Workshop notes comments

Thursday 24 June 2004 3:52:08 am

Hi guys,

After having read the workshop notes (http://www.ez.no/community/news/workshop_notes), I would like to suggest some changes to how the various functions are prioritized. I don't know if ez is open for this, but I'll go ahead and do it anyway, and perhaps some of you will agree with me.

I would like to see the following functions moved up to the "High priority" list. Actually, there are others as well, but I've tried to limit my list to the functions that I belive we would all benefit from having implemented ASAP.

USABILITY

Sort template
The template editing process is currently horrible, and, in my opinion, probably the least userfriendly set of functions in eZP. One could argue that only advanced users spend time editing templates, but this is also where advanced users spend MOST of their time (at least I know I do). Usability improvements could severely cut down the time spent on template editing.

SEARCH

Ranking
IMO, ranking is _the_ most important part of any search engine, so I would like to see it moved up to high priority list where I feel it belongs.

SHOP

Subscription based products
Nearly half of the clients I work for, or at least, get in contact with, need a way to handle subscription based products. Currently, there's no easy way of doing this in eZP. I belive the demand for such functionality is greater than the ez crew might think.

GENERAL

HTML datatype
This is so easy to implement that I don't see any reason not do do so ASAP. And though many of us have already created our own datatypes for this purpose, it would be great to have a HTML datatype as a part of the standard distro into which one could tie any WYSYWYG HTML editor.

Bulkmail
The community has been screaming for this since the release of v. 3, and it's probably on top of the list of missing eZPublish features as far as our clients are concerned. I know at least my clients are turned of when I tell them that there's no standard bulkmail functionality (and, sometimes, to the point of choosing another CMS).

Sincerely,

Eirik Johansen
http://www.netmaking.no/

Sincerely,

Eirik Alfstad Johansen
http://www.netmaking.no/

Thursday 08 July 2004 5:32:52 am

What I recall from the workshop, is that the single most important feature, as far as 'Search' is concerned, is 'Ranking'. So I was a bit surprised to see this only ranked 'medium priority'. But then, after reading the definition of priority, this may also mean that it is recognized as extremely important, but simply cannot be realized in eZ 3.5, whereas 'Search from here' is perhaps less important, but easier to implement and therefore given higher priority.

Anyway, as Eirik also wrote, 'Ranking' is the most important feature, and I would be happy if the eZ crew could find a way to have it implemented in 3.5

Thursday 08 July 2004 7:06:42 am

Thanks for pointing that out Paul. I agree, it looks like a great spec that will prove extremely useful once/if it is put into place.

Alex

Alex
[ bald_technologist on the IRC channel (irc.freenode.net): #eZpublish ]

<i>When in doubt, clear the cache.</i>

Thursday 08 July 2004 7:50:27 am

Me too I'm a bit surprised.

ez crew, is it possible to already add an empty ranking framework in 3.5? We could then already hack in a more elegant way.
The code for "search from here" is very easy and implemented in our case in the pagelayout templates as

<form action={"/content/search/"|ezurl} method="get">
<input class="searchbox" type="text" size="16" name="SearchText" id="Search" value="" />
<input class="button" name="SearchButton" type="submit" value="Search here" />
<input type="hidden" name="SubTreeArray[]" value="{$module_result.node_id}" />
</form>

Best regards

-paul

eZ Publish, eZ Find, Solr expert consulting and training
http://twitter.com/paulborgermans

Wednesday 21 July 2004 2:26:50 am

Hi Bruce,

I was unhappy with the ez search engine and created an own "plugin" with some extra features too. But my biggest problem was not the search result but the search speed. (I've more than 60.000 content objects ...)

So I decided to use mngosearch - http://search.mnogo.ru - at my user sites and my plugin only at the admin-site. (By the way - mngo search is also used by http://www.mysql.com (!!))

Kind regards,
Emil.

Best wishes,
Georg.

--
http://www.schicksal.com Horoskop website which uses eZ Publish since 2004

Wednesday 21 July 2004 4:12:39 am

Hi Bruce,

I use the "standalone version"
e.g.: http://www.kuh.at/cgi-bin/search.cgi (german version)
or http://en.laschkolnig.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi (english version)

There is a php-extension of mngosearch available, so it should be possible to create a "real plugin" for ez. Unfortunately I have no time to create one at the moment.

So for the protected areas I use my own plugin (which is a "extended version" of the original ez search engine).

Kind regards,
Emil.

Best wishes,
Georg.

--
http://www.schicksal.com Horoskop website which uses eZ Publish since 2004