... P.S.

Why have form fields that are not searchable? Why is there not a simple search options using the form profile fields as a standard for the elgg core??  When I click "Members", I cant search for anyone using any of the form data that was entered. We need 3rd party plugins to get this functionality and they might break in version 1.8 or come obsolete ???   * sigh *

** --- My Rant is now finished. Any feedback or constructive criticism is welcomed --- ** 

how will be the river enhanced ?

@idiotter - Instead of being strictly chronological, entries with latest activity bubble to the top so you can easily see what's the most active or popular bits of the site.  It's already there and working in SVN trunk.

speaking of the SVN trunk - I noticed the new CSS in there. Anychance this new CSS file can be modded to suit and applied to elgg 1.7 in the hope when 1.8 blows us away with its awesome-ness we'll have theme's that don't need major adjustments ?

might be nice for the community to have access to the new river via the community plugins section perhaps?

Rock On!   =)

JB

The issue of plugins lagging behind the core system is always a problem. Contrary to your comment Sim2K, about paid-for plugins matching new core releases, this isn't always so. (Though when you pay for them, the developers usually offer a good level of support of course).

Stability, sadly, is something we just don't get these days. Projects evolve too quickly, and for various reasons it's unfeasible to expect plugins to always do so. I do think some tighter control over plugins is required, as Brett suggested, along with ways to flag whether a plugin is still being actively developed.

As an example of user frustration... I was going to use a well known CMS system for a new site, but found that a couple of essential features were only working well within the new Beta release. The Stable release date wasn't far off, BUT, the essential plugins I required simply did not work properly or failed completely with the Beta, and some plugin authors weren't responding to user questions. I ditched the CMS system.

As to the term 'Beta'; this is sometimes misused nowadays, seemingly to allow developers to casually explain away software design and/or coding failures. "You can't complain that it doesn't work as expected: it's a Beta version", they say, conveniently calling it 'Beta' for a year or more as an excuse for poor project management.

As an example of good plugin rules and practice, have a look at Drupal.org's modules section. I use Drupal for a couple of sites, and have never had problems with plugins, as their system requires authors to be very specific about versioning, use and instructions, bug/issue reporting and maintenance, and projection of ideas for future releases and upgrades. (Making Drupal do what Elgg does so simply turned out to be a bit of a nightmare, however, so for a social network Elgg wins hands-down).

Bit of a book - apologies! Looking forward to Elgg 1.8.

@James - 1.8 has much more than CSS changes...many views have changed.  I am planning to provide a compatibility layer for views to the extent that is reasonable, but it will be the theme authors' responsibility to update themes for 1.8 as the compatibility layer is mostly for plugins.  I know many of the more experienced devs have already started looking at 1.8.

As for the new river dashboard, it will be bundled with and require 1.8.  There are no plans to backport it to 1.7.  

Keep in mind that 1.8 is still a good 3 months away from a beta (standard disclaimers apply).

@Michael - The plugin repo needs some love...we all know it.  I have some plans to improve it, but as always, plans are the easy part ;)

The best way to keep plugins up to date is not demand huge changes to them when a new version of elgg is released.

The move up from 1.6.1 to 1.7 forced almost all plugin developers to reexamine their code to make it fit due to deprecated values. There was of course a valid reason for doing this, however it doesn't make things any easier for plugin developers who generally do it on their own dime. 

Furthermore the ratio of developers to leechers is drastically overbalanced. Compare the number of downloads a plugin has to the number of comments on it. 90% of people don't even say thanks. Certainly doesn't inspire devs to keep putting their free time in.

How to make it better? Well I think there are a lot of part-time devs out there (like myself). Writing a whole plugin I think is beyond me at this stage, but it doesn't have to be. Good documentation including somewhere where I can find the code to do what I want and just copy paste into my file instead of headaches over trial and error would make me want to try just that little bit harder. I know there is an example of this already, but it's not newbie friendly and puts a lot of people off. The majority of conversation on these groups and plugins is "How can I do this?" Create a quick find code repository for doing this and that, calling this function and that. get_entities_from_relationship... etc.

But you look at Brett et al working on future releases, and they don't have time to do this kind of stuff. It's up to us, but our organization is a little off. Teamwork is the key. Why don't we make a list of all the plugins/features we want to add to the core and get on with them as a community. Elgg is great, no doubt about it, but without the community to back it up with this plugin and that plugin the out-of-the-box result wouldn't meet anyone's needs. 

@Edward - seen you on here recently. Not a lot of positive comments coming out of you so far. I hope that can change. If you're disappointed with the current situation take a step in the right direction and think of a viable solution to the problem.

Out of interest how many core devs are there at elgg? It seems like not so many as I only see Brett on the community site. Dave seems to have disappeared. 

@T

RE: "..Furthermore the ratio of developers to leechers is drastically overbalanced.... 90% of people don't even say thanks. Certainly doesn't inspire devs to keep putting their free time in....." That is why I walked away from spending 8 free hours on Elgg Cummunity (++8 paid hours elsewhere) every day.. sometime about the middle of last year. 1% said 'thank you'.. no inspiration.. except a few who commented that I did **not how to code LOLZ ;-)

Case in point - Beauty theme uploaded some 10 hours ago. Downloaded over 20 times, 1 comment (me), and I didn't even download it!

Just a couple of quick points after reading new comments. One being that I hope nobody thought I meant Elgg developers and plugin authors are hiding behind the "It's a Beta" thing. Being very new to the Elgg community I wouldn't be so presumptuous.

Another point which made me think is regarding saying thanks, or even just commenting to an author when we use a plugin. I have done so already, but will be sure to provide thanks and constructive feedback in the future. Having worked hard on other free systems in the past and got little more than complaints from 'leechers', I know how it can be! My thanks in general to all of you who give freely of your time and considerable skills.