Very much alive...
First, I'm sorry you're having problems. But I think you're wrong about a number of items.....some that I personally have to take issue with...
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> The first I ran into, was a lack of decent skins, or whatever Tiki chooses to call them. That is annoying, but otherwise minor. And, to be fair, sucky or not, it comes with more skins than any other program I have looked at.
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Have you seen the the Tiki Themes site? There are some fabulous options available. Additionally, Tiki makes it very easy to edit the CSS or TPL files to create your own theme. Speaking only for myself, I've created custom looks for most of my Tiki sites.
Personally, I agree that (for the end-user), Tiki's default interface and templates pose a substantial usability problem. For my part, I've started blogging about some of my tweaks, mods, and fixes, in an effort to help folks improve their Tiki.
> The second, would be a complete deal-breaker, if any other program had all the features and ease of use I need. Tiki, even here, has a very bad habit of logging me off while reading or composing posts. I have already lost several hours of writing because of this. I can use any other site or forum, and never have that problem, so it is unique to Tiki. I posted about it on another heading, and the problem, as well as many other posted problems from other users, were completely ignored.
Actually, it was answered more than a month ago (by me!). In fact, you inspired me to hack an even more elegant solution.
> That is a very bad sign right there. Whether or not you can help with a problem is not the issue. The issue is in ignoring those who have problems. That shows a lack of respect for those using your program. Whether its a true lack of respect, or just an apparent lack of respect hardly matters to those being ignored. I'm sure many have already gone someplace else where they will not be ignored.
Again, speaking only for myself, I try to answer n00b questions as quickly as possible — even those that are answered in docs and FAQs. I will ask you this... have you even looked at the FAQs? Or the docs? I personally have contributed to the FAQs. They truly do represent the most frequently asked questions.
I'd also strongly encourage you to go to the Tiki IRC channel. I have personally had nearly all my questions answered. The folks that monitor the channel are fantastic.
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> Even that problem I could work around, if need be. When I choose to be, I can be a royal pain where the sun doesnt shine, and can be very effective at getting attention.
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> But then comes the most serious problem, and one that cannot be gotten around. Is Tiki alive or dead? Outside of this forum, I have seen no sign of life at all from Tiki, since last October. So this project, if not dead, sure seems to have been in a coma for half a year now. Combine that with the fact that version 1.9.4, the version I am testing, has known security issues, with no known patches or updates available, according to the security sites I checked with. I came here and found there is a newer version, but found no info about that security issue (Cross-site scripting.).
I suggest that you read the release document for 1.9.7. It states "..better protection against XSS..." I believe that, for security reasons, the specifics of the issues and their fixes are not discussed in the clear. Please see TikiSecurity for details. If you're doing testing, I strongly recommend testing the current version — not 1.9.4.
>But even if that issue has been fixed, no new activity in six months is a very bad sign.
The change log clearly shows that there was checkin activity on March 2, 2007. I'm not sure about your calendar, but according to mine tht is only 3 weeks — not "six months." The CVS monitor shows 100s of commits so far this year. I'm confused by your suggestion that Tiki is "dead"...
> If I were to install Tiki as my CMS, how can I be sure it will not be abandoned tomorrow, and be a target for every hacker and script-kiddy the day after that? Whether it has what I need or not, it would be pointless to use a program thats a dead fish. (You may be interested to know that BitWeaver, a derivative of Tiki, seems to have been dead even longer. Nothing from them since last September.)
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> So while my question might seem stupid here on this board, it is not so stupid from where I sit.
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> I expect the knee-jerk answer to be "No, we are not dead.". But if this project is not dead, then it needs some very serious face-lifting and PR work done on it.
Here, I totally agree with you. This issue has been raised before (once by me!). FWIW, I also feel that Tiki's #1 problem is that it doesn't sell well. Content-wise, there are very few CMSes that can match Tiki but, as the saying goes...
>Because as things stand, anyone doing a cursory check on this software would conclude that the project is dead, and look for something more active. And anyone like me, a user instead of a developer or programmer, would head for Drupal or WebApp instead. Compared to Tiki, those are poor second choices. Drupal is aimed at developers, not users; and while WebAbb is aimed at users, it doesnt yet have features to compete with Tiki. To be brutally honest, if WebApp did have the features, I would not be here writing this, I would already be using WebApp.
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> Should be interesting to see what, if any, reaction I get from this.
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How's this for starters? I see that you've only posted 2 questions in the forum. The one that I answered last month, and this one. If you are having problems or issues, don't hesitate to ask. I, for one, will do my best to help... that's the power of an opensource community.
-Rick
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