a multi-person project and host files.
JoomlaForge is still primarily a developer tool (and a good one).

This brings up an old topic that came up the core Mambo team a couple of years back... Is it better to let 3rd party sites deal with all the CMM's, or is it better for the core group to maintain the 'official' repository.  Because the 3rd party at the time was primarily Arthur Konze, and once in a blue moon something would cause Arthur to pull down MamboPortal (and no slight intended to Arthur, even when tempermental, he has been an important player in Mambo/Joomla's development) , I was inclined to support the core team's effort to create MamboForge, which was aimed both at developers and at creating a central repository for users.

While I was never particularly crazy about it's design or navigation, Mamboforge did eventually become the best place for getting the newest version of a CMM, with a few rare exceptions.  And even those exceptions often maintained a project on MF and their own site.

I guess if Joomlaya doesn't hit the same issues that MamboPortal did, (and it probably won't since 3 people are managing it -- and by the way a big thanks to them all), this isn't an issue...  But something in my gut tells me having an 'official' repository linked right off joomla.org would be better and friendlier to new users. 

Joomlaya is making an effort at better CMM browsing - look at the "Jump to" drop down box.
Guys - please put this outline on an easy to scan page!
Users would be able to see the outline easier.

Right on the money.  Usability 101 is not to put massive lists into drop down boxes.  They'd be much better off creating a 'project map' type categorizaton page.  The problem there is (I think) the component they are using to manage downloads, which automatically throws that in. 

[benedikt]

A little off-topic maybe, but it's probably relevant.

This brings up an old topic that came up the core Mambo team a couple of years back... Is it better to let 3rd party sites deal with all the CMM's, or is it better for the core group to maintain the 'official' repository.
...
But something in my gut tells me having an 'official' repository linked right off joomla.org would be better and friendlier to new users. 

Good news!
I think the dev team is already working on it.

See this tread:
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,15106.0.html

An official 'collection'/directory of Joomla sites would be a good thing it would provide exactly what you are looking for here.

Everything takes time.

As brad wrote before it is in work ( nearly ready ) , but be patient please

To quote Guns and Roses: "All we need is just a little patience." 

[JoombieNewbie]

I'd like to see a BEHAVIOURS page.  Kinda a like a profile for anti-virus purposes.

The Sony Rootlkit has opened my eyes to malicious and intrusive software coming from a trusted source.

On one Joomla Hack forum site, I saw someone complain that their component had a hitherto unknown 'dial home' feature (like spyware I suppose) which they found objectionable. I looked at the code myself and found that what the software was doing (unasked) was connecting to the authors home server and pulling down an RSS feed to show the most current version, among other things.

What happened (and brought the issue out) was that the authors site was down, the users componnent failed as a result and he found out why.

Now, let me stress that there was no nefarious intent apparent in the code, but it struck me that I have downloaded MANY mods and bots and NEVER ONCE took a look inside to see what I was downloading!

Would you believe the first one I looked at was a IPOD NANO MP3 Player (flash). The module had no SWF file in it, and when I checked, the file and it's music playlist were hotlinked in the code to another server.

What this means, is that every time you (or your members) use that player, you are downloading it from someones server, he is getting a referrer hit in his access logs, and that swf file could be changed to ANYTHING and you would not know.

Feasibly, you (as webmaster of the hosting site) , could serve up different files based on the incoming ip, the flash file could be replaced with a file that requests user private information, - in the trusted context of your site, they may well give it up!

This all has me a little concerned...do we need anti virus for Joomla? Code that can scan modules for bad behaviour code?

For instance:
Database access - this componnent X is read only (i.e. Last Forum Posts mod -It has no need to write to the db)


or maybe ALL projects (file releases) get sent to JFORGE with a pgp key or MD5 has generated so if we download the file elsewhere from a mirror, we can verify the file is authentic.

....just thoughts...

[gsbe]

JoombieNewbie - I'm interested to see what you think of Joomla's help screens. The "Help" action icon on almost every page of Joomla opens a pop-up window at Joomla's site with help information. I've been thinking about doing something similar with a project that I'm creating to be released to the public. Do you think this is a bad idea? Is this one of those things where its ok for the master app to do this but not an 3rd party addon?

