Below is my 'goodbye' to PHP Nuke. You'll likely never see it over there, because I submitted it as news, which means it's moderated:
After recoding most of PHP Nuke 5.0 to force it to work, dealing with docs that are almost incomprehensible in English, putting up with slow support response, horrible testing and coding procedures, lack of code documentation, and the disgusting implementation of an upgrade path from 5.0 to 5.3, LinuxLaboratory.org will be moving over to PostNuke. Read on for more details.
When I got 5.0, almost nothing worked properly. After spending about a month - fulltime - with 3 other guys recoding and bugfixing and testing, I finally got something that, for the most part, works.
Today, I posted in nukeforums or nukesupport (don't remember which) that I had a question regarding the upgrade path from 5.0 to 5.3. The answer I got was something like 'You'll have to go through all of the upgrades in between to get to 5.3, but I would just go to 5.2 until they work out all the bugs'. This prompted me to look around and see what the feedback was like from the community upon the 5.3 release, and sure enough, there were just as many bugs as there were in 5.0, and they were just as serious, and as always, it appeared that the fixes were coming NOT from the developer, but from the community (again).
I understand that this is all for free and all of that stuff, and that's great. But don't expect people to use and be happy with a product just because it's free. Crap is free. Doesn't mean I want it on my doorstep.
I wish the PHP Nuke community luck in all future endeavors, and will still help those in need, as I've helped others who have contacted me in the past. However, as PHP Nuke evolves, I will inevitably become less and less useful.
I hope someday things will change with PHP Nuke, but until it does I find myself with only 2 choices:
1. Download all versions between 5.0 and 5.3, hope all of the upgrades go ok, and then debug, test, recode, retest... PHP Nuke 5.3, or
2. Upgrade to Postnuke .702, upgrade my current site with their handy-dandy script (already tested and works), and move on.
I will be doing the latter.
Best wishes.
njcajun
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This is not to say that Postnuke is perfect either. I have some real issues with it, some on a fundamental level (code docs, while much better, still fall short in some places), and some on a purely subjective level. However, if I'm going to have to recode things for either reason, I think I'm doing myself a favor going with Postnuke as a base. If niceguyeddie is willing and has time to introduce me to their CVS stuff, I'd be happy to submit code as I write it. This was an option I was NOT given at PHP Nuke, so only about 10 people worldwide that I know of have a PHP Nuke 5.0 site that works as well as mine :-) I'm happy mine works, but it's frustrating to see all the other users out there who fell prey to a nice look and feel without knowing anything about what goes on behind the scenes. The frustrating part is that I don't have time to help everyone, and my code only got to those who sifted the site looking for answers in News posting comments and found 'at line x in file y do this' postings by myself and a few others. CVS would've been a big help.
Anyway, hope to see you all at the site in March.
njcajun
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