Uhm, Devel Guys!
Okay, I'm not telling anyone how to do things, this is just a friendly suggestion...
Just so everyone knows a little background on me, I've been involved with the BitchX project virtually since it started (I'm novalogic), I started Slashdot.org's Slashnet ircd, and I've been on a few other large projects.
I understand the pressure to release a new version, and put out new features so the project seems "alive and well", but there is a trade off with doing that, and Tikiwiki is suffering that trade off, bugs, and lots of them.
I'm not going to list them here, I will submit them to SF after I scroll through the list of 700 some odd ones that are listed in the tracker forum (perhaps they should be pruned when done, and listed as completed), at BitchX we actually created our own bug tracker which color codes submitted bugs, and lets people take the assignments. Red for undone, yellow for being worked on, green for finished, blue for unconfirmed.
But, if it was me, I would hold off on the release of 1.8 until everything was for sure done and fixed in the 1.7 releases. I actually rolled back from 1.7.1.1 to 1.7 due to annoying highly visible bugs on a site that I'm working with. One is the forum bug which is very annoying (see other posts in.this forum)
Now, I've implemented major releases (x.N) that contained minor release fixes (i.e. bugs) but the fact that 1.7.1.1 broke allot of things that worked fine in 1.7.1 says that much more pre-release testing is needed.
Tikiwiki is a wonderful project! There is no doubt that it’s the best thing out there for what it dose! But slow down a little, use the limited resources that you have to improve the quality control, and spend less time on adding new features. Everyone is going to ask for a new feature, and people will use your software even if it’s lacking a bell or whistle here or there...
However, they will not deploy a product that has allot of bugs, most of all visible ones. Its hard for a site admin to deal with back-end bugs, but theme errors which end users can see, and do complain about, is just embarrassing.
And test everything that has anything to do with something you change. If the shoutbox is changed, test the live support too, they are both modules that use the side menus. never know, a missing can cause problems in very weird places.
I hope noone takes this the wrong way, it’s just based on the impression I get from the way things have been progressing, and from past experience... I'm really looking forward to 1.8!
Peace
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Thomas J. Burnham