Elgg 1.8 out of the box.

I might be way off base as I'm late as usual. Anyway, I'm seriously starting to think what my site will be after the move to 1.8 and what will be the dividing factor between it and the bazillion other sites in cyberspace. Yesterday, a new plugin was put up for foursquare. Going to the demo site the first thing that crossed my mind was there was nothing to differentiate this site from a joomla site (or perhaps Drupal) so I ran to the sourcecode and saw that it was the Elgg 1.8-svn version. I kind of like the feel of Elgg 1.7 with those rounded boxes and open spaces so I was wondering is this what comes out of the box.

Now I admit total ignorance so please don't miscontrue the foregoing as a critique of what is possible. The onus is on me to up my skills and that's what I'm doing a piece at a time and why I'm taking steps to get with the 1.8 program. With some creativity and good coding I feel I will basically be able to get what I want and need. But two words have popped into my head since seeing that demo site - newbies and future.  Newbies tend to take what is given them, if that's the default. And is the future to be the past and what everybody else is doing?

Content is king I seem to believe so who cares about a look or feel?  Sort of!!!! Perhaps!!!! I have no way to articulate what really swirls in my head. All I know is I don't know what it is, but the future is out there and it ain't what we have seen or see now in facebook, google, joomla, drupal and all.

How about it guys, those of you who are looking at 1.8  and beyond and already theming and building plugins. How does the future look to you? Will we be able to break some boundaries?

  • The pattern has been to introduce a new theme every 3 versions (1.0, 1.5, 1.8). A theme is just a theme and if you like the default one of 1.7, it won't be hard to implement it on 1.8.

    What you saw on that demo site is the theme coming with 1.8. It doesn't matter too much what it looks like. What matters is that it introduces a css framework that makes it much easier to theme. It should be much easier for themers to express their creativity. I'm interested to see what they come up with.

  • @Cash, Can you tell me when exactly are you goint to fix the database bug in the svn version, because i am going through the 1.8, and from that 15 -20 days none of your versions is working. It gets installed but site crashes as soon as is add an entity (any entity).

    Is this a know bug ? are you going to fix it before the beta release or i have wait for first beta to come

    Thanks

  • @Elgger - a little off topic, no reason not to create a new topic next time...we are unaware of any database bug in the svn version that would cause a site crash (unless you're talking about this: http://trac.elgg.org/ticket/3232)

  • @ Cash Same kind of problem I faced when I tried lastest SVN  1.8 with mysql 5.5.10 and php 3.3.9.1.  But when I test with Mysql 5.1 then it run fine the latest SVN I intalled and tested as a demo site , everyone can check it on assemblein.info it is working with mysql 5.1 and php 5.2

  • Thanks Cash to remove pg from url in latest SVN 1.8 release. All urls are looking clean and fine now.

  • I wonder how do I download Elgg 1.8 SVN release on ubuntu ... :/

  • @Cash, :) will keep that in mind next time (creating new topic). Yes i was talking about that bug. Hope it gets fixed soon. And one more thing, (again off topic), is it really have to do anything with the mysql version.

    Thanks.

  • @pauloortiz changing the css,feel and look in the new elgg site is very easy.I converted some wordpress themes for different sections of elgg(diff themes for blogs,pages,etc..) but I directly modified the core.So I will make them into plugins after my exams are over and then you can see how flexible the elgg's css framework is.By the way one of biggest feature of the elgg's css framework is that it uses OOCSS framework of nicole sullivian.

  • More accurately, it is inspired by and borrows parts of Sullivan's framework.  Enough to the point where we felt it necessary to include the license.

  • Getting clearer, Anir. and Evan. The name Nicole Sullivan is new to me. Thanks! Went and found this on her blog: My prediction is that you’ll be writing complex layouts in less than 24 hours without adding a line to the CSS file.  Hmmm! That might get somebody's attention.

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