mrartist wrote: Hopefully CB and everything related will all get a bit more obvious and simplified once CB 2.0 arrives but I suspect the documentation aspect will take more time and still be confusing and leave us full of of "what-ifs", "whys" and "what-fors"?
If I might suggest, when CB 2.0 does get here, leave this version of the site as an archive to refer back to and start afresh concentrating on explaining each plugin's benefits, possibilities and usage examples. Perhaps a visual navigable map/diagram of how everything is interrelated would go a long way to help old and new users get to grips with the potential of what is obviously a very clever, but somewhat convoluted set of solutions.
Starting afresh with CB 2.0 would clarify the current state of CB and what can be done now, with today's Joomla rather than encompass the last 10 years of Joomla and CB development.
Wow, I'd forgotten I'd written the whole of the above, and that was 20 months ago!
Having been away from Joomla and CB for a while, exploring this site again and contemplating extending my subscription which runs out soon, I was hoping to see a bit more cohesion and perhaps it updated for the transition to the new CB 2.0 world.
Back then (and before!) I see we were all eagerly awaiting CB 2.0 and I recall asking/reading questions about GroupJive updates, getting everything all bootstrapped up, responsive, with drag and drop frameworks and fully swinging with a leaner, cleaner CB. With all of CB's (GJ's and CB Subs, etc) thousands of configuration options either being refined or removed (such as historical/legacy Mambo roots and connections), and the outdated web articles, old confusing website content and links dropped so that we can all move on and enjoy a more "connected" visual idea of what CB and it's extra permutations can create.
However, I find the site and it's confusing array of articles, files and downloads is still pretty much as it was. Granted the News section is better these days (as are the news emails we get). But the site is still essentially the same. It needs a radical update and sorting out. It's not "responsive" for a start, the menus still look odd when they are too long (see missing black part of bar on "CB Solutions") and why is the bottom menu item always looking malformed (too short).
Elsewhere, there's still the array of confusing menu places to go which often have old content, references or links that now mostly just take us to the Downloads page, or if unlucky to some other variation of the page (e.g. GJ seems to have two versions or doesn't take me where I wanted to go at one point). On top of all that, you've still got the old articles from 2005/6 in Support>Articles and the FAQ section really needs some serious help with a total of "0" FAQs for CB itself.
Don't get me wrong, I want Joomlapolis and CB to be great and I can see all the little tweaks you have done to some of the visuals, but when it comes to the logic, the simplicity and the explaining of what everything is and what it can do, it's still a plate of spaghetti and it doesn't inspire me to think that configuring all those things in CB, GJ, CB Subs and all the extras will be any easier than it ever was when I'd spend countless hours, days, weeks and months just going through all the settings trying to work out what they all might do, how to set them up in the best way, to then find I need to tweak code, alter bootstrap, change css, construct complex regex for whatever before it could vaguely do and look like what I was wanting.
I appreciate that a lot of that old legacy stuff was maybe (hopefully) left behind in CB 2.0's final recent release, and hopefully the responsive bootstrap font-awesome nature of it all is probably working a lot better now so I'll give my freshly downloaded copies of everything a test-drive and see how it feels again in the CB driving seat once again. However, I'm a little disheartened to see things like GJ and CB Activity still need to be rewritten. Looking at the GJ download it's now two years old and I know it is claimed to be working with CB 2.0, but to use it would feel a bit like trying to stuff a CD in to an mp3 player. From what I recall I spent ages tweaking all the individual bootstrap elements in it and I'd rather have a new clean shiny version to use before I clutter up my new CB 2.0 with something that feels like it shouldn't be there. I guess GJ will be quite a while yet as well as few other things like a CB 2.0 manual (which I couldn't find on the site anywhere).
I know you guys work really hard on all of this and as far as I can tell it's just basically the three of you running things. so it's no surprise it takes a long time to evolve and come to fruition. However, I really think it's time to fix the website, bring it bang up to date, start connecting all the dots (for us as users) and create some visual logic on how CB 2.0 and all its parts and extras work and link together.
Oh, and I think it would be really important to start collating all the tips, tricks, hints and workarounds into one regularly updated searchable help resource. As well as adding in lots of obvious useful tricks and tweaks, each time you spot a great solution to a problem in the forums, condense it to a simple set of ideas in the help file. For example I recall not having a clue how to verify a certain email address structure on the registration form and Krileon gave me a neat little instruction in regex that I could use, before that I hadn't a clue about even that possibility and there are so many other places around CB that you all know and we don't that could be summarized with simple lists of possibilities and ideas for us to use.
Last thing, I think it's also time you updated your profile images and get rid of that yellow frame around things, it makes you all look too small. Some nice snazzy black and white photos would be much more up to date.
Many thanks for all your hard work for at least 10 years!
