Forums / Cotonti / Development / The problem of Themes

Agreed. the Nemesis skin of Sienna isn't up to date at all. Seeing I always use the default skin as a base, it prevents me from switching to Sienna. Is simple as that.

I know you guys are against it, but I would really love the return of the tags repository.

Thx to a few tips from Kort I've got better in building themes, and wouldn't mind to create a few for you guys, coz you helped me out over the years, but again, a solid base to start from would be very, very nice..

I know.. but a tags repositiry is much cleaner and clearer to work with, and a good place to start for new comers to the Cotonti.

But hey, who am I to agrue for user friendlyness...

No offence, Trust really, but this is the way I see it:

I feel cotonti slowly is grinding to a halt when it comes to new members joining your community. I visit this site on a daily basis (it's part of my 'internet round') and see so few newcomers.
On the other hand I see you guys being all geeky and design the shit out of cotonti (which is a compliment, and of-course a good thing). But on the other side the system gets more difficult to understand.
By being more open about the basics, you're most likely to attract more people that want to give Cotonti a go. Correct me if I'm wrong, but more people means more options for use made plugins, themes/skins, more contributions to the community itself,  etc. and in the long run more money for you guys.

Gonna say it again, I love Cotonti, the way it works, and the neet little tricks you can do with it. Tried all the other, liked not of them. But nevertheless I feel there's more to get when it comes to community involvement. Oke, you now have a few really dedicated people walking around, but you have to realize that they may not always be around, for whatever reason.

I know that with my knowledge I'm not a real use for you guys, but that doesn't mean I can't help out. I've offered to do so in the past, but nobody ever asked me to do so.
If you need some-one to keep track of such a thing as a tags repository, just ask dude. You give me the (raw) data, I will maintain the list. It's as simple as that. All you have to do is ask. And Im sure there are more out there, with my level of (html/css) knowledge who want to  help out, at least I hope so.

This tpl_debug feature is cool and all but it doesn't explain what is does, nor where it's applicable. And may even scare people away.

I talked to twiebie about you guys the other day.. In our eyes you guys are hardcore programmers (incl. the almost mandatory little quirks). And that's not a bad thing, but I (we) also feel that it prevents you in some way to set up a good community.. That's where others can help out.

I do hope that last sentense isn't regarded as an insult, coz it's not. It's just an objective assassment.

Just my 2 cents..

Have a good one this weekend!
 

Thanks for the clear and constructive criticism guys, it's really appreciated. The community issue with Cotonti has been on our radar for a while and is really starting to become a major thing. We have realised that our aim for a more 'professional' audience isn't really the right way to go. The development of Siena has been mostly focussed towards making such 'high-end' users happy, by introducing a lot of complex (and very powerful) features. I think it's time to focus on the actual end-user again, which doesn't necessarily have programming knowledge. This means writing good documentation, but also making installation, configuration and maintenance easy for everyone.

As for the tags repository, it's part of the documentation. Personally I simply lookup a tag in the PHP code itself if I need to know about it, but obviously that's not for everyone. When I was a novice coder (back in the LDU/Seditio days) I remember really liking the tags repositiry. I think it's a crucial feature for many developers, so I also think we should introduce it again. However, it will need to be actively maintained and structured somehow. Perhaps we'll need a dedicated module for it in which you can store info such as blocks and descriptions.

I'm willing to make a template if someone can provide me with a good design. I'm fine with doing html/css and templating but actually designing something in photoshop is the hard part for me because I always lack inspiration. So if you send me a design I will create a new template.

Thanks for constructive feedback, guys.

Maybe we can relaunch the TPL tags repository based on tpl_debug mode or some other way. Like tpl_debug, but more user friendly and with user-contributed descriptions. There are 2 ways we can provide descriptions for blocks and tags:

1. Maintain TPL Tags repository online, just like we did for Genoa.
2. Embed descriptions in code and generate tags reference like we generate code reference. And/or provide tpl_debug with descriptions for blocks and tags.

Looks nice, lukgoh :)

I'm working on a theme or two for Siena aswell.