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Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?

  • Re: Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?

    Posted 12 years 9 months ago
    • Cliff Pfeifer wrote:
      In my brief experience with Zoo, I've only used it on a handful of sites - I think it's fantastic for creating portfolios, galleries, or any type of repeatable catalog type content. Once you set it up, it's pretty slick. I did my portfolio, a 200 page wine catalog and a sheet music directory with it in a fraction of the time it would take to do articles with custom coding. I think it's a great app for that reason..
      I think it's absolutely great for news sites too...the only thing missing could be the abundance of options that K2 offers for Primary, Secondary etc item presentation, whereby one can have different layouts for various articles within a single blog page...
      On the other hand, it's got better - and directly customizable - options for setting the order of elements in items in category views...
      Cliff Pfeifer wrote:
      However:
      - The free version is only useful if you want to use only what it comes with. If not, you'll want to have 100 hours to make custom changes and a great deal of PHP knowledge. It's not for beginners
      Despite being more limited than the commerical version, the free one - along with Widgetkit - has got so many features, which are so well integrated, it makes most of several content plugins for Joomla obsolete...
      One can build forms, galleries, insert videos, attachments, Google Maps, Disqus/Intense Debate comments etc...
      Even in K2 one will at least need "Allvideos", "SIG Pro", separate Joomla/K2 plugins to do the same job...
      It's very well rounded, no doubt...
      Cliff Pfeifer wrote:
      - The commercial version is very expensive for only 6 month subscription. The support was lackluster in my opinion. Their whole forum is locked down, you can't see it if you don't have a subscription -
      see how nice we are, everyone can read this post if they want to :)
      Yeah I've heard about this...these remarks tend to be very consistent over time too...personally I couldn't afford the support even if it was better priced...
      What concerns me is the lack of organized user2user support forums...
      At least K2 has that...but it lacks documentation (this is being addressed more seriously) and the support from the developers can be incosistent...sometimes they respond really fast and effectively, sometimes serious as well as simpler issues are not dealt with accordingly and communication - and timeframe - tends to break down...
      Still, if I run into an issue with ZOO or need a customization, then well that's it...
      Cliff Pfeifer wrote:
      - Updates are the bigger deal for me though. Especially since Joomla wants us to upgrade every year now and we'll be forced to keep buying this over and over again.
      Indeed, staying with core Joomla stuff is safer...the developers of any extension may be late implementing changes and there could be upgrade issues...
      But I had the impression that content in K2 and ZOO was actually easier to migrate to newer Joomla versions (provided the extension itself was made compatible)
      Cliff Pfeifer wrote:
      - I don't believe you can edit from the front end - maybe they changed this, it's been about a year since I've used it, but you couldn't before.
      Did not spend time on this, but after taking a look at the documentation, looks like it can be done now, albeit not in a very straightforward manner...
      Cliff Pfeifer wrote:
      - Once you put your content in there, that's where it is, in the Zoo DB tables, not the Joomla article tables. Copy and paste or DB table transfers, either way, switching back will take a lot of time if you have a lot of content.

      That's kind of the point, make a wise decision on any component you use for this. If you decide you want to do something else later, you'll have to do it all over again. Just my opinions and experience.
      That's a concern...but if Joomla falls short and a separate component is needed, I would feel more comfortable keeping them separate, instead of the 3rd party component sitting on top of Joomla core content...
      I had installed Seblod some while back and after uninstalling it my Joomla content was broken...
      Yaani-Mai Gaddy wrote:
      K2 is free & can be used in the back end & front end. I love it!
      I would love to able to use it as I wanted - especially after spending some time translating it and testing it - however it does have some serious shortfalls....most important for me are:

      1) the Item Image function...it makes sense to create copies of different size to be used for different views, but this can also cause the image dimensions to be overstreched...one is forced to seek high resolution images for fear of them lookign awkward and pixilated in "Large" and "Xlarge" size...the modal windows is also of standard/stable dimensions...again, it makes sense to prevent an image from taking up significant window real estate, but one size is made to fit all...
      Moreover, once these image copies are created, they cannot be deleted but only manually...
      2) making small adjustments, like setting alignment for image to center, left etc forces one to make file changes and overrides.
      3) It has locked the Gallery function for the Sig Pro extension...I find it kind of lame really...users could be made to settle for less features...still one has to use an archive file to create a gallery...ZOO has not such vices...
      4) Tags can't have punctuation marks, so one couldn't use "Yaani-Mai Gaddy" as a tag...
      5) the Pagebreak doesn't work! a horizontal line is inserted in it's place...
      6) No way to have repeatable elements of videos for instance, if more are to be used, unless a plugin is used or/and the code is altered...
      7) Order of elements can only be changed by overrides, makes maintaing over updates more difficult, but is also quite time consuming...

