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[FAQ] Why are there so many features? / Isn't that bloated?

Arantor

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[FAQ] Why are there so many features? / Isn't that bloated?
« on January 19th, 2011, 12:11 PM »
This is a very tough question to answer. Certainly there are a lot of features in Wedge that many will not use - not every forum owner wants to have a blog system built in, for example. Nor the calendar, nor <insert feature here>

But big features like that - like blogging support, like the gallery, like the calendar - these are features we have in the core so that we can maintain them. All too often mods get neglected over time - having them in the core means they don't get forgotten about.

The calendar is a particularly odd example: many SMF users didn't want the calendar in the core, it being a feature they didn't use. But there is another group of people who would actually go elsewhere if the calendar were removed/left to be neglected. These people love having it available and want it to be more powerful than it was.

So the approach we've gone for is that we've added these features in, but in a way that we hope doesn't make it feel too big or scary - and kept the performance aspect too.


Interesting parallel, really, is Microsoft Word. Word adds new features every release, and while some consider it bloaty, the bottom line is that any user might only use 10% of its features - but if each user uses a different 10%, it caters to a lot more people as a result - and this is something we've tried to keep in mind.

We're not going to add every little thing we've thought of - and there are plenty of things we've rejected from being in the core for just that reason. But the goal we have is to make it easier to make them as add-ons that 'just work' and require little maintenance over time.

What will likely happen is that once the core is stable and the ability to expand it through add-ons is mature enough, I'll start turning some of the 'would be nice to have, but not in core' things into add-ons, but we'll see how that turns out - it really requires the core to be mature enough to achieve that first.
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[FAQ] Re: Why are there so many features? / Isn't that bloated?
« Reply #1, on March 28th, 2011, 02:08 AM »Last edited on March 28th, 2011, 02:35 AM by Xarcell
Well...

A few years ago I would have said "Yes!", for that very reason. It would be better to see Wedge maintain major modules such as calendar, blog, etc etc.

Then lately I been thinking more barebones, but then since I switched back to SMF to xenForo, back to SMF. I have mixed feelings.

It can sometimes be hard to decide what's bloat and what's not. I reckon it depends on what the goal of the software is.

I personally would love to see wedge be more of a "community" software, and let the original SMF move forward being more of a bare-bones forum as they want.

With that in mind, I think it makes it easier to decide what's bloat and what's not. What should be maintained, and what should be left out.

So Ultimately, I think wedge would be excellent with a blog/gallery added in, but more importantly extensive profiles. Where those blogs and gallery pictures by the user can also be found in their profile. Allowing users to even use photos uploaded to the gallery for his or her blog(given permissions allow for it). I think that's the way to go really, assuming it won't hit performance too hard.

A couple of other things I'd like to see to make things more "community-like", is a rss feed poster. It makes it easier to get a community off it's feet, and keeps thing interesting if your power-posters turn up missing for a few days. But that's just me...

There are things I think should be taken out, or replaced. I think karma should be removed, and replaced with a thumbsup and/or thumbsdown. Facebook uses the "like" system, and xenForo has adopted it and it works very well for everyone.

The thumbsup and thumbsdown system could be used in so many places. Even adopted and used in modules(add-ons) or hacks. Take a look at THIS. If Wedge has something similar to this, think of the possibilities. This could work as a "like" system, and replace the "karma" system at the same time.

Don't get me wrong, I don't what anyone to think I'm jumping in and trying to say it should be like this or like that. I am simply requesting that it be looked at and discussed among the professionals. I don't think it hurts to bounce ideas around or off each other. That's how ideas evolve and become something great and innovative.

Also, I have to ask. Is a block placement/portal being considered?