[JoombieNewbie]

JoombieNewbie - I'm interested to see what you think of Joomla's help screens. The "Help" action icon on almost every page of Joomla opens a pop-up window at Joomla's site with help information. I've been thinking about doing something similar with a project that I'm creating to be released to the public. Do you think this is a bad idea? Is this one of those things where its ok for the master app to do this but not an 3rd party addon?

Microsoft and others, their help files routinely hit microsoft for the most trivial of help information giving annonying wait times.. between that and the g*d*nd animated paperclip! ... ..pardon me

I think if 3pd apps link to an external help file, it should be a WIKI type format (wiki-p-idea?) the idea being that there would be

• ONE FORMAT for the help information,
• it can be updated by the users (GPL documentation?? )
  
• And there would be a greater guarantee of survival in the case of the original author disappearing (or throwing a hissy fit)

I still appreciate the need for authors to have their ego stroked and recognise that one of the moving forces behind the 'altruism' of open source is to 'make a name for oneself' and drive people toward your commercial efforts ( See inter alia, "free templates" on Jforge & 'teaser' components... "oh, you want to SAVE data? well, then, you need our licensed version!

[apoynton]

Any News yet on getting the forge organised?

It's totally frustrating as it is.

My main gripe at the moment is projects that say they have "a number of components, modules and templates".
Shouldn't each of those have their own project? That would make much more sense and searching much easier.

[philmoz]

Any News yet on getting the forge organised?

It's totally frustrating as it is.

My main gripe at the moment is projects that say they have "a number of components, modules and templates".
Shouldn't each of those have their own project? That would make much more sense and searching much easier.

Yeees, and maybe...
A component that has an attached module should be developed in the same place, but IMHO should be seperate releases, as a modification to one may not effect the operation of the other. But being in the same place (project) means you don't have to go hunting for the second part.
Also, the forge is basically (it may not be obvious) for developers, not necessarily for customers

[gsbe]

Also, the forge is basically (it may not be obvious) for developers, not necessarily for customers

This is currently true but the point of this thread is to point out how poorly the J!Forge is at serving the community's users and how it could modified to solve this issue. I am also interested to hear an update from VA. They seemed very into it at first but there has been very little since the first few weeks of installation. What's the word here?

[TheSaint]

It would be great if you could "Monitor" projects, not just file release groups. Perhaps I missed an option there for that, but last time I checked, there wasn't one. Thanks as always for keeping us up-to-date on the latest developments.

[travist]

Hi Paul,

It would be great if you could "Monitor" projects, not just file release groups. Perhaps I missed an option there for that, but last time I checked, there wasn't one. Thanks as always for keeping us up-to-date on the latest developments.

I'm the product manager for SourceForge Enterprise (currently running Joomla forge). I've been lurking on the board for quite some time -- I plan to be more active in the future.

I like your idea of monitoring projects as the current notion of monitoring a SourceForge project is constrained to projects for which you have membership. I envision this feature being most useful from the project map (currently planned SourceForge feature). Though this would also be useful from other project lists and the project home page.

Travis

[infograf768]

Thanks Travis and welcome on the Joomla Forums!
(and... happy new year!)

[Predator]

Hi Paul,

It would be great if you could "Monitor" projects, not just file release groups. Perhaps I missed an option there for that, but last time I checked, there wasn't one. Thanks as always for keeping us up-to-date on the latest developments.

I'm the product manager for SourceForge Enterprise (currently running Joomla forge). I've been lurking on the board for quite some time -- I plan to be more active in the future.

I like your idea of monitoring projects as the current notion of monitoring a SourceForge project is constrained to projects for which you have membership. I envision this feature being most useful from the project map (currently planned SourceForge feature). Though this would also be useful from other project lists and the project home page.

Travis

Welcome aboard Travis

Please contact Johan ( jinx ) or Brad ( Forumadmin ) to get Mod permission.

Merry Chrismas

[progster]

is there any progress on the "categorization" of projects?

[pelican]

how is the categorisation of joomforge going ?

looking through all the projects in the forge to search for a nice module/addon to addon is using a lot of time as most likely 60% of the projects is not of my interest.

[brad]

Within a few weeks, we should have some exciting news along these lines to release..

Stay tuned..