Update : This article has been updated.
We at JoomlArt have been working for the past 5 months to improve upon our site infrastructure at the same time use the opportunity to implement various improvements that our members have been asking us. Yes, this includes major changes to our backend scripts used for forums, downloads or access control. There are also proposals for changes in membership plans and to offer single product purchases.
Big changes at JoomlArt - See how they affect you
Big changes at JoomlArt - See how they affect you
Why change ?
As you may be aware that we use a combination of various scripts to render services on our site. Our Joomla site is tightly integrated with Vbulletin (forums), Amember (membership and access control), Kayako (ticket system) and few more minor scripts. It worked really well for almost 10 years but now we need to phase them out as maintaining them is no longer practical as their newer versions are too bulky and no longer play well with each other.
For forums we tested out discourse and Nodebb, Nodebb is good but integration with our other scripts and maintenance was bit tricky. We even thought of putting everything back to Joomla but that would have made our Joomla site very bulky and we prefer to keep it light and various systems working in synchronization but independent of each other, that ways it is easy to maintain as well as if something goes wrong its limited to affected script only and the whole site does not go down with it.
Our approach :
We invested almost 2 months in trying our various scripts, integrating them but we were not satisfied and wanted a simpler system this time, which would be stable for years to come and play well with our Joomla based site. Our colleagues at DesignWall.com (our wordpress team) offered to get it all done using some of the wordpress scripts and even take it many steps forward by integrating and offering tight integration with all of our sister sites. So once this is all done we would be having a much simpler but powerful backend system running services not only for JoomlArt but also for DesignWall.com, UberTheme.com and ThemeBrain.com .
- Phase 1 : JoomlArt.com gets upgraded first.
- Phase 2 : Integration with Designwall.com, UberTheme.com and ThemeBrain.com
For today, I will just give you a brief oversight of some of the main sections we have been working on and you can help us do it right by giving us your feedback.
1. Main Site
New Homepage UI
- It will be running latest Joomla.
- Some UI changes and performance improvements.
2. All new forums :
Membership Plan
- It all looks the same in the frontend but is based on bbpress.
- Would be simple but faster with basic required features only.
- Customized to suit our requirement and workflow.
- Much more... explore it as a beta tester (signup below).
3. Membership and subscription :
Membership Plan
- Now possible to offer single products too.
- A faster checkout and better workflow
- Wordpress based extension replaces our Amember script
- Single dashboard to access all the services and profile.
- Scalable to integrate with our other clubs.
- Signup as beta tester to see it evolve.
4. Download system :
New download system
- No longer in the forums.
- Better layout and easy to use.
- Access changelog, comparison with older versions, older versions in one place.
Get 50% OFF by being a beta tester :
We invite you to take part in our beta testing program. As a participant, you can share your ideas. When you join our Beta Testing Program, you’ll enjoy the following benefits:
- First hand look and feel of the new system before its open for all.
- The pleasure of putting devs to shame by finding bugs.
- Receive 50% OFF coupon (for any club , any product or service).
- Free membership for active beta testers.
Limited slots only. Click below and join our beta tester program.