HI Guys/Gals,
I hope this doesnt come across as being rude or offensive to anyone, but I cant seem to find out whats going on with the project and from many posts etc it appears that the project is currently on hold, possibly even stopped.
I see a lot of criticism leveled at lack of support, lack of news, lack of community etc. All these things could be improved by better communication, and maybe a slightly nicer looking website :)
Being an open source project we could take this project and fork it, particularly if it is dead (and there is no official recognition that it is).
However PP has built up a solid reputation, and a known userbase and so it seems daft to fork this great project.
If there is interest I am proposing that I would be interested in taking over the Project Management of the PP project and hoping to take it to the next stage, but I cannot do this without knowing the current state of play. Who if anyone is still working on PP, any devs still interested, designers, marketers etc.
Let me know what the state of play is, and if your interested in being part of this project.
Looking forward to hearing from you all.
regards
Paul
Probably you are right, there is no active official development of PP. I guess that the bigest issue is current PP architecture problem. PP isn't a easily scalable product. PP does not support components, modules or plugins like Joomla. Due that its really complicated to extend PP.
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New ProjectPier edition available!!!
ProjectPier GoalPanel SF Edition.
Hi guys, I finally after a lot of searching found this project. I was very happy until I readed the forums. I think this is a great project, and it could be re-launched and designed from scratch. I'll be happy to collaborate as I really need something like this. Maybe starting a new project with a modern php framework (symfony?) and a correct design could launch this project to the top this year.
Paul, if you fork the project, please post the info here.
Greetings,
Im going to leave this up for a few weeks and see how much if any response i get from devs, etc.
Then make a decision, it would be a shame to loose PP.
It big task to start new software project.
I strongly agree, that new version of PP should be based on some framework,
to adapt on some existing (Zend, Symphony, etc) or to write a new one.
Probably there is no need for very complex core engine. Maye to create new core engine and make it easily expandable. And really lightweight as possible to make core installation pack as small as possible. I think for current functionality the PP is too heavy. If to create lightweight app, then might be smart to not use some heavy framework.
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New ProjectPier edition available!!!
ProjectPier GoalPanel SF Edition.
Hi, I'm Jon. I originally forked Activecollab into ProjectPier. I spent a lot of time and money advertising PP to get it off the ground. Before ProjectPier, people were having the same discussion about forking ActiveCollab on the ActiveCollab forums. At the time the ActiveCollab project leader/developer warned that whomever forks the project had better have a lot of time and long term commitment because it's not an easy endeavor. He was right. After I built the first release (0.8) of ProjectPier I realized it was more time and effort than I was able to give. The original group of volunteers spent more time debating decisions than actually getting anything accomplished. I turned the project over to Ryan after the initial release becauase he was an active member at the time (and also wanted to fork AC, so we joined forces). Since then Ryan has become extremely busy and unable to keep the project going. Personally, I don't think a project like this can be run on a part time basis. Like Paul, I want to see the project get back on track and can now spare some time to get things going again.
I also warn that PP is extremely complex and I don't think anyone has the time to rewrite it on another framework or in any way start from scratch. Believe me, many have offered, some have offered to work on the project full time, companies have offered to dedicate multiple full time developers to the project. None of these offers ever result in actual code being written and submitted back the community for testing. This is why I'm always skeptical. It's great to be gung-ho about the project, but lets be realistic also. There are many code patches that have been submitted that have never been reviewed or tested, this IMHO is a great place to start picking up the pieces. We have to review and test these and determine if they belong in the roadmap/feature list before a new short term roadmap can even be written.
For me biggest problem is that PP isn't easy to expand. To much core code hacking seems to be needed something new to get work on PP. I'm 100% sure that writing something new is big tasks. I think that the best strategy for is:
1. Enhance the existing version to make it more easy to start to use and no new functionality.
2. Start to plan new architecture for very lightweight core engine, that offers very easy ways to expand system.
For example Joomla case. I like Joomla because its easy for me to manage. If i need some new functionality I don't have to change any core code. Just adding module, component or plug-in. But i think that Joomla core engine can be more lightweight.
