CMSimple needs a better plugin system

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cmb
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by cmb » Sat Jul 16, 2011 10:54 am

Hello Gerd, hello Björn,
johnjdoe wrote: Full ack! But the ideas with the "stub solution" are not bad at all guys ...
Thanks for your acknowledgement. :)
bjorn wrote: A new INCLUDE-ON-DEMAND module system could be parallel to the present plugin system.
It is possible. But that would require the user to install the plugin in one of two directories, based on how it should be used. That's IMO not conforming to CMSimple's spirit to be simple.
bjorn wrote: But still CMSimple has two wasteful solutions we should try to do something about: The automatic including of all plugins every time and the big content.htm.
Basically I agree with you. But consider the problems with existing extensions. I don't know how many use e.g. $c. If not all pages are read by rfc(), then $c won't be filled accordingly. So the extension may fail. And at least CMSimple classic and LE 3.4 need all the page headings to build up the TOC.

I'm conservative in this regard. Changes to CMSimple's core should remain compatible with the currently available extensions (plugins, addons, templates etc.) If major incompatible changes will be made, they have to be done as a totally new CMSimple version. And this version must be tagged explicitly as such. But this will only be reasonable, if many extensions will be changed accordingly. And this means lots of work must be done. IMO a major change can't be made in a short time. It must be prepared and discussed by many developers and template designers. And they have to agree to support the new version. Otherwise this new version won't be of great use for users, because of the missing extensions, which are IMO extremly important for CMSimple.

Consider CMSimple_XH's move to UTF-8, which was very farsighted for future development and use. Even if it is a moderate incompatibility, much work was needed to update different extensions. Unfortunately this wasn't done for all existing extensions. So some users still can't upgrade to newer XH versions, if they want to keep the incompatible extensions. For most extensions the switch to UTF-8 might take no more effort than converting the files to UTF-8. But for some extensions (e.g. Genizforum) it is not that easy. And to make it possible to further use those extensions CMSimple LE was born.

Now consider even more comprehensive changes to the core. Probably another fork of CMSimple will be made by somebody. So users have to chose between one of them, and developers have to provide different versions of their extensions, so that they can be used with all forks. And as I can see from the rather few contributions of other developers to this topic, they are either not interested in it or have already too much other work to do. And I suppose the latter is the case. :(

Christoph
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

bjorn
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by bjorn » Sun Jul 17, 2011 12:30 am

Christoph

Perhaps I should have made it more clear that even I consider improvements I strongly believe that CMSimple should be kept backwards compatible. That was my basic reason for starting CMSimple LE and I'm going to stick to this principle. But backwards compatibility should of course go hand in hand with improvements.

Bjorn
http://www.cmsimple-le.eu

Tata
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by Tata » Sun Jul 17, 2011 7:14 am

Backward-compatibility
This might be sometimes a problem and an obstacle to further development and/or improvements. Consider functions and possibilities of newer versions of HTML, PHP, JS, CSS etc. SImply they either won't be applicable in older versions or there would be necessary to extend CMSimple core files by corresponding "if(old_CMSimple...)" blocks.
As long as any of older versions is safely working - compatible or not with previous versions - I see almost no need to upgrade them to newer version. If the reason for an upgrade results from possibilities of new functions, plugins etc. then it requires often changes in content and/or template and CSS. Then it means to me that the website is to be rebuild. And in this case the webmaster has less or more to do. So the backward compatibility is not as much important. I have rebuilt a couple of old websites (first built on CMSimle v.2.4 a couple of times up to v.3.3). Then I upgraded some of them to XH. Some of features worked smoothly. In some cases I have achieved entirelly new functionality, in other cases I had to terminate some old ones.
Shortly to say - fully IMHO!!!:
Those being proud about their reliably running veterans must not expect any aircondition, ABS, EPS, XYZ etc.
Those being proud about their newest prototypes must forgot about replacing new tiles by those from veterans and think about a number of hidden risks (not yet found or not yet solved).
And those willing combine and rund the "old-new" mix have to find their way to make it running. But they also must be aware that further development of this mix will remain always only their own hobby.
CMSimple.sk
It's no shame to ask for an answer if all efforts failed.
But it's awful to ask without any effort to find the answer yourself.

cmb
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by cmb » Sun Jul 17, 2011 10:47 am

