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greetings from an elgg coder - some questions about oxwall | Forum

Topic location: Forum home » Community Exchange » General Chat

ura soul Jan 27 '14

i have been coding an elgg site for several years here (www.elgg.org) and for various reasons i have decided to look for a different platform to use to create my social network on (infinite eureka community).

since oxwall is one of the small number of open source packages that i am aware of that can match or exceed elgg's feature set - i am interested to learn more and am inquiring here if anyone is willing to answer some questions i have about oxwall - both the software and the foundation agreement?

the main reason for me leaving elgg is that i perceive that the group there is simply not operating on my 'wavelength' with regards to the decisions they are making and the direction that they are taking the platform. without going into lengthy details - the issues are wide ranging, from technical issues through to belief systems and overall intentions of the project as a whole.

so i am wondering how i can find out if the situation with oxwall (foundation) is an improvement for me and whether it is a better home for my site/coding. for example, one of the major blocks i have at elgg.org is that they are strict about what topics can be spoken about in the elgg community - and on top of that are evasive about questions i ask about some of their motivations; this does not inspire me with confidence about the levels of integrity there.
someone in the forum there informed me that a thread full of comments that highlighted the flaws in the recent oxwall build (1.6) was deleted from the oxwall community forum (http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/15724) and so i am asking here if anyone can confirm that and maybe explain what occurred there?

does oxwall have a presence on github? or is there an equivalent change management process in place that coders can access and provide fixes to?

also, i am interested in your comments about why you like oxwall and especially if you have also used elgg, what your comments are about the two in comparison.

i could produce many more questions.. for now i will stop here. ;)

thanks

The Forum post is edited by ura soul Jan 27 '14

Lech Sakhar Jan 28 '14

I am not sure if my thoughts can answer precisely at you are asking for but here are there :

Oxwall seems to be a very fair combination between business and open-source. Oxwall foundation and the team work/finance the core and developers build plugins. The team seems to be hermetic for both security and efficiency reasons, i believe. I have no information about that. The architecture of the software is deeply built. I have read the docs. If you think you are going to work like other open source projects close with the team I think you are wrong. If you are a coder you can build and sell plugins.

If they have deleted some messages it is because -maybe- it is bad for the image of Oxwall which is, as I said above, a good combination between business and open-source.

The Forum post is edited by Lech Sakhar Jan 28 '14

ura soul Jan 28 '14

thanks for responding here.

the choice of 'image over reality' and 'image over substance' is precisely the dysfunction i am seeking to not participate in.. so i will most likely not use oxwall at this timing. thanks again.

Steve Winter Jan 28 '14

Quote from ura soul someone in the forum there informed me that a thread full of comments that highlighted the flaws in the recent oxwall build (1.6) was deleted from the oxwall community forum (http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/15724) and so i am asking here if anyone can confirm that and maybe explain what occurred there?

I started several threads where in retrospect I was a bit too heavy handed so I deleted the threads since I had started them. A lot of the more egregious problems with 1.6 were caused by a very irresponsible lack of documentation. When strict upgrade procedures are researched here in the forums and followed it seems to work just fine. A programmer like yourself should not have a problem with it at all.

I like to hope that just maybe some of those responsible for the problems that haunted and tainted this release have learned from their mistakes. I believe that they all have the best of intentions and are working hard.

Some simple step by step documentation and a real open beta could have prevented just about every problem that I have read about here.

Steve

Lech Sakhar Jan 28 '14

Quote from ura soul the choice of 'image over reality' and 'image over substance' is precisely the dysfunction i am seeking to not participate in.. so i will most likely not use oxwall at this timing

Listen first to what they are going to tell you. Why don't you write directly to the team ?

The Forum post is edited by Lech Sakhar Jan 28 '14

ura soul Jan 28 '14

Quote from Steve Winter

Some simple step by step documentation and a real open beta could have prevented just about every problem that I have read about here.

