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I am freelance programmer and i have a client who wants to build web-based software for scheduling/booking events. There is very few rules for possible booking options, but they are somewhat uncommon so there is no ready-made software to fully support them.
Anyway, besides that, the most important part is pretty common: calendar with events, reminders etc. So i believe there is some tools i can use, at least for that part.
What i'm interested in, is what tools can i use to build custom calendar, where i can write my own rules to prohibit user from booking in certain situations? Maybe there is some special framework (or, much more likely, plugins for web-frameworks) for scheduling software? If not, which ready-made software support maximum customization?
Well since you didn't specify what language your most familiar with i'll just stick to php.
Now you have a few options here.
A) You can start from a framework with some libraries and build from there. The major pro is that you can customize it like you want it. Downside would be more time actually making it, and since a client sets specific deadlines this might not be the right solutions.
B) You could start with something like Joomla. Now I do agree that it does have it's bloat, more than a million lines of code if I can remember. But with some searching I found some good booking systems that are built into modules.
If you go with B, you will be able to worry on details instead of the core grunt stuff. I've used joomla for a few different sites, and it's extremely customizable if you spend time with it.
In the end it's honestly related to your time restrictions, and your language of choice. Joomla is built with PHP if your wondering.
Hope this helps,
Daniel
I'm planning on starting a new project, and am evaluating various web frameworks. There is one that I'm seriously considering, but I worry about its lasting power.
When choosing a web framework, what should I look for when deciding what to go with?
Here's what I have noticed with the framework I'm looking at:
Small community. There are only a few messages on the users list each day
No news on the "news" page since the previous release, over 6 months ago
No svn commits in the last 30 days
Good documentation, but wiki not updated since previous release
Most recent release still not in a maven repository
It is not the officially sanctioned Java EE framework, but I've seen several people mention it as a good solution in answers to various questions on Stack Overflow.
I'm not going to say which framework I'm looking at, because I don't want this to get into a framework war. I want to know what other aspects of the project I should look at in my evaluation of risk. This should apply to other areas besides just Java EE web, like ORM, etc.
I'll say that so-called "dead" projects are not that great a danger as long as the project itself is solid and you like it. The thing is that if the library or framework already does everything you can think you want, then it's not such a big deal. If you get a stable project up and running then you should be done thinking about the framework (done!) and focus only on your webapp. You shouldn't be required to update the framework itself with the latest release every month.
Personally, I think the most important point is that you find one that is intuitive to your project. What makes the most sense? MVC? Should each element in the URL be a separate object? How would interactivity (AJAX) work? It makes no sense to pick something just because it's an "industry standard" or because it's used by a lot of big-name sites. Maybe they chose it for needs entirely different from yours. Read the tutorials for each framework and be critical. If it doesn't gel with your way of thinking, or you have seen it done more elegantly, then move on. What you are considering here is the design and good design is tantamount for staying flexible and scalable. There's hundreds of web frameworks out there, old and new, in every language. You're bound to find half a dozen that works just the way you want to think in your project.
Points I consider mandatory:
Extensible through plug-ins: check if there's already plug-ins for various middleware tasks such as memcache, gzip, OpenID, AJAX goodness, etc.
Simplicity and modularity: the more complex, the steeper the learning curve and the less you can trust its stability; the more "locked" to specific technologies, the higher the chances that you'll end up with a chain around your ankle.
Database agnostic: can you use sqlite3 for development and then switch to your production DB by changing a single line of code or configuration?
Platform agnostic: can you run it on Apache, lighttpd, etc.? Could you port it to run in a cloud?
Template agnostic: can you switch out the template system? Let's say you hire dedicated designers and they really want to go with something else.
Documentation: I am not that strict if it's open-source, but there would need to be enough official documentation to enable me to fully understand how to write my own plug-ins, for example. Also look to see if there's source code of working sites using the same framework.
License and source code: do you have access to the source code and are you allowed to modify it? Consider if you can use it commercially! (Even if you have no current plans to do that currently.)
