Hi all Joomla guys,
I have following the different topics now her about Joomla and just setting up my first own hobby Joomla site just now with some testing. You understand Joomla better when you working with it directly from a user friendly and logical perspective. Even that you can guess that Joomla is constructed from the beginning by technical guys it’s a very nice system.
But what struck me is that a CMS system like Joomla that should be expert of flexible structured content creation for different areas have several drawbacks that I believed was already solved. Maybe this is bcs of historical conditions that have formed Joomla to what it is today.
I am not a techie more of a business developer/visionary and I am good at understanding the driving forces for the Internet business in whole. Joomla is a impressing framework with all its features but there’s chance now that it is missing in the focus for some core functionalities that I will talk about below. I have seen that this issues have been raised in many topics from users in this forums during the years.
Anyhow my background is that I have been working with Internet since 1994 and created my first Internet community beginning 1996 with la(m)p environment built 100% in java with a nested content creation structure. This system had nested functionality, credit card payment (Wells Fargo Bk), our own database built bcs no existence of MSql or MSql at that time. This is exactly 11 years ago now. This system could create by end user their own content depending on permissions on some set up categories.
The picture up load functionality I had to convince Netscape to implement for browser functionality though this was a core of our world wide system where users could do this independently where they were. Our database resize and compressed all images to size and we had all pictures like “Cooles pics” “5 latest pics” etc on the front page. Everything we made our selves that time with a user profiling system too.
Today when I look at Joomla I still see 3 very important core functionalities that still are missing or not focused at from the techies view from the core team. Maybe these core improvement is not important in a techie way of thinking or they don’t understand they importance of knowing about your end users who they are, how content would like to be created from their perspective and also promoted. I see for example that other CMS competitors like Drupal are heading in a better direction with its “nodding” structures for similar solutions like sub categories etc.
If Joomla should strive to leave the Web 1 framework and strive to be a more web 2 framework it’s lacking as I understand some of the basic features:
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a flexible unlimited nested sub categories system, this is very important for making Joomla powerful and more user friendly
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user profiling system, this is the core of every system that want to know who your users really are
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SEF, well everybody knows the power of SEO and what that means for your sites traffic
I will not discuss the SEF and user profiling issues bcs that’s something I know you are working on and that’s very good. I have started these discussions about “profiling” before with developer Sergey and Mikko and they are solving part of this now with some extensions but this should be a core in Joomla already – from a site owner’s and site dev. point of view.
Here is some background info about these core functions and discussions.
Sub categories discussions:
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,67076.0.htmlhttp://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,126674.0.htmlhttp://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,131310.0.htmlhttp://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,157702.0.htmlhttp://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,47415.0.htmlThis is the Juser for Joomla core profile fields
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2034/Itemid,35/This is some info about the CB version that is developed now profile fields
http://www.joomlapolis.com/index.php?option=com_joomlaboard&Itemid=38&func=view&catid=13&id=35672#35672Deep Pockets way of trying to solve this sub cats structuring with many limitations sofar
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2088/Itemid,35/This Deep Pocket I have tried to do a little bit with but it cant be used with other Joomla core functionalities and working more alone as a component it self. As I said this should be a core of Joomla instead of a component.
So for Joomla there should be a better way of creating unlimited multi nested sub categorizing to any content than in only two levels that is the limit today with the sections/sub category limitation!
So my question is when is this going to happen that Joomla will have a better way of structuring content in unlimited multi nested sub categories? I have followed Joomla now for 2 years now and don't see this as for the core members a important question?? And I don't want to move to Drupal bcs I really like Joomla in many ways.
This is so important for building larger structured sites where it’s not just a question of putting up some linking to different content types, modules etc that Joomla is good at doing alredy.
I f you can manage to put in this functionality now in the J 1.5 that will ease the pain in the ass for many that need this solution now bcs this affect site building a lot! I believe that this would be a right step for Joomla correct me if I am wrong.
Hope you understand what I mean and we are many that would like that you core dev look into this now and try to implement this as soon as possible for Joomlas core functionality!
Cheers!
ssnobben
will see how the reaction will be and if we get any better answers about the road map for this important core functionality Just curious to know more about the "Nested Sets Model" and how they solve the unlimited nested categorizing to any content. This is the db road map then.
hmmm The draw back with using a DB for this is the the amount of tables compared to using a rule engine system when its many to many with inference - rete algorithm that can fix this logic smarter. Rules solve tihis different and a rule engine is smarter to use than a static db storage container. A db can be used for many things like be used for simple triggers etc but the data for a db always have to be hard coded and is normally different to change for "business users"=site owners. 
