Icy Phoenix

I think of icy phoenix is a very good CMS and i think of is time for a 2.0 version , i think of some features can be:

-WYSIWYG Editor
-Post Icons by default.
-Advance Reputation System.
-Global Moderator.
-Ignore Buddies.
-BBCode in quick reply by default.
-Buttons of online/offilne in post be default.

Some of this things and others make me use SMF (simple machines forums)

some others features can be implemented in a 2.0 version and thanks for MG and the team of icy phoenix because you are making a very good work

NBG wrote: [View Post]

I think of icy phoenix is a very good CMS and i think of is time for a 2.0 version , i think of some features can be:

-WYSIWYG Editor
-Post Icons by default.
-Advance Reputation System.
-Global Moderator.
-Ignore Buddies.
-BBCode in quick reply by default.
-Buttons of online/offilne in post be default.

Some of this things and others make me use SMF (simple machines forums)

some others features can be implemented in a 2.0 version and thanks for MG and the team of icy phoenix because you are making a very good work

I, for one, am looking forward to the time when this release will be made available for all of us. Sound very good and very appealing to me.
Great job folks.
I really appreciate your work.

NBG wrote: [View Post]

I think of icy phoenix is a very good CMS and i think of is time for a 2.0 version , i think of some features can be:

-WYSIWYG Editor
-Post Icons by default.
-Advance Reputation System.
-Global Moderator.
-Ignore Buddies.
-BBCode in quick reply by default.
-Buttons of online/offilne in post be default.

Some of this things and others make me use SMF (simple machines forums)

some others features can be implemented in a 2.0 version and thanks for MG and the team of icy phoenix because you are making a very good work

2.0 version?

I think...
Priority now, is security and estability, others features can be implemented but... Who thinks MG?

Ahhh! is include in Icy Phoenix 1.2.0.27a

-Buttons of online/offilne in post be default.
-Ignore Buddies.
-Global Moderator. (Junior Admin is equal for me...)
-Post Icons by default. (Bad MOD estructure)
-WYSIWYG Editor (It's necesary?)
-BBCode in quick reply by default.( Mmmmm, working to posible Customization...) Enjoy!

I think MG already has a lot of work and I believe that these features are not needed, for me

Greets!

ThE KuKa wrote: [View Post]

..... Priority now, is security and estability, others features can be implemented ......

i agree with you The KuKa...

ThE KuKa wrote: [View Post]

I think MG already has a lot of work and I believe that these features are not needed, for me

for me too... not needed

Well... IMHO 27a puts ICY now at a "almost finished state" . There are a lot of things that really should be changed / tweaked. For instance an improvement of the template system to make it easier to make a new themes, for example this discussion - this has always bugged me that some things in the templates could and should be made a lot easier, so it would encourage a lot more innovative themes for Icy (i.e. different layouts and mouse hover effects, rather than just replacing the standard table header pics). I mean, by default, the actual appearance of Icy (and of XS) is too much of a forum, when the idea was to have a CMS style site management system - more than just a forum (lets not forget the CMS system is an overhaul of Importal that was already in XS - thats not to deny that MG has done a great job with it). Presently, by default it still looks just like a heavy modded forum, not a website, with too much forum related clutter on the homepage, which should just be kept to the forum area. OK users can change that themselves, but we should be providing a default template that has a website look to it, not a modded forum look. When most users show off their "websites" here, mostly all they have is a duplicate of Icy, and perhaps a different header image, and if they're really pushed the boat out, different table header pics. But it still looks like what they are showing is not really a website, but a modded forum. And we should be worried about that, because with CMS, Icy is meant to be much more than just a heavily modded forum (even if that is the ultimate reality, its now at the stage where under the bonnet it has a lot more in common (in principle, not the literal coding) with Drupal than phpbb).

Then there is the fact about some of the inefficiencies of the logins and sessions tables handling, as per Here. The system is really a little stupid at present - why keep a record of several thousand dead sessions in your database, so that when you access the site, mysql server has to do more work to search through thousands of rows of dead sessions and data in the logins table, slowing down site loading? Also as I said there, certain tables, especially sessions, are better installed as ENGINE=HEAP, not myisam/Innodb, provided the sessions table is pruned regularly / automatically. A dream system would have a dual table structure, using disk-based tables for permanent record of data, and semi-duplicate tables in HEAP for speedy retrieval from RAM. (semi-, in that for posts/posts_text, only 2000 or so of the most recent posts should be in HEAP). Only if mysql crashes does the disk based tables get read, and only then to repopulate the heap tables. This would be at least 10 times quicker than simply caching "static page" sql data to disk, and probably 100 times or more on building the dynamic content like the forum.

