To Many problems To post!!

i have had to reinstall elgg about 4 to 5 times already.

Yes - i have installed it corretly

No - I'm not a noob in php/html/css or Database

in the last several days I ( myself ) have posted about 3 discussions asking for help about elgg and only about 1 got answers.... :(

i moved to elgg thinking it would be better then social engine. inforutunatly it's not

 

The #1 thing that bother me about elgg is the support. Not many people are on here.

I'm 18 and going to school. For the last week i would come home work on making elgg work.

When i came to elgg i was under the impression that elgg was a social networking script.

As they say, it is. 

The problem is that not much people have specificity that some people require. Some people will post you need to edit such file.php and not even give a derictory as to where the file is located... GRRRRRR anyways.

I think elgg should be more specific as to what the functions do. 4 example Default widgets? what up with that option? if you read at the top it just says "Add, remove, position, and configure default widgets for the selected widget page. These changes will only affect new users on the site."

elgg doesn't say where these widgets will be shown? also if default widgets is enable, why does the user have an option to add widgets? why can't the admin choose the widgets and not allow the users to do so. Also when you do set the default widgets they don't show to the right of the picture of the user. They show under because MOST themes for some weird ass reason have a sidebar that if you were thinking was a 3 column theme - it's actually 2 column theme with a big left sidebar that get's in the way of the default widgets... i understand that the extra space is for the "about me section" but shouldn't the admin have an option to disable such thing. I have download about 10 plugins and yet none are as specific. 7/10 i download a plugin and then see what the real function of it is, let alone the instruction of it to install it.

They main problem that i've had is with this facebook theme!

None of them WORK! took me 5 days to realize it.

#1 you post a status - you can't even comment on your own status

#2 You post on someone's wall ( logged in as user ) - if you're lucky you won't get an error

#3 you comment on a post - It duplicates into the river

#4 Not even the smallest specifications on how to change the index of the site / landing page (Download homepage 1.8) 

BTW that plugin - Can't even be seen on internet explore... Ohhhh!!!! there's another thing

#5 this is for most themes... - different browsers have different views on the css of a theme...

#6 My most recent problem - When and if you do try to post on someone's wall, it won't even post to the member's messageboard it'll post to the wire... WTF??? 

i took the time to view the source and the action="thewire/add" - & thats for the messageboard?

i tried the latest version of elgg and the version that was origonally made to work with the facebook theme... Gosh.. wasted 5 days of my life and more seconds as i write this..

my adive. 

Elgg has tooo many problems for a support team such as the size ( it is now ) for it to fix all of them

also, what the heck is up with the a lot of updates? 1.8.13?? now we all gotta make some modifications to the themes and plugins?

evenmore, what's the update for? elgg doesn't even specify that??

:|

 

and... whenever i try to contact a member about a plugin, guess what?

their message board isn't there.. great...

and most of the time if i send a message they won't even reply...

i'll pay someone $10 to make the facebook theme work on my site.

  • Check on my profile as example: http://weborganizm.org/creator/rivervanrain/

    It's my widgets

     

    Check on one group: http://weborganizm.org/crewz/p/192/elgg

    It's group's profile

     

    Check on http://weborganizm.org/totemz/v/2046/wordpress-tips-tricks

    It's a modificated Facebook Theme with 3 colums

     

    Cheers ;)

     

  • whoa there buddy! why do you have so many probems with elgg? it clearly states that elgg is an engine, a framework, works out of the box. it doesn't mean it caters to your needs! do you realize how many request/tickets are open for newer version of elgg to deal with mediocre questions? what you see is what you get. now to answer your questions, i'm gonna have to divide it:

    I think elgg should be more specific as to what the functions do. 4 example Default widgets? what up with that option? if you read at the top it just says "Add, remove, position, and configure default widgets for the selected widget page. These changes will only affect new users on the site.elgg doesn't say where these widgets will be shown? also if default widgets is enable, why does the user have an option to add widgets? why can't the admin choose the widgets and not allow the users to do so.

    default widgets are there for NEW users only, elgg wasn't set up to to set default widgets for current users. if you want to do that then you're gonna have to write a script/plugin to do that for your needs. or go to the professional group and pay someone to do it for you. if you don't want current users to modify the widgets then that is a simple fix! just remove the add widgets button in widgets.php file (EASY!)

