Elgg 1.8 speed

Is elgg 1.8 faster than 1.7 ?

If yes, why? what's the difference?

Thanks to all elgg friends.

  • The primary focus for devleopment of 1.8 was improving the UI/UX, fixing long standing bugs, and standardizing code and API, so there were no explicit improvements to speed beyond those that come with better written code. 1.9 will focus on performance enhancements.

  • Smith

    Thanks Brett.

    I 'm a little confused, please i need an advice.

    I closed my site a few weeks ago because unfortunately my same idea is to be launched from a billionaire site, after careful consideration I have decided not to go forward.

    Fortunately I had better idea, small but good. Now, in tha past 9 months I studied and learned a little about elgg 1.7.6 I have many plugins and changed many parts of the site, small and large changes in html and css, not much of php .

    You will release  elgg 1.8, I like it, has some things that I want in my site, I think it is also more fluid in through the pages, perhaps because there are no plug ins or other reasons.


    My question:
    I would work on 1.8 from settember. Should I start over from scratch? customizing everything, all the pages, all installed plugin, translate in my language, I spent the last 9 months to understand, explore and customize elgg 1.7.6. It will take me a long time and I'm confused because the 1.9 will focus on speed and i'm interested very much to speed improvements.

    So do you think it's better to wait for 1.8? or wait for 1.9? or continue working onmy site that is already customized, configured and tested?


  • Smith

    Is 1.9 the last version of your project?

  • If you haven't launched yet and plan to launch in the next 2-3 months my advice is to use 1.8.

  • I think i messed my site up a few weeks ago in 1.7 =).

    Anywho, I did dive into installing 1.8 and it seems very different from 1.7. If you view the source all the CSS have 'elgg-' branded added. So i doubt your old CSS will work.

    You'll probably have to re-learn most of the things in 1.8 to navigate it and most likely your old plugins needs re-doing.

    As Brett suggested, it is probably better to use 1.8 because support for 1.7 will die like the others. If your plugins are all customized then you should probably stay on the one you customized it for unless you want to re-code everything for 1.8.

    If you're talking about speed then it probably won't make a differences in the short-run but if you want to continue upgrading with standard elgg (with future releases) then it will in the long-run. If your site is slow then you probably want a bettter host =)

  • It's not overly complicated to migrate well-written plugins from 1.7 to 1.8. Cash wrote a blog post about ways you can ease the transition when developing plugins.

    The biggest changes in Elgg 1.8 are frontend. The API on the backend side is mostly unchanged, though we standardized a lot of functions and simplified or improved others. This means you will need to adapt your plugins for 1.8's CSS (which is simpler than 1.7), but you can probably keep the backend logic the same.

    For the record, the migration from 1.8 to 1.9 won't be as complicated as 1.7 to 1.8. We made a decision to fix a lot of long-standing bugs and bad practices that had been around since the early 1.X days, so the upgrade to 1.8 is more complicated than others.

  • Smith

    Thanks Breed, for your explanation.

    I read somewhere that you develop through 2.0, then stop, but I might remember wrong. If true, do you think would be unwise to continue to work on and wait for 1.7.6 to 2.0 directly? Maybe it will take years, I realize, but I also think it will be the absolute best version of Elgg, and be a good ground on which to build, customize, and carry out a great site.

    Considering that I have not yet launched the site and i would like to do so within the next 3 months ...
    Last advice. What you would do in my place?

    1. You would continue to use the modified version of 1.7.6?
    2. You would work on 1.8 from scratch and then launch the site?
    3  You would launch 1.7.6, and expect the 2.0
    release to work and update the entire site (database migration and data) ?


  • It's Brett, but you're welcome ;)

    2.0 isn't on the radar yet. I definitely wouldn't make plans based on Elgg 2.0.

    If I were you I'd port my custom plugins to 1.8 and use that. Things are so much easier and smoother in 1.8 that it makes 1.7 feel clunky and uncomfortable to work in. It's really not complicated to port a plugin to 1.8, so you won't have to start from scratch.

  • Smith

    hehehe, ok great, I will do that!

    Thanks again brett ;)

Feedback and Planning

Feedback and Planning

Discussions about the past, present, and future of Elgg and this community site.