Siena

Kingsley	#1 2011-02-09 20:47
Donator Thanked: 7 times	oke, have been here for a while, but with the upcoming release of Sienna, I do have some questions. Does Sienna changes that much that it won't be doable for people like me? Will this update filter out the hobbyists and aim its arrow only on professionals? If so, what CMS is a good replacement for cotonti?
Donator Thanked: 7 times	This post was edited by Trustmaster (2011-02-10 01:56, 13 years ago)

Dyllon	#2 2011-02-09 21:04
Contributors Thanked: 16 times	After messing around with the beta it doesn't look too hard to understand. Like all new things, your going to have to do a little research and play around with things before you completely understand it. With that said, i don't believe looking for another CMS to replace cotonti is a great idea considering you will be stuck in the same scenario, of not knowing what to do due to you being unfamiliar with the CMS. Stick with what you know, and adapt. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

Dyllon

#2 2011-02-09 21:04

Contributors
Thanked: 16 times

After messing around with the beta it doesn't look too hard to understand. Like all new things, your going to have to do a little research and play around with things before you completely understand it. With that said, i don't believe looking for another CMS to replace cotonti is a great idea considering you will be stuck in the same scenario, of not knowing what to do due to you being unfamiliar with the CMS. Stick with what you know, and adapt.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

Trustmaster	#3 2011-02-09 21:26
Administrators Thanked: 263 times	I'd recommend people who is not good at plugin coding to wait till most of plugins will be ported to Siena (one "n"). Then you'll be able to upgrade quite comfortably (because plugins seems to be the only real problem with Siena upgrade). We don't force anyone to be on a bleeding edge of development, Genoa will be supported for about a year ahead. May the Source be with you!

Kingsley	#4 2011-02-09 21:31
Donator Thanked: 7 times	Oh, it's not the adapting Im worried about, but there are so much possibilities in this system already, and I imagine that will only be more once Sienna is here. I am asking this because, in all fairness, you have to know alot about php too (and it's strings) in order to fully use it. The lack of documentation (being from existing possibilities to what will be new/changed added) draws me to conclude it (Sienna) will be meant for the more professional community members. Don't get me wrong, in the years from Seditio to Cotonti I have grown fond of the system and it's fairly relaxed community. But as Cotonti grows, we (my clan) does too. I have been looking around, and it occured to me that other cms do a lot more when it comes to plug-ins. The support for it is wider. As you can read on the frontpage cotonti web: The community itself is also set to be changed. We intend to aim at a more professional audience and we're working on a new website for Cotonti.com. it is safe to assume that this means that the variety of plug-ins will stay stable and the professional users will either write their own plug-ins, or make paid ones. Now I do not mind paying, but as my last purchase showed, you almost never buy a complete thing, or it interferes with other plugins, which make one of the two unusable.

Kingsley

#4 2011-02-09 21:31

Donator
Thanked: 7 times

Oh, it's not the adapting Im worried about, but there are so much possibilities in this system already, and I imagine that will only be more once Sienna is here.
I am asking this because, in all fairness, you have to know alot about php too (and it's strings) in order to fully use it.
The lack of documentation (being from existing possibilities to what will be new/changed added) draws me to conclude it (Sienna) will be meant for the more professional community members.

Don't get me wrong, in the years from Seditio to Cotonti I have grown fond of the system and it's fairly relaxed community. But as Cotonti grows, we (my clan) does too. I have been looking around, and it occured to me that other cms do a lot more when it comes to plug-ins. The support for it is wider.
As you can read on the frontpage

cotonti web:
The community itself is also set to be changed. We intend to aim at a more professional audience and we're working on a new website for Cotonti.com.

it is safe to assume that this means that the variety of plug-ins will stay stable and the professional users will either write their own plug-ins, or make paid ones. Now I do not mind paying, but as my last purchase showed, you almost never buy a complete thing, or it interferes with other plugins, which make one of the two unusable.