[FAQ] Re: Why are there so many features? / Isn't that bloated?
« Reply #2, on March 28th, 2011, 12:43 PM »
Quote from Xarcell on March 28th, 2011, 02:08 AM
Then lately I been thinking more barebones, but then since I switched back to SMF to xenForo, back to SMF. I have mixed feelings.
Why did you come back from xenForo? I thought everyone loved it... (Except for me, but I haven't actually played with it much. Never bought it, never registered to a xf forum, etc.)
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It can sometimes be hard to decide what's bloat and what's not. I reckon it depends on what the goal of the software is.
Bloat = a load of extra features that are presented to you and you don't really need, and bother you more than anything.
How to avoid bloat? With one or several of these solutions:
1- Make sure the extra features don't make the software slower. If it's not possible, make sure they can be disabled, and that they don't slow it down if disabled.
2- Finetune the front-end and back-end interfaces to make sure they don't jump at the user or the admin. They should be there, but discrete. If someone doesn't want to use the feature, you shouldn't remind them that they are to use it.
3- Generally, make sure the feature is actually useful to at least a good portion of the community...!
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I personally would love to see wedge be more of a "community" software, and let the original SMF move forward being more of a bare-bones forum as they want.
It's not going to happen that way. Although it's likely (because SMF repeatedly said "we're just a forum", and we're saying the opposite), the SMF team and us aren't in touch, and we're not developing two opposing branches of the same software -- we're just developing them as we would LIKE it to be, while they're developing it as they THINK people would like it to be. That's a major difference. In our case, we may fail to attract a large user base, but we will definitely appeal to like-minded (perhaps more tech-savvy) people.
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With that in mind, I think it makes it easier to decide what's bloat and what's not. What should be maintained, and what should be left out.
We've already gotten rid of the majority of what we thought was unneeded. Pete had a lot of fun removing huge portions of SMF like support for PGSQL and SQLite, or PHP4, things like that. What was valid for SMF2 when it was built, isn't always valid 5 years later. Well, PGSQL and SQLite may be very well alive, but it's quite obvious at this point that people who use it, ALSO have a MySQL server installed somewhere, making it pointless to use PG or SQLite. Ultimately, that was a load of bloat. (The best example being the extra empty parameter at the beginning of each query... There's no logic in using global $smcFunc; $smcFunc['db_query']('', 'SELECT * FROM {db_prefix}table'); when you can achieve the same in Wedge using wesql::db_query('SELECT * FROM {db_prefix}');....)
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So Ultimately, I think wedge would be excellent with a blog/gallery added in, but more importantly extensive profiles.
We haven't started work yet on extended profiles. Blogs are underway, gallery is being developed in parallel and hopefully I'll start integrating it into Wedge soon. (I still have a few minor changes I need to do before I, ahem, break Aeva Media and Wedge altogether for the time it takes to make them behave.)
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Where those blogs and gallery pictures by the user can also be found in their profile.
Generally, just have a look at noisen.com and consider that all of its features will end up in Wedge one day or another --- because my goal is to switch Noisen to use Wedge, obviously. I have no commitments other than that. And it's already a lot -- took me a couple of years to refine Noisen to what it is, and it doesn't even need to be open to more server types... While Wedge needs to take all kinds of server setups into account.
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Allowing users to even use photos uploaded to the gallery for his or her blog(given permissions allow for it).
Well that's already in AeMe2...
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I think that's the way to go really, assuming it won't hit performance too hard.
There's a difference between a perceived performance hit, and an actual performance hit.
Just like jQuery: if you include it at the start of your source code, it will slow down your first page load. If you put it at the end, it won't slow down anything, even though it's the same code. jQuery is slower than native JS, but if you handle it correctly, it's fast enough. (e.g. if you're using jQuery discovery functions inside a large loop, you may wanna look into using native JS instead.)
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A couple of other things I'd like to see to make things more "community-like", is a rss feed poster. It makes it easier to get a community off it's feet, and keeps thing interesting if your power-posters turn up missing for a few days. But that's just me...
Yeah, never wrote that, never looked into it, but it's in my future plans. Far future though... Importing external data into a board (i.e. new topics each time) isn't my thing, though. If it were to be done, I'd give the ability to import into new posts inside a specific topic, things like that. Also -- importing and exporting in/from thoughts. (Kinda like my own tweeter/FB wall on noisen.com...)
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There are things I think should be taken out, or replaced. I think karma should be removed, and replaced with a thumbsup and/or thumbsdown. Facebook uses the "like" system, and xenForo has adopted it and it works very well for everyone.
Karma was removed long ago from Wedge. The Like system isn't implemented yet because we're unsure how BEST to implement it -- i.e. it should be extremely flexible and would be handled as part of our floating topic system (more on that later... Well, if we end up discussing it publicly at least.)
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Don't get me wrong, I don't what anyone to think I'm jumping in and trying to say it should be like this or like that. I am simply requesting that it be looked at and discussed among the professionals. I don't think it hurts to bounce ideas around or off each other. That's how ideas evolve and become something great and innovative.
Well, if you look closely, you'll see that Wedge.org has got over 10k posts since its inception... Meaning we definitely talk a lot ;) Only, in private. Many of the things you mentioned were discussed over at the private area, really.
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Also, I have to ask. Is a block placement/portal being considered?
Not by me, I'm not a big fan of portals (having never used one more than 10 minutes.)
However, I made it extremely easy to add code to the sidebar (Wedge has a 'mandatory' non-intrusive sidebar.)
It's just a matter of sending a call to showSubTemplate('my_function', 'sidebar'). Really, piece of cake.