All in all: flexibility. If I am satisfied with all four points, I'm pretty much done. Notice how I didn't have anything about "deadness" in there? If the core design is good and there's easily installable plug-ins for doing every web-dev 3.0-beta buzzword thing you want to do, then I don't care if the last SVN commit was in 2006.
Here are the things I look for in a framework before I decide to use it for a production environment project:
Plenty of well laid out and written documentation. Bad documentation just means I'm wasting time trying to find how everything works. This is OK if I am playing around with some cool new micro framework or something else, but not when it's for a client.
A decently sized community so that you can ask questions, etc. A fun and active IRC channel is a big plus.
Constant iteration of the product. Are bugs being closed or opened on a daily/weekly basis? Probably a good sign.
I can go through the code of the framework and understand what's going on. Good framework code means that the projects longterm life has a better chance of success.
I enjoy working with it. If I play with it for a few hours and it's the worst time of my life, I sure as hell won't be using it for a client.
I can go on, but those are some primary ones off the top of my head.
Besides looking at the framework, you also need to consider a lot of things about yourself (and any other team members) when evaluating the risks:
If the framework is a new, immature, "bleeding-edge" framework, are you going to be willing and able to debug it and fix or work around whatever problems you encounter?
If there is a small community, you'll have to do a lot of this debugging and diagnosis yourself. Will you have time to do that and still meet whatever deadlines you may have?
Have you looked at the framework yourself to determine how good it is, or are you willing to rely on what others say about it? Why do you trust their judgment?
Why do you want to use this rather than the "officially sanctioned Java EE framework"? Is it a pragmatic reason, or just a desire to try something new?
If problems with the framework cause you to miss deadlines or deliver a poor product, how will you talk about it with your boss or customer?
All the signs you've cited could be bad news for your framework choice.
Another thing that I look for are books available at Amazon and such. If there's good documentation available, it means that authors believe it has traction and you'll be able to find users that know it.
The only saving grace I can think of is relative maturity. If the framework or open source component is mature, there's a chance that it does the job as written and doesn't require further extension.
There should still be a bug tracker with some evidence of activity, because no software is without bugs (except for mine). But it need not be a gusher of requests in that case.
What options are there for producing audio in a GWT app? I'm thinking of making a simple game, but I'm disappointed to see that there's still not much progress on audio support directly in GWT (yes, I realize that's largely due to lack of underlying browser support; looking forward to HTML5!)
This blog post says that "audio support in GWT is rapidly evolving", yet I don't see updates in over a year, at least not at that site. It seems these are the available options:
GWT Voices
GWT SoundManager
GWT Sound
GWT Incubator (all of the audio APIs seem deprecated here)
I believe most of these (all of them?) rely on Flash to produce audio. I'm most inclined to go with the GWT Incubator, as that's where features slated for inclusion in GWT get started, but I've no real recommendations to go on. I would appreciate hearing about your experiences with any of these libraries, thanks.
GWT Voices is written by Fred Sauer. He seems to be very closely affiliated with GWT. I've used his drag and drop code before, and found it quite well documented and frequently updated. Also, he seems responsive to questions in the forum. (I have no affiliation!)
I don't know anything about the others.
Most of the aforementioned SoundManager2 wrappers are dated and no longer supported. Gwt Voices is a good project, but lacks a lot of the functionality that is provided by a mature and proven solution like SoundManager2.
Check out this newer one called gwt-soundmanager2. It's a fork from Jeffery Miller's gwt-sound project. https://github.com/rcaloras/gwt-soundmanager2
(I created it, happy to answer questions or add additional features)
What are your criteria for selection a (open source) library (or framework) for enterprise usage?
Some libraries are pretty small and can be easily checked for security flaws or tested for performance. But most libraries are too big to be reviewed before you can start to use them.
When I think of me selecting a library, most if the selection process is just gut feeling. When I try to be more specific, these are the first criteria which come to my mind:
How many developers are working on the project? My feeling is that more developers will find more bugs and security issues. In addition it will be harder to introduce security issues intentionally.
