Updates and upgrades for 2.0

I agree - progress in the core cannot and should not be held back by the lack of module development. And the core should not get so far ahead that no one can follow.

What we do not have is a good sense of what modules are being used, other than what we are using ourselves. Some have alternatives that could be used in place of the module selected. In those situations, when the alternative is compliant with the core and the underlying architecture, we proceed. In cases where there are limited options and the module is highly used, we need to work together to improve the core and the module.

What I see as the outcome of this next release is a way to gauge what modules are active and will be updated. We will be better off as a community when we all have a path forward together.

How can we capture our top must have modules?

How can we capture our top must have modules?

We had something in that direction several years back, with the heartbeat functionality each time impresscms was installed.  Short term, we could look into a similar system that sends the modules and the versions once every month with a autotask. Setting up the receiving end will be the hardest (Google Docs perhaps?)

On the longer term, we can look at the installation statistics from packagist when our modules are installed using composer.

It would have been nice if that feature stayed active. I know we used a different server instance for gathering the data.

We could put up a survey and capture information via Google Forms. Download information is always another option to get a sense of what people are trying.

To be honest, the feature was a bit wonky, so it would need a bit more work to bring back 😁

Might be a good subject for a newsletter.

Just choice 10 modules for now.

All these stats are cool but not possible right now.

Loosely based on what I use normally on my sites:

• News
• Menu
• Sitemap
• Tools
• Content
• Contact Center

I also know which modules I will prioritize -

• SimplyWiki
• imBlogging
• imTagging
• Billboard
• xcGallery

I do need to figure out what to do with forms (Formulize), and decide on which news module. A downloads module, a links module, and iForum are also on my list.

I think imBlogging and news more or less have the same use case? Perhaps we should prioritise one of the two. We use news on the impresscms site for example, but it should be possible to do a conversion from one to the other.

I have sites where I use both, and could probably merge them into a single module with some thought to the navigation changes. One for reporting events and activities, the other more for conversation, ideas, and opinions.

The news module I've been using is the one from InstantZero and it has the ability to manage submit, approve, and viewing based on groups and topic (category). It also has the ability to expire articles and move them to the 'archive', which I like. That's a lot to try and build into another module, along with bringing it up to the latest ImpressCMS, PHP, and MySQL versions. I'm open to it, though.

I think right now is not a good time to merge these two modules. They are written in different code styles - one is IPF another not. Right now these modules are needed just for testing. Faster icms release is better.

Totally agree. I've been going through some problematic libraries for PHP 8.0 and I'm updating them one by one. But I don't know if @skenow wants to wait for all those upgrades before launching the new 2.0 release into the wild.

I still need to clean up PR #1397  before it can be merged. That's going to be done right after.

I think it's OK that we have more than one option for a type of module, that's been part of our heritage and what fuels the OSS community. There have always been multiple options for various types of content - news, blogs, galleries, downloads, links, calendars. The same is true in other environments, too - WordPress, Drupal, XOOPS.

The choices are also available in other markets - Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), or Google Apps (Docs, Sheets, Slides)? Or, LibreOffice? Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet?

For me, it is the least amount of resistance to move forward. News from InstantZero is much more mature, robust, and feature rich than any other news module available. It does things - and I use them - that no other similar module does. The news module we use here is based on IPF and needs another module to create and manage categories (a good thing, actually, from a site management perspective). So does imBlogging - but it uses a different category/tag module. SmartSection had even more features - allowing a preview of an article, but viewing the entire article required another level of authentication, if you chose to do that. I'm not going to wait until one module can do it all. I don't think one module should do it all.

We can't create and support all the variations webmasters will demand, nor should we have to. That is why the marketplace exists.

The key at this point - what do we do with the core, and how does that affect the marketplace? Once I know what to aim for in module compatibility, I know what to do with my sites and the modules they use.

I hadn't considered all those points when going for the news module. At the time, Madfish was still actively developing his modules, and his modules were based on the last version of IPF, so it seemed like a given to integrate modules that were built on the most recent best practices.