*snarl* Hating on Joomla
Jul. 31st, 2011 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexI am presently hating on Joomla.
This is a typical example of an overdesign, obtuse, geektastic system. It's like trying to cut bread with a 357-bladed Swiss Army knife - somewhere in there is probably a tool that might be useful for slicing bread but you're more likely to cut yourself and get pissed off than to find the tool you need.
The documentation is also written by and for geeks. If you know it already the documentation makes sense; if not you are SOL. Let me give an example: "This element renders a single module given by the name and title attributes". OK, in English please? I believe what it's trying to say is that the content of something pointed to by those name/title bits will be included in the page. However, you couldn't prove it by me, nor by any actual examination I've done. Joomla sites are template built and they nest include on include on include so the ability to trace from something that actually appears on your page to a bit of HTML, CSS or PHP you actually need to edit is effectively zero.
Of course, if you had built the template that included the include that included the include that included the fuckwhothehellknowswhat then you'd know what bit to edit. But then, if you understood this crap to that level of detail you wouldn't be frustrated trying to find one single line of footer text to change. I now understand why there's an entire industry of Joomla consultants because mere mortals cannot do this. All I want is to have a site, and tweak its content now and then, not memorize entire encyclopaedia's worth of arcana that I will use 3-6 times/year.
Admittedly this isn't helped by not having a shell access. If it was my machine I'd just fucking grep the files until I found the thing I needed, but since I'm using Dreamhost I am even further shit out of luck. I know, I should have gone with some other CMS or some other hosting option but fukkit. The number of hours it would take me to pull all this content apart, tarball it, get another site set up, untarball there and re-edit every fucking page so it appeared properly on the new site is more than the 3-6 days of aggravation/year I have now. I think.
We won't even start on the bit where clicking the button to change to SEO-friendly URLs breaks all the CSS. WTF
ETA: got it set up so I could ssh in and fixed the simple problem in seconds. Now to tackle the bigger problem...
This is a typical example of an overdesign, obtuse, geektastic system. It's like trying to cut bread with a 357-bladed Swiss Army knife - somewhere in there is probably a tool that might be useful for slicing bread but you're more likely to cut yourself and get pissed off than to find the tool you need.
The documentation is also written by and for geeks. If you know it already the documentation makes sense; if not you are SOL. Let me give an example: "This element renders a single module given by the name and title attributes". OK, in English please? I believe what it's trying to say is that the content of something pointed to by those name/title bits will be included in the page. However, you couldn't prove it by me, nor by any actual examination I've done. Joomla sites are template built and they nest include on include on include so the ability to trace from something that actually appears on your page to a bit of HTML, CSS or PHP you actually need to edit is effectively zero.
Of course, if you had built the template that included the include that included the include that included the fuckwhothehellknowswhat then you'd know what bit to edit. But then, if you understood this crap to that level of detail you wouldn't be frustrated trying to find one single line of footer text to change. I now understand why there's an entire industry of Joomla consultants because mere mortals cannot do this. All I want is to have a site, and tweak its content now and then, not memorize entire encyclopaedia's worth of arcana that I will use 3-6 times/year.
Admittedly this isn't helped by not having a shell access. If it was my machine I'd just fucking grep the files until I found the thing I needed, but since I'm using Dreamhost I am even further shit out of luck. I know, I should have gone with some other CMS or some other hosting option but fukkit. The number of hours it would take me to pull all this content apart, tarball it, get another site set up, untarball there and re-edit every fucking page so it appeared properly on the new site is more than the 3-6 days of aggravation/year I have now. I think.
We won't even start on the bit where clicking the button to change to SEO-friendly URLs breaks all the CSS. WTF
ETA: got it set up so I could ssh in and fixed the simple problem in seconds. Now to tackle the bigger problem...