These are things that have concerned me (a little bit) since XS, perhaps I will resolve them myself (although if I went far down the HEAP route, it would probably be a fork from Icy, as a lot would be changed), although I'm working on some other mods at the moment - most of the above is not hard at any rate, just laborious. I do also like the idea of a WYSIWYG editor, again something I might consider working on myself, but not enough time at present. We should not suddenly stop being creative (not that any of you guys have ceased to do a great job), but come up with new features - although if we want to see something added, then really we should have a go at doing it ourselves, not just demand it from somebody else - thats one of the seldom-written rules of open source.

And that leads me to the final point about XS and Icy - I thought MG (and also Bicet) said in the past, these are open projects, people should be encouraged to come up with modifications and alterations to Icy themselves, and if they are good / useful / high demand, then they might be implemented in a next release. Its not just for MG to make the changes, its for all of us to

moreteavicar wrote: [View Post]

Well... IMHO 27a puts ICY now at a "almost finished state" . There are a lot of things that really should be changed / tweaked. For instance an improvement of the template system to make it easier to make a new themes, for example this discussion - this has always bugged me that some things in the templates could and should be made a lot easier, so it would encourage a lot more innovative themes for Icy (i.e. different layouts and mouse hover effects, rather than just replacing the standard table header pics). I mean, by default, the actual appearance of Icy (and of XS) is too much of a forum, when the idea was to have a CMS style site management system - more than just a forum (lets not forget the CMS system is an overhaul of Importal that was already in XS - thats not to deny that MG has done a great job with it). Presently, by default it still looks just like a heavy modded forum, not a website, with too much forum related clutter on the homepage, which should just be kept to the forum area. OK users can change that themselves, but we should be providing a default template that has a website look to it, not a modded forum look. When most users show off their "websites" here, mostly all they have is a duplicate of Icy, and perhaps a different header image, and if they're really pushed the boat out, different table header pics. But it still looks like what they are showing is not really a website, but a modded forum. And we should be worried about that, because with CMS, Icy is meant to be much more than just a heavily modded forum (even if that is the ultimate reality, its now at the stage where under the bonnet it has a lot more in common (in principle, not the literal coding) with Drupal than phpbb).

I agree with this. Mods have been integrated in the whole system, but the system is not fully modular as a good CMS should be. IM Portal code is very few at the moment, even if I based my CMS on it, I can say that it has been at least 80% rewritten... anyway this is not so important after all, as we are in open source world, and neither me, nor Masterdavid (IM Portal creator) are been paied for this.

I asked in the past some help in creating blocks, layouts and templates to make IP more "website" looking instead of a "modded forum" looking... but each of us have its own priorities and its own real life.

I have created some sites with IP which doesn't look as a "modded" forum... but more like a "website"... Unfortunately I know that doing that requires both times and some basic skills. Of course creativity as well.

Hence I strongly agree on this as well:

moreteavicar wrote: [View Post]

I do also like the idea of a WYSIWYG editor, again something I might consider working on myself, but not enough time at present. We should not suddenly stop being creative (not that any of you guys have ceased to do a great job), but come up with new features - although if we want to see something added, then really we should have a go at doing it ourselves, not just demand it from somebody else - thats one of the seldom-written rules of open source.

And that leads me to the final point about XS and Icy - I thought MG (and also Bicet) said in the past, these are open projects, people should be encouraged to come up with modifications and alterations to Icy themselves, and if they are good / useful / high demand, then they might be implemented in a next release. Its not just for MG to make the changes, its for all of us to

What I agree only partially is this:

moreteavicar wrote: [View Post]

Then there is the fact about some of the inefficiencies of the logins and sessions tables handling, as per Here. The system is really a little stupid at present - why keep a record of several thousand dead sessions in your database, so that when you access the site, mysql server has to do more work to search through thousands of rows of dead sessions and data in the logins table, slowing down site loading? Also as I said there, certain tables, especially sessions, are better installed as ENGINE=HEAP, not myisam/Innodb, provided the sessions table is pruned regularly / automatically. A dream system would have a dual table structure, using disk-based tables for permanent record of data, and semi-duplicate tables in HEAP for speedy retrieval from RAM. (semi-, in that for posts/posts_text, only 2000 or so of the most recent posts should be in HEAP). Only if mysql crashes does the disk based tables get read, and only then to repopulate the heap tables. This would be at least 10 times quicker than simply caching "static page" sql data to disk, and probably 100 times or more on building the dynamic content like the forum.

These are things that have concerned me (a little bit) since XS, perhaps I will resolve them myself (although if I went far down the HEAP route, it would probably be a fork from Icy, as a lot would be changed), although I'm working on some other mods at the moment - most of the above is not hard at any rate, just laborious.

I hope you will find the time one day to trying to implement this, so you will better understand what lies behind the sessions tables, ram cache, different DB type, disk reading, memory limits and system "smart" files caching. It is a long technical discussion to be done here, and now I don't have the time to fully afford it. Maybe I won't be able to express myself in correct English as well to be sure I won't be misunderstood.