GHengeveld	#5 2011-02-09 21:43
Team Thanked: 52 times	I still consider Siena to be very amateur-friendly. This is mainly caused by the fact that, opposed to most other CMS systems, Cotonti isn't programmed in object-oriented fashion. We have some parts that are like that, but everything that you'd normally have to look into is not. XTemplate has always been OO, and now the database handler is replaced by PDO, which is object-oriented too. Trustmaster also added a caching system which is OO too. As far as complexity goes, Siena doesn't add much to the basic stuff. It's only the lower (less visible) code that has gained complexity. Most changes you'll have to deal with are changes to the directory and file structure (such as the new 'modules' directory, which contains stuff that used to be in 'system'). For plugin developers, the change in database abstraction layer is probably the biggest change, although there is a wrapper plugin which mimicks the old behavior so old plugins will still work. Like Dyllon said, you just have to get used to the changes. Don't worry, it's not all different ;-)

GHengeveld

#5 2011-02-09 21:43

Team
Thanked: 52 times

I still consider Siena to be very amateur-friendly. This is mainly caused by the fact that, opposed to most other CMS systems, Cotonti isn't programmed in object-oriented fashion. We have some parts that are like that, but everything that you'd normally have to look into is not. XTemplate has always been OO, and now the database handler is replaced by PDO, which is object-oriented too. Trustmaster also added a caching system which is OO too.

As far as complexity goes, Siena doesn't add much to the basic stuff. It's only the lower (less visible) code that has gained complexity. Most changes you'll have to deal with are changes to the directory and file structure (such as the new 'modules' directory, which contains stuff that used to be in 'system'). For plugin developers, the change in database abstraction layer is probably the biggest change, although there is a wrapper plugin which mimicks the old behavior so old plugins will still work.

Like Dyllon said, you just have to get used to the changes. Don't worry, it's not all different ;-)

Dyllon	#6 2011-02-09 21:51
Contributors Thanked: 16 times	# Kingsley : it is safe to assume that this means that the variety of plug-ins will stay stable and the professional users will either write their own plug-ins, or make paid ones. Now I do not mind paying, but as my last purchase showed, you almost never buy a complete thing, or it interferes with other plugins, which make one of the two unusable. i can almost guarantee just because sienna is aimed to a "professional" audience, that all currently existing plugins will be ported free of charge. There are very few people here who actually sell their plugins.. so what makes you think that will change? We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

Dyllon

#6 2011-02-09 21:51

Contributors
Thanked: 16 times

# Kingsley : it is safe to assume that this means that the variety of plug-ins will stay stable and the professional users will either write their own plug-ins, or make paid ones. Now I do not mind paying, but as my last purchase showed, you almost never buy a complete thing, or it interferes with other plugins, which make one of the two unusable.

i can almost guarantee just because sienna is aimed to a "professional" audience, that all currently existing plugins will be ported free of charge. There are very few people here who actually sell their plugins.. so what makes you think that will change?

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

Trustmaster	#7 2011-02-09 21:52
Administrators Thanked: 263 times	In other CMS you get more ready-to-use modules/plugins, but this is mostly due to the fact that their communities are a lot larger and more people contribute. In Cotonti you get as much of them as big the community is. We are not going to switch our financial model or stop releasing stuff for free. What we have done with Siena tends to attract more coders to have more free stuff available. The lack of documentation is a big problem and we will do our best to solve it. May the Source be with you!

Trustmaster

#7 2011-02-09 21:52

Administrators
Thanked: 263 times

In other CMS you get more ready-to-use modules/plugins, but this is mostly due to the fact that their communities are a lot larger and more people contribute. In Cotonti you get as much of them as big the community is. We are not going to switch our financial model or stop releasing stuff for free. What we have done with Siena tends to attract more coders to have more free stuff available. The lack of documentation is a big problem and we will do our best to solve it.

May the Source be with you!

pieter	#8 2011-02-09 22:21
Team Thanked: 9 times	@Kingley I'm busy with a skin theme for Siena (with only 1 n) and it is more or less the same. There are some things changing, but they are more logical. Thanks to the conversion I learn a lot about Siena and the new features. And sometimes you need to search, but tou find new solutions with the new features to make the side more attractive and more easy to use. ... can we help you ...

Kingsley	#9 2011-02-09 23:32
Donator Thanked: 7 times	Thank you all for your replies, am happy that I can continue using this system