Hello Björn, hello Tata,
bjorn wrote: But backwards compatibility should of course go hand in hand with improvements.
Yes, but only if it possible to improve without sacrificing backwards compatibility. And if you want to be compatible to all older plugins, I'm afraid only slight improvements are possible regarding the reading of content.htm and the plugin loading.
Tata wrote: As long as any of older versions is safely working - compatible or not with previous versions - I see almost no need to upgrade them to newer version.
But then users won't have additional features and convenience of newer versions.
Tata wrote: I have rebuilt a couple of old websites (first built on CMSimle v.2.4 a couple of times up to v.3.3). Then I upgraded some of them to XH. Some of features worked smoothly. In some cases I have achieved entirelly new functionality, in other cases I had to terminate some old ones.
I have no experience with updating/upgrading CMSimple installations. But I guess the most problems arose from the switch to UTF-8 in CMSimple_XH 1.2. There should have been only minor problems updating from e.g. XH 1.2 to XH 1.4. (Okay, the flash player and oEdit were removed, but this functionality was replaced by Multimedia_XH and the FCKeditor).
Tata wrote: Those being proud about their reliably running veterans must not expect any aircondition, ABS, EPS, XYZ etc.
Those being proud about their newest prototypes must forgot about replacing new tiles by those from veterans and think about a number of hidden risks (not yet found or not yet solved).
And those willing combine and rund the "old-new" mix have to find their way to make it running. But they also must be aware that further development of this mix will remain always only their own hobby.
+ 1

Christoph
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

Gert
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by Gert » Sun Jul 17, 2011 3:04 pm

The pluginloader is a very nice automatic system, it loads automatically:

- the css file, if folder and file exists (adding to the head section)
- the config file, if folder and file exists
- the language file, if folder and file exists

... and so on.

Of course it were better, if the plugin itself would do that, then all that stuff would be loaded only if the plugin is active.

But nearly ALL Plugins are written for the pluginloader and its automatic service.

So reduce the index.php of yours plugins (by using the stub solution), and let the plugin system as it is. Otherwise the old plugins will not work.

Or anybody finds a solution to let the pluginloader find out, if a plugin is active (called by main function).

But the index.php should be loaded automatically furthermore, because some plugins are working without plugin call, for example the canonical links plugin and partially the templateswitch plugin.
Gert Ebersbach | CMSimple | Templates - Plugins - Services

cmb
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by cmb » Sun Jul 17, 2011 3:20 pm

Hello Gert,
Gert wrote: But the index.php should be loaded automatically furthermore, because some plugins are working without plugin call, for example the canonical links plugin and partially the templateswitch plugin.
Thanks for pointing this out! It's very important IMO.

Christoph
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

Holger
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by Holger » Sun Jul 17, 2011 3:34 pm

Hi,

just back from holidays and so much interesting to read :o ...

But coming back to the subject of this post "CMSimple needs a better plugin system", I'll give you (again) an example of a live-installation.
Just have a look at the sitemap here:
http://www.quattroclub.de/index.php?sitemap

The plain content.htm is about 3.8 MB today and there are 5 plugins active.
Do you really think that another way of plugin-loading will result in a feelable speed up there?

I think this page is running fast and without problems (beside the not optimised images on a lot of pages).

You may be right. There is room to improve the concept and the code, but I really won't say
bjorn wrote:The CMSimple plugin system is extremly wasteful.
Holger

cmb
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by cmb » Sun Jul 17, 2011 3:51 pm

Hello Holger,

nice to see you back. I hope your holidays where recreative :)

Thanks for giving the link to quattroclub.de. I've stumbled across it in another thread, but I couldn't find it again. Do you know if this site is hosted as typical hosting package, or if they have a dedicated server?

Christoph
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

Holger
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by Holger » Sun Jul 17, 2011 4:02 pm

Hi Christoph,
cmb wrote:I hope your holidays where recreative :)
Let's see :) .
cmb wrote:Do you know if this site is hosted as typical hosting package, or if they have a dedicated server?
I don't know.
But an IP-Lookup told me that 23 other sites hosted on this server ;) .

Holger

cmb
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Re: CMSimple needs a better plugin system

Post by cmb » Sun Jul 17, 2011 4:14 pm

Hello Holger,

thanks for the hint. :) But I found only 9 domains on the server. So I'll have to improve ;)

Christoph
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

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