Sandbox

The joomla sites I have now visited are VERY confusing in their graphics
and do NOT have good useability.

The only mambo site I ever went to (and I went like every day),
way more then I even went to their forums is this page

http://mamboforge.net

The setup and useability is about the best I have ever seen on a website.
PLEASE I BEG YOU make one like this for joomla, I REALLY REALLY need
this the exact way it is

It is so important to me, I can't even try and switch to joomla
until I have a joomla page like this as exact as is possible without
any layout infringement if layout can be copyrighted that is.
(oh update I checked and layout cannot be copyrighted)

Thank you.
Squig

UPDATE: if I wasn't clear I am talking about doing the LAYOUT EXACTLY THE SAME
as mamboforge.net, absolutely nothing should be changed from that layout as it is
perfect in my opinion except perhaps removing the ad sense bar on the far right I think
this site is about the best useability I have ever seen in terms of quick, easy, instant, no useless space.

TOP LINKS
Home My Page    **Project Tree(VERY important for browsing by topics)** Code Snippets Project Openings

**LATEST NEWS**
(note the SHORT intros, no long stuff, you get long stuff once you click the link, joomlaforge.net
news as it is now is WAY too long, too much screen space given to each entry on main page. Just make main page
have a headline and 1 line maybe. Rest you get once you click headline link and go to another page)

Search bar

Right column
Getting Mambo
*MamboForge Statistics ([color=blue]BY NUMBER, no unknown by percentages only that is useless)
***Top Project Downloads**
**Most Active This Week ***
***Recently Registered Projects**[/color]

***NOTICE almost ALL OF THIS is viewable on one page with a little scroll down.***
THIS IS how exactly the joomlaforge site must be in my opinion.

Also links to forums, manuals, videos, etc.
And short intro "Welcome to MamboForge.net"

*** NOTICE NO GRAPHICS ON MAMBOFORGE TO WASTE SPACE AND MAKE
ME SCROLL OR CLICK MORE THEN I HAVE TO AHHHH, GET ALL THE GRAPHICS OFF THE PAGE PLEASE ****

Just follow the exact layout of mamboforge and everything will be perfect to me. I am not a betting man
but I would bet a large sum of money that if you duplicated the exact layout of mamboforge.net that
you would have a very noticible increase in stickability and return users to joomlaforge.net.

Thanks.

There's a forge already made for joomla
http://developer.joomla.org

It was made with the same purpose as *amboforge.net

in addition to @quiquedcode's post,.. you can simply change the *ambo to joomla. thus, *amboforge.net to joomlaforge.net (will lead oyu to http://developer.joomla.org)

on your fantastico like installation of joomla you can find a very helpful script that will do same as fantastico does. soon to be released as stable version.

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,8602.0.html

for your migration concerns, you can check the *ambo to joomla auto migration script on this thread:

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,9238.0.html


both scripts(both developed by Team Joomlancer PH)  functions similarly like FANTASTICO auto install - auto update. very useful for newbies and end users like me


-guilliam

I mentioned I had been to the joomla sites including joomlaforge, and sorry man, but purpose and reality are
very different for the useability of joomlaforge, maybe you don't know about useability,
that site  is nowhere near as useable as the setup of mamboforge,
I thought this would be obvious, but I guess not, oh well, keep it as you want then,
I will have to stay with mambo then because that page is that important to me.

And hi guilliam but unless it is one click install and one click uninstall I can't do it.
the fantastico has an uninstall as well which I need probably more then the
install because I uninstall sites all the time cause something goes wrong
and have to start over. I hope you get it in fantastico at micfo soon.
But I can't go to joomla till the useability problem is fixed at the joomlaforge
website.

Thanks.
Bye.

Squig - while your emotions are clear, you haven't provided any specific regarding usability to which we can respond. Do you have specific questions, problems, concerns that we can use as the basis of (a) response and (b) action. I don't doubt that there are things that you would like to see on the site -- but without specifics we are unable to response effectively or help.

Col

Squig:
  I think we should be clear what mamboforge is, what joomlaforge is and what the differences between the two are.  Mamboforge and Joomlaforge are both approximately the same thing.  They are systems which allow developers to manage projects. Most of the projects on Mamboforge and Joomlaforge are addons for Mambo/Joomla.  The main difference between the two is the software being used.  Mamboforge was run on software called GForge, while Joomlaforge is being run on Sourceforge.  Probably in most ways the two systems are very similar.

The look of the thing is sometimes hard to seperate from the content.  I would agree that the look of Mamboforge is aesthetically pleasing, and there's a lot of information on the front page that currently isn't on joomlaforge.  That doesn't mean that the same functionality isn't lurking there, or that, given time, some of the same information won't make its way to joomlaforge.  The important thing to remember is that it's primarily a tool for developers, to be able to manage their projects and provide the great quality and diversity of plugins and templates.

I think what squig meant was the following dicussion in this post http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,9347.0.html. He is talking from a end users experince the old forge had project categorization etc etc which makes it easy for a end user to browse through the forge. All this is yet to be implemneted.

Right - and we will be implementing many of the things that have been requested by the community.

Just a brief historical note. GForge is based on SourceForge.net code base from around 1999/2000. SourceForge.net continues to run that php code base (but with additonal capabilitues, code corrections, performance enhancements etc). SourceForge EE (on which this site is based) is a J2EE-based application. Development started on it in early 2002 - first release was at the end of 2003. We're integrating Joomla! and SF so we'll get the best of both worlds.

Col

"GForge is based on SourceForge.net code base from around 1999/2000. SourceForge.net continues to run that php code base....etc "

I am not familiar with what boomzilla is talking about, but please see my updated post at the top for more specifics of what I meant to say more clearly.

We are working on a Joomla front-end to SourceForge for developer.joomla.forge. A number of the things you mention will be supported within that envrionment.

Col

Hello all,
IMHO, The forge you have setup is the cleanest, easiest to traverse, most appealing I have ever seen, extremely usable, and well organized. The Test layout is compact enough to best utilize the realistate but large enough to read. The colors are eye retina friendly and not blinding on those late nights. I implore you not to change the format/Layout.
Just my two cents.
Regards,
Cordel

To explain more, the "old" Sourceforge and the fork "gforge" have php as codebase.

The SFEE which we now have on developer.joomla.org is totally rewritten in JAVA to say it easy. Datatransportation works with SOAP.

VA and Joomla working on solutions to exchange the datas easily to got all needed infos on an Joomla frontend, to make it easier for all to get more infos. But this is not a task of a week, it will take some time. Collin is collecting all requests, but please be more patient, they really work as hard as they could.