Demo site sample?

Hi,

I was wondering if there's any documentation for setting up the demo site. I have been looking around but haven't found anything. I'd like to set up a site that looks similar to the demo site on joomdle. If there's any documentation or sample code for this I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Not really. The demo site was just put together using the standard features of Joomdle and Joomla with a few 3rd party components for rotators, banners, etc. - there is nothing out of the ordinary on it.

We have been asked this question a few times now, so I wonder if there would be some benefit in creating an installer with the template, modules and sample data. Would this be of benefit to yourself? Is this something you would be willing to pay for? How much?

I think what a lot of people may be asking for is a finished install document. I'm a developer; have been for 11 years full-time and I had a difficult time trying to set all of this up! I am in the process of writing a complete set of install/set-up instructions.

I also understand that this is still a BETA project and expecting anything more than what has already been supplied is unreasonable. What I am trying to pass along is the reverse understanding; while the Joomdle team understands "The demo site was just put together using the standard features of Joomdle" the rest of the world that did not develop Joomdle simply will expect step by step instructions in response to their queries.

Thank you for developing this product and I hope you continue to expand and improve upon it.

Hi Marc,

Thanks very much for your feedback. The installation document at this time is the Wiki. It currently covers the complete installation instructions and probably 80-90% of the problems that may come up. We have chosen to take this route rather than say providing a pdf document, etc. for ease of maintenance on our side.

Specifically, for the demo, we have chosen not to document exactly how we have put it together, ie which Joomla Extensions, etc. not because we are trying to be difficult or hide what we are doing, but rather they are just "standard" Joomla modules and we do not wish to prescribe nor influence which "non Joomdle" related modules a given developer / administrator should be using. Of course those particular extensions that are integrated with Joomdle are documented in the wiki. Also, key to us at this time, is that we rather not be fielding questions related to those particular extensions or design / layout issues - Joomdle itself is already keeping us pretty busy considering Joomdle is available at no cost.

Unfortunately / fortunately, Joomdle is a rather complicated extension due to the integration needs ie CURL / XML_RPC, web services, and of course the networking side. In fact, I would dare say that most of the JED extensions would rather simply, technically, comparable to Joomdle. Typically, as you would know, almost all of the extensions found in the JED, can be installed almost exclusively through the extension manager with little or no knowledge of anything beyond Joomla and in most cases, I do not even need to worry about css, look & feel etc.

Thus, I do appreciate the struggles that even technical developers are experiencing as networking, web services, etc. is something they are typically not exposed to.

Naturally, we welcome any contributions to assist with the up keep and/or improvement of the documentation.

Thanks again

Chris

Wow, thank you for the quick response. Maybe I should've been clearer in what I was trying to state; I am not referring to how to use Joomla!, Moodle, Kunena, CB, etc. I am referring to clear instructions on how to set up Joomdle with these components.

Your instructions on the wiki for setting up Kunena is sparse and leaves off at two Moodle settings while failing to remind folks WHERE to find those new settings. Instead the user is left to scouring Google and your forum here trying to find that answer.

Now, once I found those last two I was left scratching my head trying to figure out why no one was allowed to post a new topic to the new forum. Turns out that Moodle is setting the first course forum activity as a Main Topic. Well, you can't post to a main topic nor make any replies. Moodle always sets the first course forum activity as a News type and no one is allowed to start new topics or post replies to this particular forum. However, when you add a second course forum activity, it gets added as category of the topic News and now regular forum activity choices are available to everyone that is allowed via their respective role permissions.

Ok so this falls into both areas, Kunena regular support and Joomdle support; I would still try to answer it as if the inquirer doesn't know diddly!

I've been supporting clients for over 10 years and have found that it is just easier on me and the client if I answer the question as detailed as possible. Yes, it's a time vampire, yet...

I feel I may be making enemies and I'd rather not; what I would like to offer is my help with this project; currently I am finishing an installation and set up manual for Joomla 2.5.8, Kunena Forums 2.0.4, Joomdle 0.9 Beta, Moodle 2.4.1+ (currently setting up a script to run Git to get the updates), VirtueMart 2.0.18a and CommunityBuilder 1.9.

I can send this over for review once I have completed it. Hopefully in the next week.

Lastly, I think the main question on every bodies mind is why won't you allow access to the back end of this demo so we can look at the settings you have used? I think about 80% of these questions could be self answered by allowing it.

Once I have my automatic site reset up and running, I believe I will allow dashboard access to the community at large.

I want to make sure I have said thank you again and let you know that this was a big time saver. Wasn't looking forward to writing something similar from scratch.

Naturally we welcome any feedback especially as it pertains to improving the installation & configuration instructions. The reason we set up a wiki for just for that ie most people know a wiki means everybody can help. Unfortunately, there has been only a handful of people offering to provide assistance over the past few years and most of that has been contributing some code or providing assistance in the forum. There has been some translations of the wiki into other languages but those quickly get out of date. In fact, sadly, there has been a few cases where instead of providing assistance to improve Joomdle and it's documentation, the community member(s) took the code, set up their own demo,download sites and forums and started charging for support. When they couldn't answer the questions they posted them in the forum for our support. Not really in the spirit of community - but each to their own.