How good is the support? Compared to closed source libraries, I've got the feeling that the support of open source is often much better since you have a community around the globe which will be available whenever you need them.
How wide spread is the library? Are there any books about it on the market? Which other projects are using the library?
What are your criteria? Feel free to edit this note as community wiki.
For me, it depends on whether or not it is paid for or not. In your case, you give the impression you are looking at open source libraries.
In that specific case, I'll look at test coverage. Regardless of the number of contributors, if there aren't any unit tests that I can run myself (as well as enhance and test my use cases for if they fall outside the coverage of the unit tests provided), then that's a massive issue for me.
It's not that I don't appreciate the work that is done already in providing the library, but code in projects like this should have unit tests already with good coverage in order to gain traction.
If there are no libraries that have unit tests, then I would start searching for the library on search engines, actively seeking out negative replies. People who have negative feelings about the code and can crystalize the objective basis for those feelings in terms of how the code failed them will provide more valuable feedback than the masses that say "it works great".
Now for a commercial piece of code, it's completely different. At that point, I'd start looking at the company and it's support staff as a whole, and using that as a determination (as well as tests of your own to see if the library is right for you) as to whether or not to use that company's offering.
Quite often in open source libraries you cannot get reliable support. In such situations your best bet is to fix it yourself, which involves the following requirements.
You need to have the ability to read often messy and undocumented code.
The technical ability to ask the right questions from the right people -- i.e., these people aren't being paid to fix problems and they will only answer you if you make it easy enough for them.
Then you need the ability to fix the bug and get the patch accepted -- because if the patch isn't accepted .....
With this in mind I would be inclined to get a commercial library, or dual licensed library so that I could pay to get a competent engineer (motivated by the money I pay his company) to fix my problem.
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I'm about to start a project for a customer who wants CMS-like functionality. They want users to be able to log in, modify a profile, and a basic forum. They also wish to be able to submit things to a front page.
Is there a framework or barebones CMS that I could expand on or tailor to my needs? I don't need anything as feature-rich or fancy as Drupal or Joomla. I would actually prefer a framework as opposed to a pre-packaged CMS.
I am confident I could code all this from scratch, but would prefer not to, as something like a framework would significantly cut down on my time spent coding, and more on design and layout.
Edit: I should have been more specific. I'm looking for a Content Management System that will be run on a Debian server. So no .net preferably.
I think i may end up going with Drupal, and only adding modules that I need. Turbogears looks a bit daunting, and i'm still not quite sure what it does after it's 20 minute intro video...
TinyCMS doesn't look like it's been touched since... 2000?!?
I think the best is CMS Made Simple. Seems like drupal takes awhile to customize.
http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/
tinyCMS is about as barebones as you can get. (edit: fixed link, I had gotten a little click happy and linked to the wrong thing)
#modesty, I would definitely NOT use SharePoint, as it is anything but barebones. It is a fairly expensive product (especially when compared to the many free alternatives), and it has quite the learning curve to do anything interesting.
Woo, another Debian nut!
I think you need to be a bit more specific here, Forum != CMS. Is this for internal company or external customer use? What language(s) do you know/prefer? There's no point in recommending a Perl or PHP framework if your language of choice is Ruby. Do you need to plan for scalability?
What's wrong with Joomla or Drupal? I would argue that they can be successfully used on small sites. Maybe a framework isn't what you're looking for, maybe you just need a library or two (eg. PEAR?). If you need something smaller, maybe writing your own backend library that you can reuse for future projects would be a better solution.
For a one-size-fits-all framework have a look at Turbogears. ("it's a big hammer, that makes every problem look like a nail")
I've been obsessing over TikiWiki lately. Although it has "wiki" in the name, its full name is "TikiWiki CMS/Groupware" and it's an interesting piece of software. It has a real everything and the kitchen sink feel. It includes support for wiki, blogs, articles, forums, and files out of the box (and a ton of other stuff too). I think the real appeal to me is that most of the stuff can all be integrated together, wiki pages can include other wiki pages and articles (which is more useful than you might think). It's in RC stage for release 2.0 and is still missing a ton of features, but I think I might keep using it and contribute some of the features that are missing, it's a really interesting base right now.
