improvements to the site

Moved to "General and Technical Discussions (Enquiries and Suggestions)" forum.
Thanks for the suggestions.

kensup wrote: 1) On the navbar, change the color of the "My Page" button when there are new posts on the wall.

Don’t know if Joomla supports this. I’ll ask Kari to check.

kensup wrote: 2) On the navbar, change the color of the "Mail" button when there are new private messages.

see 1)

kensup wrote: 3) Make Connection Requests its own button on navbar.

Probably possible. I’ll ask Kari to check.

kensup wrote: 4) Make logout button on navbar.

Definitively possible (I hope). I’ll ask Kari to implement it.

kensup wrote: 5) In any given page, poll the server every 60 seconds for updates. For example, on a forum post, check for additional replies and display them if any. On any given page, check for new PMs, connection requests, and wall posts.

Not going to happen. The server is at its limits already, so we are not going to poll data every 60 secounds.

This sugeestion is on our list of possible improvements for a time when we are on a nice, new & fast server with vast resources.

kensup wrote: 6) Show user-specific notification total (PMs, connection requests, wall posts) in title of the page, like Facebook. For example, (2).

see 1)

kensup wrote: 7) If a user has subscribed to a forum topic, generate a notification when there is activity in it.

Is there already. You simply need to subscribe to your topic.

kensup wrote: 8) Get rid of upper left notification grid.

Well, this only is plausible if 1), 2), 3), 4) and 6) are implementable.

kensup wrote: Generally speaking, integrate as much AJAX as possible.

Yes, this is a great idea as AJAX as a middle-layer reduces server-load, theoretically! But, we will need

1. a capable AJAX-programmer
2. Joomla-plugins supporting this

As you might know, AJAX is not a technology or language such as PHP or HTML. Rather it is a collection of the XMLHttpRequest-object which not all browsers support, XML-data objects which not all browsers support, the DOM and JavaScript to bind it all together. So what happens to users using browsers without XMLHttpRequest-object (just take Internet Explorer, there are 3 (!) different implementations of the XMLHttpRequest starting from ActiveX through to a pseudo .NET-implementation) or deactivated JavaScript or falsely implemented JavaScript (such as Internet Explorer)? And, the main drawback of AJAX: the theory does not work in practice, where you send the browsers JavaScript into a busy-waiting-loop, which - if not implemented properly - constantly ask the server whether the XMLHttpRequest-object has been filled, leading to a higher server load! - The only benefit remaining is the higher inteaction-comfort for users, which - and I’m honestly very sorry about this - does not outway the stability and security of the server.

Anyway, some parts of the site already use AJAX or AJAH, for example, but not limited to, the member-list on the left or the textareas in which you enter your forum posts.

Believe me, AJAX is nice and I would like to see more of it on Hey-AI, but it needs to be done properly. I know what I ’m talking about as I teach this stuff at the Saxonian University of Cooperative Education.

kensup wrote: AJAX Programming / Joomla Plugins:
Without having even touched Joomla before, I would guess that one could hack it to integrate it with external code, without going through the trouble of authoring a Joomla plugin. With libraries like jQuery nowadays, it rather simple to create cross-browser compatible AJAX. I've made plenty of AJAX methods using it.

Och one... Let’s say you hack Joomla and do it your way. You do know that you will need to apply the same hack each time there is a Joomla-update? And then you have to modify your hack if they change the interfaces of Joomla? - E.g. this is exactly the reason why the self-delete funtion does not work. Joomla was updated, they changed the inner interface-structure and voila, the self-delete hack did not work anymore.
Ouch two... Please look into the concept of plattform/framework-programming and its deficits.

ILoveCreampuffs wrote: Are you pretty happy with Joomla as a whole? Any comparison to Drupal?

Joomla is a pain in the ***. We would like to migrate to something easier modifiable, but that takes time we do not have.
Also, we would like to go away from Apache to Ngix or something lightweight like that, but that also takes time and reconfiguration of the entire backend.
Lastly, we would also like to use a CDN like Amazon in order to improve performance for everybody, especially the users in the US, but that costs money we do not have and, once again, time we do not have.

So summarizing: No, we are not happy with the situation as it is now.