Our choices are limited considering Joomdle is not a company and only has 1 developer and 1 "helper" both of who have full time jobs and families to support. Thus there will be times when the features are not as well documented as they should be. Only feedback will help to improve this.

The other challenge of course as you point out, the time require to support customers is a killer especially when being detailed. The difference perhaps between your experience and Joomdle is that Joomdle does not have paying customers nor do we ask for any money to manage the forum. I have run rather large customer support centres in the past right throughout Asia and understand the desire / need / benefit of quality support. Thus as much as possible we try to answer every question in the forum in a very reasonable time frame - better than most paid extensions in the JED. I have often thought about hiring a person to manage the forum, test and manage the documentation and naturally charging a subscription fee to cover the costs. However, with the spirit of community we have held back from doing that hoping that people would come forward to contribute. Sadly, only a few have - I can count them on one hand.

Back to the demo. There are three primary reasons we do not provide back end access:
1) I did know how to do this until recently and wanted to ensure integrity of the installation. Previously, I did not have sufficient time to explore the JED for J1.5 solutions. With J2.5 and ACLs this makes it much easier but still we are all busy with our real jobs with very limited time for much else. My intention, is to do this for the J3.0 demo that I have been building.
2) The current demo is based on very old Joomdle, Joomla and Moodle code. Opening up the configuration would potentially mislead people with the configuration options causing more frustration and confusion. As per my previous point, I have been slowly building up a new J3.0 demo and am just waiting for a few extensions to be released with J3 support. Once it is ready, we will likely have both versions for playing.
3) Thus far out of the thousands of communities members, we have only had a handful of people who have requested to see the back end. Thus, much less than 1% and clearly not a priority. Similarly, we have only had, I think 3 or 4 requests asking us how we built the demo ie what extensions. Still not really sufficient to warrant the effort of setting up the appropriate scripts and back ACL tools required with J1.5.

With regards to your automatic site, dashboard, and instructions I do not really understand the purpose of this. Wouldn't it serve the community better to help ensure the current wiki / documentation is up to date and maintained and/or perhaps providing some expertise and guidance with the demo, support forum and of course development of new features? Creating another place of reference and support will certainly create disparity and confusion? Or perhaps I have misunderstood your initiative.

Thank you for clearing the air. I had no idea the traffic was so little. I wanted to set up a local demo where I had more freedom in what I can show a prospective client. Your demo, as you have pointed out is out of date now and even the demo I have hacked together will be out dated soon.

As far as the instructions: also slightly out of date and my thoughts were to contribute to this project by sending you an updated (for J2.5+, etc) set of instructions with current screen shots, what I think IMHO is a more logical install flow and filling in some of the details for those less experienced with Joomla, Moodle etc. and send it to you via .doc, .pdf and let you decide how to proceed with it.

Obviously, I am setting up a demo to show prospective clients and the two main reasons are:

1. I can't show the dashboard in your demo.
2. Clients want to "see" that I have the skills to setup a working version.

BTW I too am a force of 1. I do web development full time and am completely self taught. I love coding and really love the direction everything is going so I absorb everything I can.

I had J3.0.2 working with Moodle 2.4.1+, CB 1.9, HikaShop Starter (I prefer VM2 and they haven't updated to J3 yet) and the Kunena forums wasn't ready either. So I went back to J2.5.8 instead. If you don't have any issue with HikaShop and don't need the Kunena forums (for now) then I would go with a J3 build.

I have a working version set up now and I have even added in the ability to set Member level discounts. When I have it fleshed out I will email you a link to look if you want. Contact me if you wish to further discuss how I may be able to help with Joomdle.

UPDATE: I have the functionality that I am initially looking for set up. I have added Akeeba Subscriptions to the build and can now apply Membership level percent based discounts. I have set up a demo that I think will hit most of the basic points for Businesses that want to offer online training, certification and re-certification, K-12, and higher ed.

Hi mark,

Are you able to create detailed document for joomdle. if yes can you provide me that. I am really struggling with getting it worked.

Hello, I sent a copy of that to Chris and I know there have been changes to Joomdle since I put it together so I cannot attest to the accuracy at this point. Anyway, I'm not wanting to ruffle any feathers here and I am sure Chris would be more than glad to help and maybe send you a copy or maybe give me his OK to send you a copy of my version of the install instructions. Thank you in advance for understanding.

Hi there,

No feathers ruffled. After reading through the document, I could not find any significant difference between the source Wiki provided here and the word document you sent me. In fact, the majority of the content was an extract of the Wiki pieced together in 1 word document, with some specific "stuff" for your own implementation. Personally, I find this less effective from a usability point of view as there are many possible configurations that need to be supported. As mentioned, from Joomdle's perspective, I felt the effort to compile this would have been more worthwhile to contribute back to the existing Wiki where updates are required.

With regards to the accuracy, for those pages copied straight over, you are correct some of them will be outdated as we maintain a live Wiki updating various pages as and when required. Thus I cannot provided a realistic assessment if the word document is out of date or not.

@Sudarshan Kumar Given you are struggling, have you considering posting your issues for help? Thus far I notice that you have asked to see the demo which is not likely to solve your problems given the various configuration options. As said, the demo is as much about Joomdle administration as it is about Joomdle configuration.