      This is what comes to mind at the moment...I have actually exhausted my patience with K2...seems more easy to pickup, but is more demanding to customize and maintain, at least for the simpler things that could be done through options...

      Zoo's shortfalls for me (up till now)
      - Haven't checked out the multiple Authors features of ZOO really, but at first glance they seem more limited...
      - No easy way to control the alias creation...in K2 I could set it to transliterate Greek characters into "greeklish" quite easily...don't know if it is possible in ZOO, which uses unicode chars for the slugs, although unicode aliases are disabled in Joomla!...
      - Haven't found an import from ZOO feature up till now...ZOO can import from Joomla and K2 but not the other way around...
      - Can't set up "related items" to be pulled dynamically from tags/meta-keywords, instead of being manually selected...
      - The lacking support mentioned above....
    • Last Edit: 12 years 9 months ago by Cretan Studies Association.
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    Re: Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?

    Posted 12 years 9 months ago
    • All good points. The best thing to do is to go with what works best for you and consider the future when deciding.

      I know it might be sacrilege to say this in a primarily Joomla based forum - and I never thought I would say this - but personally, I'll be using Wordpress for anything like this from here on out. It took me about a year to learn it well enough to customize it like this - but it's amazing what you can do, and it's all built into the core so no cross extension issues or other things to learn. Also, it's free, stable, great support forum, excellent detailed documentation and a million tutorial websites on every possible thing you can do with it. You can learn everything just by Googling.

      There are many, many other areas where Joomla is better than Wordpress - but this particular area is WP's greatest strength. Again, just my opinion, consider your options carefully :)
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    Re: Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?

    Posted 12 years 9 months ago
    • Cliff,

      That is good information to know. Hopefully the Joomla team will see these posts & take notes for future improvements to Joomla. Maybe someone familiar with these features (Cliff?) could make the request/suggestion in the Joomla forums for these features to be included in future versions of Joomla.
  • Re: Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?

    Posted 12 years 9 months ago
    • Let me just add to the disadvantages of ZOO that because of the way it stores content in the database (inserts many many extra chars and for Greek at least it converts them to another format with manifold as much chars) its mysql tables are more than double the size of the Joomla ones...
      My joomla content database table is 2.1mb while Zoo's item table (after importing articles from Joomla!) is about 5.6mb!
      Now that's something! Wonder how much this can affect performance, especially over time...those tables are gonna get HUGE!
    • You can call me George
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  • Re: Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?

    Posted 12 years 9 months ago
    • Cretan Studies Association wrote:
      Let me just add to the disadvantages of ZOO that because of the way it stores content in the database (inserts many many extra chars and for Greek at least it converts them to another format with manifold as much chars) its mysql tables are more than double the size of the Joomla ones...
      My joomla content database table is 2.1mb while Zoo's item table (after importing articles from Joomla!) is about 5.6mb!
      Now that's something! Wonder how much this can affect performance, especially over time...those tables are gonna get HUGE!

      I've never checked that. Sounds like a lot of useless I/O and database transactions.
    • Thank you,
      Jason

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  • Re: Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?

    Posted 12 years 9 months ago
    • Jason Kopacko wrote:
      I've never checked that. Sounds like a lot of useless I/O and database transactions.
      Well I actually contacted YOOtheme and to my surprise - had read reports about their neglecting to answer pre-sales questions - they replied within the day...
      Concerning this, they said this is the JSON format...

