NYCPHP Meetup

[bz-gmort at beezifies.com]

Dan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I fell in love with Joomla about 10 months ago. I'd love to meet on 
> the 23rd. I'm a non-PHP type. I went to a few NY-PHP meetings just to 
> meet Joomla people, but I didn't meet any. Where are we meeting? The 
> Delancy at 6:30?
>
>

Yes, we will be combining the summer party with a meeting to get to meet 
other Joomla users and determine which week of the month we want to meet on.

Right now it looks like any week but the fourth.  My own leaning would 
be the second or third week of the month, only so that there will be at 
least a 3 week gap between the 23rd and the first official stand alone 
meeting.  In fact, I will try to send Hans a message later tonight to 
find out if any of those weeks would be a problem for starting in 
September(I'd like to start ASAP to keep the ball rolling)

I'd like to have some sort of presentation for the first independent 
meeting, so I'm soliciting feedback now for the types of presentations 
people are interested in.

I've primarily listed choices for items that I can speak to directly 
since I figure the chances of our getting anyone more experienced at 
speaking and willing to do so for the first month or two to be slim.

 From my own focus, the main idea would be to discuss how/what I did 
related to the topic with an existing website.  As what I've done there 
has covered the gamut of setting up a theme club template, modifying the 
template to accomodate specific needs(generally adding at least 2, if 
not more, module positions to the layout, as well as removing some 
"features" I am not enamored with myself, and making some changes to the 
layout of some of the module positions), installing and configuring a 
number of modules and components, debranding said modules(and setting up 
a credits page), integrating components together(primarily making a 
component aware/use the secrurity settings of a subscription module as 
well as making custom components and integrating them with the original 
components), and creating a component.

I've found that with Joomla, while all of the above might sound like a 
lot of work, it tends to be a lot less as you only have to deal with 
small, manageable bites at a time - as well as being able to borrow at 
least 75% of my code from existing modules(this does have copyrwrite 
implications)


I'm not sure how other people feel about theme clubs, my own feeling is 
that while I COULD do the same thing, provided I wanted to spend the 
time doing it(over a week to do for a decent layout).  At the end, I'd 
have a decent Generic template tuned for a specific need.  With an 
established template club, I get at least half a dozen templates for 
different purposes, for minimal cost(there is the issue of picking a 
template club, though.  As there is a great amount of reuse from 
template to template.  I've seen sites with over 50 templates, that when 
I really look at them turn out to be variations on 2 or 3 templates with 
different graphics and color schemes.  I don't want 50 templates, but I 
do want at least 5 unique templates that are generic enough to be used 
on many different sites).    I still end up modifying and changing it 
quite a bit, but time wise it turns a large project into a manageable 
one.  (and to be honest, their ui design skills are better than my own, 
so why not leverage it?)

I've only dealt with 1 theme club, so how that compares to others I 
don't know.  I do find the community of the theme club has been very 
helpful when it comes to layout and presentation.  Moreso than the 
general Joomla community . I can understand the difference, as a 
programmer, I find layout and presentation to be mindnumbingly boring 
and I have little interest in making minor positioning changes.  What's 
worse, is when someone comes along who is clearly getting paid to do all 
this and than demands free help on a forum.   With the theme club, 
everyone there is doing it commercially so they lack the general 
attitudes you find on GPL focused forums.  And the employees of the club 
itself are amazingly helpful in handling things outside the scope of the 
template itself. 


If I want coding help regarding a component, I ask on a component 
forum/  If I want layout help, I ask on a theme club forum.  If I want 
general coding help, I ask on the Joomla forums and don't get any replies.

(and keep in mind, when I say help, I don't mean "write my code for 
me".  I mean: I would like integrate this component/extend some 
functionality.  What is the API or function call for the base function I 
should be using/modifying.)