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Why are you rolling your own?
Posted by ImOkJM
on 2006-10-25 10:22
OS: All / Any
I like the fact that you finally saw the light and made a forum to support users. Now we can maybe get some support without filling up our mailboxes. Thanks.
However I dont see why you are rolling your own. Why not use a nice canned Forum one that does everything like phpBB and its open source? I mean shouldnt you be programming your products instead of wasting time reinventing the wheel?
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The answer is that we didn't roll our own, and actually wrote very little custom code in order to implement this site. This website is based on Drupal CMS. We chose Drupal over a more forum-centric application because it offers more flexibility for things like hosting blogs and creating custom content which we intend to use in the future. The primary function of this site initially was to be able to publish a public knowledge base.
I do intend to make some improvements to the forums in the future by implementing a 'flatter' or more vBulletin-like layout. I realize the current layout is somewhat basic - it's a 'Beta', right? What things in particular do you feel are missing from the forums that you really miss from vBulletin?
at least for the design ;)
(just a thing, when someone replies to a comment, it would be nice to have a small "padding" - as with the normal template - to better see who answer what... i hope i'm understandable here...)
By the way, as a Drupal user and module developer i think that this site already reaches a lot of its goals.
An idea perhaps, just an idea, add the "project module" for the komodo extensions (like for the modules on Drupal.org).
An other thing i think missing, but that has to do with content, it's a step-by-step komodo extension tutorial...
I would like to create some simple extensions (like a function list, but in the sidebar and with cleaner results) but i simply can't find enough doc (reference and examples) at the moment (i'm perhaps a little stupid too).
I would like to create a "drupal module project template" (or better.. "drupal site project template") for komodo. I guess it shouldn't be that hard to do.. i'll give a try soon..
Shortly we're going to be giving this site a bit of a facelift related to a project to use the same template for all of our web properties. As for the padding of comment replies, this is an option in Drupal, at 'admin/content/comment/settings'. The settings I am currently using are:
- 'Flat list - expanded'
- 'Date - oldest first'
- '50 comments per page'
- 'Do not display comment controls'
As for extending Komodo, it sounds like what you want to do is create a Project template for Drupal modules. To something simple is pretty easy, all you need to do is create an existing project that contains macros, commands and snippets that implement the features you want, then right-click on the project and 'Save as Template'. There are some tricks and tips to adding more advanced features to project templates however.
Tell you what, if you want to collaborate on a Drupal template, I'd be happy to work with you on this. Contact me through this site:
http://community.activestate.com/user/2/contact
or at jeffg (at) activestate (dot) com. It would be cool to create some nice module and theme templates for Drupal users.
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JeffG
by the way i didn't remember that the "padding" thing was a settings, thanks for the tip ;)
Curious if there is any word on this front?
Any word on what? Not sure what you're referring to.
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JeffG
Sorry,
Wasn't very specific. Was wondering if anyone has started a Drupal extension or created some templates.
andre
If you check out 4.3 Beta, I included a few Drupal snippets in the default toolbox, but haven't gotten very far along with a Drupal-related extension.
The snippets are in:
Abbreviations / PHP / Drupal
...and are intended to be the basics for starting a module. Some other things that wold be nice are theme templates and snippets related to Form API. I hope to get to some of this after 4.3 release.
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JeffG
I am very new to the world of Komodo - after having spent a couple of years working in Zend studio.
I must say I'm really liking the switch - and the fact that Beta is shipping with Drupal tools is pretty sweet.
What's the best way that such an extension could be developed in an open way?
I notice that if I export something out of the toolbox as an 'package' its XML wrapped in something. But, if I export as a 'project file' its just XML. Could such files simply be developed openly - i.e. plopped in a repo free for the world to grab, edit, contribute patches? Is there any significance to the ID attributes in the XML? Could they be anything?
I guess a better question is - is there an open API to generate these files? As I think about this while I type I realize that snippets for every hook could be generated (with a little massaging) automatically from the phpdocs for the hooks e.g. http://api.drupal.org/api/group/hooks/6.
Anyway - there are more than a couple of Drupal developers using Komodo I'm sure. And, being one of them, I think I can safely say that a fully developed extension would become standard in everyone's toolbelt. I'm also sure the community would maintain it gladly.
andre
Toolbox packages / project files are an older and relatively simple way to share Komodo toolbox items. Kpf files are a specific XML dialect, and all of the tags / attributes have meaning. More than that, it's probably a bad idea to actually hand-edit these files.
The best way to collaborate on a Komodo Toolbox package is probably just to use Komodo as the authoring tool:
- create a new Project in Komodo and call it the 'Drupal Toolbox'
- add various Toolbox items to it
- save the project and export it as a project file
- check the file into a public SVN server so people can check it out and use it in their Komodo
The problem with this is that it wold be difficult for people to create patches and otherwise merge changes with multiple developers, because the contents of the kpf file are auto-generated and don't stay in a consistent order.
Just thinking-out-loud, maybe the best thing for snippets would be to maintain them as files and write some Komodo macro that compiled them into a project. I'll try to find some time to look into that, it would be a lot better than trying to diff the kpf files themselves.
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JeffG
I enabled 'threaded comments'.
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JeffG