Loading...
 
Skip to main content

Features / Usability

Forum List Topic List

Forums » Features / Usability » Noble warriors of Tiki rollout development UNITE
 
Thread actions
Print this page
  • Print all pages

    • Noble warriors of Tiki rollout development UNITE

    Posted by Bryan Pfaffenberger posts: 10 United States

    Do you develop and administrate customized versions of Tikiwiki for use in enterprises, non-profit organizations, government agencies, or educational institutions? Would you like to see a Web site (in the tw.o hierarchy) focused on your needs?

    Please let me know (write to bpfaffenberger), let me know, and tell me how the site could help you! Share ideas! I've plenty of Web publishing space for the site. The question is, how best to implement it?

    Why a separate site for rollout developers/admins? Although we share many of the same concerns and interests that Tiki developers have, we have unique concerns of our own. Most important of these is this: After we successfully make the argument for applying Tiki to a problem in our organizations, it is DAMNED important that the site functions smoothly and delivers as promised!!! This is a serious matter — professional reputations and users' needs are at stake! We need to get to know each other, share resources, and share experiences!

    At such a site, we could do the following:

    1. Share our experiences - which Tiki features are stable enough to use?
    2. Share STYLE SHEETS and TEMPLATES! It is a TON of work to modify Tiki's style sheets and templates so that they meet minimal accessibility and organizational Web design guidelines - we should SHARE
    3. Help the Tiki developers identify and fix problems (some of them long-standing!) that make it difficult or in some cases impossible to use Tiki or certain Tiki features in enterprise settings
    4. Develop criteria for Tiki 2.0 based on our experiences trying to APPLY Tiki to enterprise and other organizational settings

    Tell me your concerns — tell me what you'd like to see on the site!

    Best wishes,
    Bryan Pfaffenberger
    University of Virginia

    Reads: 1459
    Posted by paulap01 posts: 112 Austria

    Hi Bryan,

    I have got your personal message to me and want to answer here in this forum.

    Thx for your proposal to make a community of users and responsible content managers & admins.

    I think tw has a lot of top features. But I share your opinions:

    • each group of tw fans should give to the community what they can (devs, admins, content manager, users,...)
    • sharing application knowledge is important
    • first less bugs, then brand new features


    I will support a new group of tw gurus. That type of application gurus. A successful Open Source Projects is a long term project and it is always successful with a lot of users. They make the branding, the feeling, the community.

    paulap

    PS: I setup a new site based an tw 1.8.0: http://www.pitschek.com. Take a look and tell me about your opinion (i changed the .css, a lot of .tpl, no .php and i found a lot of problems, specially with german support).


    Posted by Bryan Pfaffenberger posts: 10 United States

    Wow - what a BEAUTIFUL site - this is truly a professional development of Tiki and shows what the software can do... but only after a truly difficult and time-consuming revision of the styles and templates.

    Be sure to copy any modified templates to styles/templates/your-style-name - this will prevent them from being overwritten if/when you upgrade.... (but I'm sure you know this).

    I am personally in favor of discarding all the existing Tiki style sheets and templates for Tiki 2.0, in favor of:

    • Going through the templates and eliminating all duplicate styles. For example, there are about 25 or 30 separate styles for odd/even tables. This is ridiculous and makes the rollout developer's task a nightmare.

    • Creating a new, standard, 'official' style sheet that takes full advantage of CSS inheritance (which the current style sheets do not). The style sheet should be reoorganized by FUNCTION rather than FEATURE so that rollout developers can achieve style consistency.



    Take a look at my development site (http://pfaff.tcc.virginia.edu/stshome)... I developed the underlying style/template matrix as a possible 'standard' for Tiki 2.0...

    Best,
    Bryan


    Posted by paulap01 posts: 112 Austria

    Hi bryan,

    thx for your compliments!

    I worked hard for this site. And it works. Oohhh... Lot of tpl, css, php changes.

    But i think about that tw is cool. But the culture behind the closely community...

    I don't understand. For you the site is cool. For the experts and the gods my questions seems to simple.

    Where are the hundreds of tw site i can learn?

    This is probably not a user oriented open source project. My opinion not more.

    paulap


    Posted by Damian Parker posts: 2881 United Kingdom

    Hi

    Bryan you should create a TikiCore page too. And join the likes of DamiansCoreDev, MoseCoreDump, and many others putting ideas forward for Tiki 2.

    Style sheets and templates will be available on mods.tikiwiki.org and we welcome contributions there.

    Hope it helps!

    Damian


    Posted by jamesoftopiya posts: 175 Canada

    hi, excuse me this is a little long!
    Well I do not see myself as a "Noble warrior" but perhaps as an "Adventuring Explorer" I could offer some ideas. These are based on my last year of observation of TikiWiki.

    I have no comment on the tiki 2 thing I will put my trust in the tiki gods, this is about websites.

    But before I go on I am not sure exactly what you mean by "rollout development". This input below is based on the idea that you mean a place for end users, system developers and those encouraging and/or using TikiWiki to go for ideas and support? Although I think you are on a silghtly different direction then me this is from my perspective.

    So my thoughts.

    The TikiWiki web sites are way to heavy in the "brainy act" side of things with out enough support for the "What am I doing" people. Now for us folk that can understand this space that is great but for the END USER this may be a problem. It is also a problem when you are trying to "Sell" TikiWiki and its features.

    I host and/or am the webkeeper for quite a number of TikiWiki sites. However, if I want to show off TikiWiki I pretty much have to create the sales room my self. If I send my clients to the TikiWiki.org sites they get lost!

    If I am lucky I may find a site with features or design that the client might be interested in but that does take a LOT of looking! There is currently no way to show off features with out a lot of work.

    There has got to be a way for the END USER to report bugs and get a responce with out having to be part of the TikiWiki or sourceforge dev sites! These folk are not DEVS they are END USERS and must be treated differently. So perhaps a central tracker for END USERS could be created.

    The END USER must be able to find solutions quickly and not have to rely on the host or designer to find this info! As well the END USER must be able to find examples that they may copy or use for themselfs.

    We need a place to show off the power of TikiWiki. Again if you search around enough you can show what TikiWiki does. But, want a quick example of Galaxia, well fat chance! I still only dream of what it can do as I do not have the skills to make it work! (YET) Examples help perople relize the potencial of things and we do not have those examples here.

    This has got to change if TikiWiki wants to grow. We need a place to show off all the features of TikiWiki and to encourage the END USER to want to use this great product. As well those of us that create these site need a place to hang out and share as you say.

    BUT, I guess that what I really feel about TikiWiki is that it is truely a blank slate for us to work on. OK we have showen that it is a great CMS but we know it is more. So we need a place to show it off!

    So is this what you mean? If so great idea! Very worthy of consideration.

    However thinking of community it should not interfere with trying to get the mods + theme sites filled up with neat stuff. Damian and others have put a lot of work in this effort and it would be nice to help out there before there is more redirection of energy.
    James