The Mozilla support site is implemented using TikiWiki, for an example of a really beautiful implementation.
Drupal's include system should keep everything relatively lightweight as long as you only include what you need. Despite the fact that it comes with a smattering of modules, what you choose to enable is all that will be included at runtime. If you have to get under the hood and make modifications, I'm also a firm believer that Drupal is a more friendly and elegant system than Joomla. We use Drupal at my work-as much as a framework as a CMS-and it has proven pretty reliable in keeping development practices at a high level.
I realize I'm a couple years late to the party but I was looking for something like this myself and ran across this post while doing Google searches for 'barebones cms'. Along with this post, this turns up:
http://barebonescms.com/
There is also a forum on that site.
A similar combination could probably meet or exceed all of your criteria. Although, as others pointed out, you weren't particularly specific on the details.
While the original author is probably long gone, hopefully someone else finds this useful.
I would suggest PmWiki, it's something between a framework/wiki. By default there aren't even users, just different passwords, for different tasks, but using PmWiki Cookbook 'recipes' You can add additional functionality.
You can check their philosophy to get main idea what it's about.
If you want a Rails solution, Radiant CMS is a good option. It's simple, elegant, extensible and, of course, comes with all of the benefits of being based on Ruby on Rails.
if you are looking .net you can take a look at umbraco, haven't done much with it (company i work for wanted much more functionality so went with something else) but it seemed lightweight.
Edit : if the customer wants a tiny CMS with a forum, I would still probably just go Drupal with phpBB or simple machines forum, almost positive they can share logins. Plus tomorrow the customer is going to want more and Drupal might save you some work there.
Might want to check out Drupal.
Here are the details of the technology stack that it uses.
I have never used it so I can't vouch for the quality etc but definitely worth a look.
how about you use drupal but scale down and code it according to your needs.
definitely will be faster than code-from-scratch-with-framework
I have been working with Joomla for some time and I believe it one of the best CMS for starting off a Website. I have tried others a lot, But Joomla is better because it has Numerous Extentions (Components , Modules) and also its very Easy to Customize. You could also look at the Community Builder Extension for joomla.Other requirement like Chnage Fronpage Articles etc is a Breeze....
joomla.org
For some reason Joomla Does not Suit you try Drupal.
Wordpress is a very powerful but simple CMS.
bbPress is a very simple but integrated forum (easy, Wordpress user account integration with cookies and all).
Since you have programming experience you may find Wordpress to be the perfect match (PHP, MySQL) with plenty of plugins and hooks to help you achieve what you need. For example, there is a featured posts plugin that will put selected content on the front page.
I need to jump on the Umbraco bandwagon here. As far as ease of use from a developer standpoint goes, there is nothing easier than umbraco and v. 4 has full master page support and a tone of other stuff... and it's free.
For windows take a look at the DotNetNuke is asp.net based, free and open source and easily skinned and modified, there is also a thriving market in add-on modules. In addition most hosting companies offer it as a pre-installed application
Expression Engine is fantastic. It's free to download and try but you must purchase a license if you are making a profit with it.
WordPress actually has a forum plugin - it's nothing fancy but it's there. It handles user management et al and has a big community for plugins and themes. I think it is probably the easiest CMS to install & run (I've done some legwork here). There are plugins that update the core & plugins automatically (take that Drupal). I've tested these and they seem pretty solid. As usual - backup beforehand.
For .NET MojoPortal looks pretty good and is lighter than DNN. I saw the edit but thought I'd include this anyway since it looks like it's worth checking out.
Drupal is a language unto its own - I wouldn't tackle it unless you're going to do so with some regularity, otherwise it's just another different framework to learn. The uplink into my brain is at capacity already so I gently pushed it aside. The themes tend to look the same too.
Joomla may suit your users for usability.
I'd go for a pre-made framework myself because it would have a community and expansion capacity. What your client wants today will pale into insignificance tomorrow.