(BTW, note to Pete: the function that shows the sub-template is loadSubTemplate while the function that just loads it for later use is showSubTemplate... Although it does make sense when reading the source code especially next to loadTemplate calls, it's kinda awkward when you come to think of it :lol: Maybe I should do an automatic search & replace to swap the names...?)
Posted: March 28th, 2011, 12:37 PM

Re: RSS feed and extended profiles... Just a quick Google search on your made me understand :angel:

[FAQ] Re: Why are there so many features? / Isn't that bloated?
« Reply #3, on March 28th, 2011, 08:01 PM »Last edited on March 29th, 2011, 01:34 AM by Xarcell
"inspireromance.com/SMF" is a test site.

"inspireromance.com" is the actual site I'm trying to build. It's the reason I left xenForo. I love xenForo, but I could not auto-assign age to a membergroup. It's ajax driven, so it's looks & runs very smooth. The speed of it is really quick, really. I still love it, but I cannot tweak it to suit my needs @inspireromance.com. Maybe for another project in the future...

The only thing that I really miss, is the alert/notification system and the "like" feature. Everything else cosmetic about it can be achieved by simply tweaking the templates in SMF.

The only thing I hated about xF was the sidebar. I absolutely hated it. While half the people that wanted just a forum, it was perfect. For the other half who wanted better block placement, it was a bitch to work around. You were forced to work with it.

Which is why I was asking about block placement. I don't really care for CMS/Portals, that's what I got a forum for. To me, a forum topic with reply is no different than an article with comments. For SMF, I simply altered the templates a bit to achieve that. See example HERE. First post is different from the rest, and is always on top on every page. In turn, makes it "appear" to be an article with comments, rather than a forum topic with replies...

Block placement on the other hand, to me isn't a portal per say, but allows some flexibly from overall site layouts. Having that option to display blocks of info, images, ads, or notes to anywhere in the forum on a permission/membergroup basis. Overall, I personally don't like CMS/Portals, I'd rather everything be in the forum. The forum should be the sitemap. Just my 2 cents.

To be a 100% truthful, I would like to see a forum allow on a category or board basis, to "show as": topic, article, or page. Allowing options of with or without comments. The trick would simply be a minor template change for each option. Make posts look like topics, or articles. A page is sightly different, because it allows HTML or PHP by the admin, but still has that option to comment.

Never the less, all 3 types can be located inside the forum boards. XenForo already allows "pages" to be made inside certain boards by the admin. For example, the admin when creating boards or categories, there is also an option that says "create page", just above "create board". Most admin's find this very useful, and no need for a Portal/CMS.

Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself. Just tossing out ideas. You guys probably have discussed it already.

I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with in your final product, and I'm sure it will be better than what SMF.org is developing. They seem to have issues moving forward...











[FAQ] Re: Why are there so many features? / Isn't that bloated?
« Reply #14, on May 22nd, 2011, 01:28 PM »
My first post here, and I am already impressed by the amount of work that has already been done to improve on SMF. Personally I have used SMF for about 6 years, with each version release I am frustrated by the lack of excitement from new features, functionality etc - I end up questioning whether the upgrade time I had spent testing/implementing was really worth it.

In my opinion, you can never have too many features and so I'm feeling really positive about Wedge being packed full of them! My only hesitation with 'featured' apps is that features get neglected, so long as each piece of functionality is kept up to date, I suspect that Wedge will be the most popular PHP forum on the net!

Having read the background behind the formation of Wedge, I'm rather disappointed with the SMF team for kicking out two guys (even if Nao can be a controversial character :D) that have clearly contributed massively to the codebase and evolution of SMF - I wonder whether their v2.0 Final will be rejoiced, or rejected by their fanbase.

I'm happy to run any beta testing that you might need, keep up the good work.

p.s. great domain name!!

[FAQ] Re: Why are there so many features? / Isn't that bloated?
« Reply #15, on May 22nd, 2011, 01:57 PM »
Welcome :)

One thing I will say is that both Nao and I can be controversial, but it comes out of two things:
1. We're passionate about what we do, and because we are, we *care* about it.
2. Part of being passionate is that we end up drawing lines in the sand and making people pick which side they stand on, rather than trying to please everyone at once and failing on all counts...