    They show under because MOST themes for some weird ass reason have a sidebar that if you were thinking was a 3 column theme - it's actually 2 column theme with a big left sidebar that get's in the way of the default widgets... i understand that the extra space is for the "about me section" but shouldn't the admin have an option to disable such thing.

    profiles right now are set up to use one column instead of 2 to show a 3 column widget layout. if you want to change this then do it in the widgets.php file then edit the layout php files in the profile plugin. profile icon and information is on the left and it looks like it's a 2 column but it's not! it's set up that way because the information is fixed either through css or hard coded in html/php. you have to realize elgg is set up to make a lot of php calls to make up one single page. arrays are everywhere in elgg, it's up to you to read the docs to find out what functions the core developers set up to make it easier for us developers to use.

    They main problem that i've had is with this facebook theme!

    take a look at the plugin and it's comments, earlier today or probably yesterday someone figured it out. read the comments people are posting in that theme's plugin page. scroll through the last comment page.

    #5 this is for most themes... - different browsers have different views on the css of a theme...

    yes it's pretty obvious, not to the normal masses but to us developers that different browsers uses different rendering engines. for example firefox (iceweasel, netscape, etc) uses gecko, safari/chrome uses webkit and the OH SO dreadful internet explorer uses trident. opera uses presto or some shit. now this is my knowledge from years ago so i'm not sure if it changed for IE but still IE is SHIT

    #6 My most recent problem - When and if you do try to post on someone's wall, it won't even post to the member's messageboard it'll post to the wire... WTF??? 

    i think someone fixed that in the plugin's comment

    Elgg has tooo many problems for a support team such as the size ( it is now ) for it to fix all of them

     uh no, seems like YOU'RE the one who's having too many problems, elgg works great right out of the box.
     

    also, what the heck is up with the a lot of updates? 1.8.13?? now we all gotta make some modifications to the themes and plugins?

    evenmore, what's the update for? elgg doesn't even specify that??

    updates are there to provide security and or enhanced functionalities of elgg. "elgg doesn't specify updates" what? don't you read the damn blogs? http://blog.elgg.org it clearly states "Elgg 1.8.13 and Elgg 1.7.17 have been released to address a security issue in the Twitter widget." SECURITY issue! i know security is an important issue to you. there are other bug fixes and enchances, read the update file. also to my knowledge, 1.8.xx updates don't hinder any 1.8 plugins unless the core developers says so. functions/views will still be the same unless stated otherwise, core developers also keep in mind about backward compatibilities, they even have measures to tell you that a function that you use for 1.7 in 1.8 has been deprecated.

    and... whenever i try to contact a member about a plugin, guess what?

    their message board isn't there.. great...

    and most of the time if i send a message they won't even reply...

    guess what? developers have other lives than coding 24/7 for elgg, they're just like you and me. normal human beings who got other things to do. of course you can send them a message but some developers just come and go, deal with it.

    i'll pay someone $10 to make the facebook theme work on my site.

     go ahead and post your request in the professional group, and see if someone wants to take the challenge for $10.
     
    now i understand your frustration and that you want to take it out on the community but it won't get you anywhere, like time, it waits for no man and people will just move on from your post and act like what you vented didn't even exist. now people like me care and try to help people out, but people like you makes us not want to help out. either you gotta understand how elgg works or just move on and try something else. it's as easy as that
  • True, elgg does work out of the box great.

    it's the developers who assume that their version of a plugin will work with an update.

    i see this 1.8+ compability.

    You don't have to help anyone if you don't want to... i appreciate your responds btw...

    take a look at the plugin and it's comments, earlier today or probably yesterday someone figured it out. read the comments people are posting in that theme's plugin page. scroll through the last comment page.

    Thats kinda the first thing i did.. Trust me, i research all i can before asking for help. Otherwise i'd have a lot of people like ( you ) linking me discussion that have solved my question.

    How come elgg doesn't put the updated details of the newest version download page? i have to go to blog??

    does that make any sense?

    I already knew how to remove the add widgets.. Thanks Though, but doesn't solve all other problems

     

    Yes - I agree security is a big issue.

    i'll research again for the fixes to all these problem.. but like i said i already have.

    Here goes another 5 days of my life.... - I figure that i'll learn some more php and how elgg works.

