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[Phill Moderator PhillJoin date: February 2014Posts: 7013Downloads:40Uploads:77 Thanks: 917 Thanked: 2206 times in 1818 posts]

#473005

Glad you managed to update your modules.

As for the message it does say what is wrong in a round about way. Problem is putting too much of the guides in messages results in bloating the extension. Most people want their files as small as possible and JA try to oblige. I will try and suggest a little change or two to try and make it a little more explanatory.

Having said that the documentation for the plugin is quite good these days. There is also plenty of information in the forums detailing how to setup the extension.

[wdburgdorf Friend wdburgdorfJoin date: June 2012Posts: 26Downloads:1Uploads:1 Thanks: 3]

#473012

Thanks, Phill. I actually never read any documentation. It has so far not been necessary for a simple update.

By “extension”, do you mean the JA Extension Manager? Maybe I need to read the documentation to figure out what the purpose of that component is. Sure, you want to protect your stuff. But I’ve never seen that done in such a complicated way.
And sure, bloating an extension is no good. But forcing people to use an extension that isn’t really necessary isn’t great either …

Meanwhile I read “Help and Support”. This is quite well written, clear enough. I can see that some developers may find this extension useful. If it became simpler to use and didn’t need a lot of setup work, uploading things to a repository etc. perhaps I might find it useful, too. But for the time being I’d rather not have to use it.

Then, there’s still the problem that Joomla does not seem to recognize updates done through that extension, as they still show up in the normal Update Manager.

[Phill Moderator PhillJoin date: February 2014Posts: 7013Downloads:40Uploads:77 Thanks: 917 Thanked: 2206 times in 1818 posts]

#473016

Nobody is forcing you to use it. You can still update extensions in the standard joomla ie downloading them from here then installing them over the existing one.

The extension manager is a great tool. There is no need to upload anything to any repository, all JA extensions are available already, you simply need to point the extension manager to the right place and setup your permissions. It offers the advantage that you can roll back in a single click should one of the updates cause unwanted problems. It also provides easy access to see any changes you may have made to your template for instance so you can make sure they are not affected by updates. There is a lot more to it than that but really, it takes less than a minute to set it up and from then on just a click or two to update all your JA extensions. It is there to use should you wish, but you do not have to.

[wdburgdorf Friend wdburgdorfJoin date: June 2012Posts: 26Downloads:1Uploads:1 Thanks: 3]

#473017

Thanks, good to know the standard way is still possible. My fault not to have tried.

Updates may work with a single click for JA extensions, but with all other extensions it doesn’t, as far as I tried. Something needs to be loaded into a repository first. Or did I miss something in the docs again?
Pointing the extension manager to the right place is the next problem. I’d need to figure out where that place is then find the correct form and enter the correct location. Extra work. It’s a different place for the local installation than for the server, so I need to keep track of that. You’re used to it, so you don’t need to think much. And you probably have mostly JA extensions installed. For me this is, first of all, just added complexity.
For rollbacks I use Akeeba Backup. Quick, easy, reliable.
To be able to see changes is nice, I have not tried it. Not sure how much better that will be compared to normal version control that I’m used to.
If all of those features work with *all* extensions, I’d find that miraculous.

A suggestion: add a filter to the list of extensions, to show different kinds of extensions, such as JA / non JA / with/without repository / uptodate/outdated etc. I have now 6 pages of extensions in that list, difficult to find anything …

[Phill Moderator PhillJoin date: February 2014Posts: 7013Downloads:40Uploads:77 Thanks: 917 Thanked: 2206 times in 1818 posts]

#473018

The filter is already there, just type JA in the search box and voila, you see all the JA extensions.

Take a look at the wiki to understand why JA created it – http://wiki.joomlart.com/wiki/Main_Page

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