Steve

thanks for clearing that up for me, steve. though i am actually having a problem with the lack of clear documentation too.

i use nginx as a webserver and when i search the oxwall documentation i see a page extolling the virtues of using nginx. yet so far i haven't found a config file for nginx anywhere that is intended to be used with this/any version of oxwall.
i do see the comments in the install notes saying that apache is a minimum requirement and i do see some threads in the forum contradicting that...

so... why the incongruity here?

this is not an issue that is unique to oxwall.. i am often finding that nginx configs are hard to locate - even for apps where others recommend to use nginx!

Quote from Honayn
Listen first to what they are going to tell you. Why don't you write directly to the team ?

when you wrote that the team is 'hermetic', i took that to mean 'air-tight' and not reachable. i notice now that you also wrote that you don't actually know.. so.. erm.. lol
with elgg, i go to the community for assistance since there is no 'tech support' there.. which is why i started in the forum here.

The Forum post is edited by ura soul Jan 28 '14

Lech Sakhar Jan 28 '14

Listen ura soul : I am sure if you spend some weeks you will appreciate the spirit and for sure you will not need a lot of help. The code is quite clear.

ura soul Jan 28 '14

thanks for the words of support. ;0)
i have installed oxwall with nginx now - there are forum posts here which do not show up in the site search, so i missed the nginx config that is available.

Lech Sakhar Jan 29 '14

Great ! You're welcome.

Purusothaman Ramanujam Feb 4 '14

They have in BitBucket and not in GitHub which is not good in terms of wikis and issue reporting features.

Also Oxwall team does not effectively use Git-based development model. They just push the code to Git when their local development is completed. These are my personal observation.

#10

Team

Alia Feb 7 '14

>>yet so far i haven't found a config file for nginx anywhere that is intended to be used with this/any version of oxwall.

We will add this to our docs next week. Thanks for pointing out.

#11

Team

Alia Feb 7 '14

>>does oxwall have a presence on github? or is there an equivalent change management process in place that coders can access and provide fixes to?

We have started this only recently. But will improve the process over time:
https://bitbucket.org/oxwall/public

>>someone in the forum there informed me that a thread full of comments that highlighted the flaws in the recent oxwall build (1.6) was deleted from the oxwall community forum (http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/15724) and so i am asking here if anyone can confirm that and maybe explain what occurred there?

As a general rule, team deletes topics only in 2 cases:
- spam topic
- same topic being created in several forum section. In this case we leave only one of them. Other get either deleted or get locked with a link to the topic where reply will be given.

I personally have not deleted a singe real topic over the past year being on forum.
Overall only users themselves delete their topics.

With regards to the future development plans.
You can always check where we are heading here: http://www.oxwall.org/roadmap
So our users usually know what to expect 1-2 years ahead.

We also came to the conclusion that it is a good idea to tell our user what we are working on right now in "Dev Diary" blog http://blog.oxwall.org/2014/02/dev-diary-february-6-2014 .

Finally, with regards to support. First of all you will not get a 24/7 support here. Oxwall is open source software and it is expected that you have some coding knowledge. Any issues you are facing are discussed on forum or in PM. If the issue is confirmed- we include the fix in upcoming build OR provide the fix on forum in case it is very urgent. If the issue is within the plugin and it is an urgent one- fix is added to plugin and plugin gets updated on Store. If issues are minor ones, we gather several of them before updating the plugin on Store. Overall, it takes up to 3 working days to get the response from us.

#12

Steve Winter Feb 7 '14

Quote from Aliia someone in the forum there informed me that a thread full of comments that highlighted the flaws in the recent oxwall build (1.6) was deleted from the oxwall community forum (http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/15724) and so i am asking here if anyone can confirm that and maybe explain what occurred there?

I deleted several of my own topics. None of my posts were deleted by the team. I deleted them myself of my own free will. I felt that I had been too heavy handed even though the points I made had validity.

Regards,

Steve

#13

Oxwall Software

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greetings from an elgg coder - some questions about oxwall | Forum