Ok, so elgg is really good and i see the benefits but how long does it really take to master???

Forgive me, i'm not slagging off anything or anyone but it seems such an overkill to customise the simpliest of tasks with elgg.  Like the home page for example,  say i want to display a line of text and a couple of pictures and use css to do this,  with normal php coding its a very simple task.  With elgg you have to dig tons of folders, work out what the hell functions are doing and try to locate one of many css files that are cached before they even load.

How long did it actually take people in this community to get to grips with how elgg works, and is the cost of learning such a complicated system really beneficial?

as an example, i installed a test site, added a facebook plugin which is all cool and works however doing my own stuff just seems such a massive hassle to do the very simpliest of tasks.

 thoughts?

 

I have been at this for a week now constantly and i'm at the point of trashing elgg completely.

 

  • Ok, i've been testing elgg and phpfox all day.

    Here's my findings:

    task: change the size of the avatar displayed on a user profile page .

    Time to complete:

    ELGG: 6 Hours

    PHPFOX: 1min

     

    I've had the same amount of time to work with both platforms, unfortunately Elgg is even worse than I originally thought.  The task was a very simple task, however to achieve the results ELGG was an absolute nightmere.  I had to dig through folders, scripts, plugins, core files, and eventually after trial and erroring I managed to complete a modification that took less than a minute to do with phpfox.

     

    I truelly think ELGG is a great system for someone who wants to spend the next 6/12 months working it out.  But in this day and age I just dont have the time so PHPFOX is the way to go for me.

     

     

  • It takes two lines of code. You could have just asked in the community.

    elgg_set_config('icon_sizes', $new_sizes);

  • I didnt ask the community because I feel this kind of modification should be a simple enough task to do without having to ask.

  • this is a tricky way for advertising for phpfox which is not Open source...

    @millzee can you post the same in phpfox community? LOL

  • I would say you need one month to get to know Elgg and half a year to master it, similar like with every other platform - including PHPFox. Time may vary from person to person :)

     

  • oh, and after over three years I'm still learning :>

  • i agree w/ Mike 100% ++ learning in a experience that varies from master to master. we all taste the same food in our own special way. i've been in computing sciences for about 40 years now and the most that i have learnt so far is how much i do not know, and so i try harder. the coding part is easy. what i find really difficult is not whining when things don't go my way.

  • If you want to learn a function with elgg, use reference.elgg.org. That may help you out.

  • @vazco thumbs up.

    on my personal experiences one month is enough to learn elgg basic thing when you are well known in html,css and some basics of php. And more or less than 6 months it takes to understand the complete elgg framework. And learning always matter...

Beginning Developers

Beginning Developers

This space is for newcomers, who wish to build a new plugin or to customize an existing one to their liking