Maybe one day we may afford it into another topic (which you are welcome to open and bookmark).

I can only say that sometimes things are not so easy as they might seem.

_______________

Back on the main topic, I won't implement WYSIWYG editor just because I don't like them... I neither use WYSIWYG editor for coding because they usually mess up the code. You are free to implement it as an addon, it is not difficult at all, and there are some good ones.

Other features you mentioned, some are already included as Raul said... some I don't like them (the Reputation system for example is often source of misunderstanding and competitions which often take the focus away from what is important in a forum).

Again, as Adrian said, any of you is welcome to release addons for IP.


I think Icy Phoenix is mature and is now time to move on towards something else... which doesn't mean that I will abandon this project... it just mean that I won't implement big changes on it. My main goal is making sure that this IP version will become more stable and hopefully fast.

Mighty Gorgon wrote: [View Post]

I agree with this. Mods have been integrated in the whole system, but the system is not fully modular as a good CMS should be. IM Portal code is very few at the moment, even if I based my CMS on it, I can say that it has been at least 80% rewritten... anyway this is not so important after all, as we are in open source world, and neither me, nor Masterdavid (IM Portal creator) are been paied for this.

Absolutely these things are a labour of love
BTW I refer to IMportal mainly because phpbbxs was a starting point for having some sort of "cms" - don't I know you've re-written practically everything in it... it drives me mad ...now if you write a block, you have to change from $portal_config to $cms_config_vars Seriously though, good job

Mighty Gorgon wrote: [View Post]

I asked in the past some help in creating blocks, layouts and templates to make IP more "website" looking instead of a "modded forum" looking... but each of us have its own priorities and its own real life.

Hopefully we'll all come up with some other things soon

Mighty Gorgon wrote: [View Post]

I hope you will find the time one day to trying to implement this, so you will better understand what lies behind the sessions tables, ram cache, different DB type, disk reading, memory limits and system "smart" files caching. It is a long technical discussion to be done here, and now I don't have the time to fully afford it. Maybe I won't be able to express myself in correct English as well to be sure I won't be misunderstood.

Maybe one day we may afford it into another topic (which you are welcome to open and bookmark).

Yep, thats the bit that's excluded from the "most of the above"... there is a fairly straight forward way to keep sessions as a heap table and have it auto delete sessions to keep it within the max limit of 2500 rows (phpbb website article on it, link is within the link above) so that part at least is easy. But yes, the rest of the system would be a nightmare to set up... and also certain choices because there is only so much you can store in HEAP tables... so maybe just blue sky thinking...

...and perhaps a more intelligent thing would be to examine what the real bottle neck is in data flow - sites can load slowly even though they have been rendered in lightening speed, often it is because of all the table cell images etc - see how slow it can be to load the new / edit post page, just because of the smilies and other graphics - it's not the absolute image size thats important, its the number of them - since every single image introduces a hard disk access time - so this is one of those instances of less is more - less of these little image files gives more speed.

 

Off Topic

:

I looked into this a bit because I get frustrated with seeing news articles with all these people moaning that they have a bad broadband connection, that their service providers are "lying" about their connection speed, they do not factor in server load and actual content of the sites they visit - and the limiting factor of the way hard disks operate (they never transfer at the speeds claimed on the box - SATA 500 Mb/s is the interface speed - you'll be lucky to get above 30Mb/s from a hard disk - when people understand why this is so, they might also realise that transferring 30,000 1kb files would probably average at 1MB/s transfer from the typical hard drive, compared to 25-30Mb/s for the 30Mb file - its all down to access times.. and therein lies the bottle neck of a server. It might have a 10 disk array, but if theres 1000 visitors accessing data from all the sites on that server... you can expect, all things being equal, that traffic divided over the number of disks, then (1MB/s) / 100 = 100kB/s transfer... low and behold, I observe data transfer from a number of websites to be in this range (though this is a very basic set of assumptions, the reality won't be so different, for even if you scale up the servers and disc arrays, that would only make financial sense if you're likely to have a lot more traffic... however... a real analysis would have to take into account the stochastic nature of web traffic...

Mighty Gorgon wrote: [View Post]

I think Icy Phoenix is mature and is now time to move on towards something else... which doesn't mean that I will abandon this project... it just mean that I won't implement big changes on it. My main goal is making sure that this IP version will become more stable and hopefully fast.

On this front Luca, it is indeed faster

The WYSIWYG Editor is really useful for novice members , also the idea is of the advance editor ca be disable like the others editors.

The post icon - mmm maybe MG or zuker or someone can make another mod with a better structure

Maybe you can integrate a thanks system in all the post , not only for the topic starter

The ignore list can be a nice feature for the next version

You can implement AJAX in something , like a fast edit in post.

Anyway i only put some ideas , you can implement or not.

IP Rulz