    I'm trying to learn how elgg works but the lack of specific support and the problems with plugins isn't helping.

    overall, Thanks for your response. :)

    i'll try to fix all of them...

    @RVR... how come says wordpress in one of the topics?

    also, if is that theme available for people to download or did you just modify the facebook theme

    did you add another column or did you edit the two-sidebar.php?

     

  • " To Many problems To post!! " ?
    You're posting too many problems ;-o 

     

  • Well, I thought I might have missed the 3 discussions your started, so I checked out the activities to see what exactly you had already asked. Actually, I did not completely missed them but I denied myself to reply as I wouldn't have been able to post any positive advice. Maybe I should have posted this sooner as you complain to have wasted 5 days on trying to get Facebook-like themes working:

    What I would have said earlier and do say now: all Elgg Facebook themes are indeed crap - that's my personal opinion for several reasons.

    Generally speaking: why trying to make your site look like Facebook? Do you think that's what people are looking for? I would say that they will rather stay at Facebook instead of feeling attracted to another site that looks exactly the same. Additionally, there's a chance you get into troubles with Facebook if you offer a Facebook-clone site. Why risk that?

    More specific: the Facebook Elgg themes are very, very heavy themes. They not only change the look of your site via modifying CSS but are also trying to change how the Elgg site normally works in some ways to make it more similar to Facebook. The problem is that this is achieved by replacing a lot of the Elgg core views. The basis for the first Facebook Elgg theme - that is where the modified views are based on - is one of the first Elgg 1.8 versions. Since then the Facebook theme has not really progressed much. It was never without errors even at the beginning - more meant as a showcase of what is possible with Elgg theming. But it will rather work even worse now as compared to back then as the modified views of the Elgg theme have not in any way taken into account of the progress of the Elgg core engine. If you only look at the many many comments posted on the download pages of the various Facebook Elgg themes you will notice that many people have problems with these plugins. There are much more issues posted on these pages as on other Elgg plugins.

    If you have installed the Facebook theme right from the start without taking a look at how Elgg works without it, I not surprised that some things seem to confuse you. The default widgets are meant for the profile and dashboard pages of the users. The normal layout of these pages is 3 columns. It's only the Facebook-clone themes that change this default layout - and of course completely ignore the default widgets settings options because the Facebook plugins are simply incomplete and buggy. The default widget layout is also rather meant to provide new users with kind of a sample profile page and dashboard page. Better that than a completely empty page. Of course, they should still be able to customize these pages according to their liking. If you want a fixed configuration of widgets for these pages for all users then try out the Widget Manager plugin. It offer among other things exactly that.

    Regarding your complaints about the support: everyone here is just like you. Nobody gets paid to provide support. It's all voluntary: users give back their knowledge. A lack of replies is rather a sign that nobody has any solution to offer for your problems. Especially, with a 3rd party plugin the first person you should ask is the developer of this plugin as he has most likely the best knowledge about this plugin and if there's a bug might even release a fixed version instead of simply telling you how to fix it. And why do you want to post on the user's messageboards here instead of asking directly on the plugin pages if you have a specific question about this plugin? Better ask in the open as not only the single developer will read your question but others might rely even sooner. Additionally, the answer is not only visible to you but to others who might have the same problem too.

    If you would look beyond the rim of your teacup, you might notice that generally speaking most questions get answered here at the community site quite soon indeed. You might also want to try to take a look at other plugins apart from only the Facebook themes. I would say most - if not all - of your problems are connected with the Facebook theme plugins. But you can't expect to have your perfect site ready in just a few days. First you need to get used to how Elgg works - installing plugins, configuration etc. - as you would have to get used to any social network engine. Take your time browsing through the available plugins and test out what you think will suit you - read the descriptions and comments and there shouldn't be much difficulty to understand what they are about.

  • @ iionly

    all Elgg Facebook themes are indeed crap - that's my personal opinion for several reasons.

    Thank You!!!!!

    Additionally, there's a chance you get into troubles with Facebook if you offer a Facebook-clone site. Why risk that?

    yeah, the guy who made a facebook theme like for wordpress got sued lol

    tried Widget Manager plugin :) Kool plugin

     

    I apprecaite the time you took to write the feedback. Thank You and i will 4get about these themes and go with one's that actually work. Furthermore, i will be posting How To: discussions on some of the things in elgg work, that i have found :) I'll be sticking to elgg... Thank You for all your replies.