Instead of developing hard PHP application, there is also option to do a lot of improvements on database engine level. MySQL 5 offers lot of functionality, like procedures, triggers and so on that its more easy to write on database based app now for web. Few SQL queries can do a work of many pages of complex PHP queries. So i think its not too complicated to get new PP to create. Anyway its not the deal of nearest future. Better is to do it with careful planning.
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New ProjectPier edition available!!!
ProjectPier GoalPanel SF Edition.
Hi Jon,
Thanks for your comments, the amount of comments is a little dissapointing at the moment so its good to have some more input.
I would like to do anything that avoids forking it, as like you say there is plenty that still needs testing.
The product as it stands fits a niche and with some bugs sorted out, will suit a lot of people, yes it needs some more features, but these could probably be added.
I have a few ideas for the project, but I am waiting to find out what the core team plans for this site etc for the short term. Maybe a forking of the name, new website, new branding but with the same codebase may allow us to make a clean break, but I would rather do it under this name and site albeit with a refresh :)
Paul
First of all I would like to thank you all for ProjectPier. It is really great project management application.
Holyfield, you wrote that the bigest issue is current PP architecture problem. I agree that if ActiveCollab and ProjectPier were written in raw PHP, it's just a question of time when it will have to be rewritten into some suitable framework. But IMHO that's not the biggest issue.
The biggest issue is that this project needs much better leadership. I mean that if there is slow progress caused by wrong architecture and lack of active developers on one side, and plenty of happy, excited and loyal users hungry for new features and faster development on the other side, then task number one for the core team is to allow and motivate these users to participate. The worst thing the core team can do is to ignore the community trying to participate because "we are so overloaded by coding in wrong architecture". The most important issue at the moment is to bring a vision for the project, offer a hope for early enhancement by inviting and igniting more people to participate. Switching to better architecture, faster development, nicer looking website will be just some of consequences of that change.
Paul is offering to lead that mission. I would expect much more support and encouragement for him. This project should move forward. It has enormous potential, but it needs to be grasped well.
Thank you guys.
Yeah, I would venture to say that you're right. I think that this comment and the idea for adding the 'comment notify' module to this Drupal site are great contributions to this project, so thank you for that.
Certainly the communication channels for the project are not stellar, and the non-existence of a current, publicly-accessible, on-line code repository was the first issue I fixed when I joined the project.
Anyway, I believe that some great improvements are ahead, and I will certainly do my best to make them happen.
--
Dan Bernardic
http://www.bernardic.ca
Unfortunately the development information seems out of date, can you please post a link to the repository?
Yes, the Github repository is at https://github.com/dbernar1/Project-Pier
Happy hacking! ;)
--
Dan Bernardic
http://www.bernardic.ca
Thanks! =)
Well, PP was silent for 2 years but we are rolling again. I have no idea who Paul is but I do not subscribe to his architecture issues. As far as features and involvement: there is an entry on my blog where people can comment on what they would like to see in 0.9.
Furthermore, language translations are being picked up all over the world, i just received the chinese and italian translation and we have another developer on board since 2 weeks.
I think we are on the move again.
That's great news! I am a happy PP user, I use PP in several project teams, so I am going to look around and find some way to contribute.
We are definitely rolling again, and with a whole new team. I just want to point out that this thread originated almost two years ago, when things were very different. phpfreak has done an excellent job producing version 0.8.6, on time and with many new features. Regarding the website, I'm in the process of upgrading from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 which will force a redesign as well. Yes, we'll be adding either the "comment notify module", "subscription module" or other similar module once we evaluate all the options. I'll be asking for help/input on this soon. This will include an initiative to rewrite the "development" pages as well, I'm aware they have outdated information, as does the manual. Thanks to everyone for all the efforts in getting this project going again.
-Jon
Great news, Jon. I have some skills with upgrade from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, including theme upgrades, so don't hesitate to ask me for help.