      I asked them three questions
      1) First of all, I see ZOO does not make use of the Joomla transliteration option for aliases as set in Global Parameters. Currently in Joomla IF "unicode aliases" are disabled, IF another language has been installed for Joomla and IF that language is the default one for the backend, unicode characters in the title (of articles, categories etc) are converted to latin characters automatically.
      ZOO, however, maintains the unicode characters in the alias/slugs, which is undesirable because various issues come up with the URLs. My question is
      - Can ZOO be made to use the Joomla settings for transliteration or use of unicode aliases?
      Their answer
      1) Currently ZOO only translates parts of the unicoded aliases. Greek and Chinese characters are left untouched. This is what most customers wanted. If you want to change this behaviour, you could take a look at the class in administrator/components/com_zoo/helpers/string.php. It contains the transliteration table.
      In fact, I have already combined the set of conversion of the above file with that of my Joomla's greek localise.php file and come up with the following code (works for me)
          /**
           * Get the transliteration array
           *
           * @return array Transliteration
           */
          public function getTransliteration() {
              return array(
                  '-' => array('\''),
                  'afth' => array('αυθ'),
                  'afk' => array('αυκ'),
                  'afks' => array('αυξ'),
                  'afp' => array('αυπ'),
                  'afs' => array('αυσ'),
                  'aft' => array('αυτ'),
                  'aff' => array('αυφ'),
                  'afx' => array('αυχ'),
                  'afps' => array('αυψ'),
                  'efth' => array('ευθ'),
                  'efk' => array('ευκ'),
                  'efks' => array('ευξ'),
                  'efp' => array('ευπ'),
                  'efs' => array('ευσ'),
                  'eft' => array('ευτ'),
                  'eff' => array('ευφ'),
                  'efx' => array('ευχ'),
                  'efps' => array('ευψ'),
                  'ifth' => array('ηυθ'),
                  'ifk' => array('ηυκ'),
                  'ifks' => array('ηυξ'),
                  'ifp' => array('ηυπ'),
                  'ifs' => array('ηυσ'),
                  'ift' => array('ηυτ'),
                  'iff' => array('ηυφ'),
                  'ifx' => array('ηυχ'),
                  'ifps' => array('ηυψ'),
                  '-b' => array('-μπ'),
                  '-d' => array('-ντ'),
                  '-g' => array('-γκ'),
                  ' b' => array(' μπ'),
                  ' d' => array(' ντ'),
                  ' g' => array(' γκ'),
                  'av' => array('αυ'),
                  'ev' => array('ευ'),
                  'iv' => array('ηυ'),
                  'ou' => array('ου'),
                  'a' => array('à', 'á', 'â', 'ã', 'ą', 'å', 'ā', 'ă', 'ḁ', 'a', 'α', 'ά'),
                  'ae' => array('ä', 'æ'),
                  'b' => array('б', '^μπ'),
                  'c' => array('c', 'ç', 'ć', 'č', 'ĉ', 'ċ', 'ћ', 'ц'),
                  'ch' => array('ч'),
                  'd' => array('d', 'ď', 'đ', 'Ð', 'д', 'ђ', 'δ', 'ð', '^ντ'),
                  'dz' => array('џ'),
                  'e' => array('e', 'è', 'é', 'ê', 'ë', 'ě', 'ę', 'ē', 'ĕ', 'ė', 'э', 'ε', 'έ'),
                  'f' => array('ƒ', 'ф', 'φ'),
                  'g' => array('g', 'ğ', 'ĝ', 'ġ', 'ģ', 'г', 'γ', '^γκ'),
                  'h' => array('ĥ', 'ħ', 'Ħ', 'х'),
                  'i' => array('i', 'ì', 'í', 'î', 'ï', 'ı', 'ĩ', 'ī', 'ĭ', 'į', 'и', 'й', 'ъ', 'ы', 'ь', 'η', 'ή', 'ι', 'ί', 'ϊ', 'ΐ'),
                  'ij' => array('ij'),
                  'j' => array('ĵ', 'j'),
                  'ja' => array('я'),
                  'ju' => array('яю'),
                  'k' => array('ķ', 'ĸ', 'κ'),
                  'ks' => array('ξ'),
                  'l' => array('l', 'ł', 'ĺ', 'ļ', 'ľ', 'ŀ', 'л', 'λ'),
                  'lj' => array('љ'),
                  'm' => array('μ', 'м'),
                  'n' => array('ñ', 'n', 'ń', 'ņ', 'ň', 'ʼn', 'ŋ', 'н', 'ν'),
                  'nj' => array('њ'),
                  'o' => array('ò', 'ó', 'ô', 'õ', 'ø', 'o', 'ō', 'ŏ', 'ő', 'ο', 'ό', 'ω', 'ώ'),
                  'oe' => array('ö', 'œ'),
                  'p' => array('п', 'π'),
                  'ps' => array('ψ'),
                  'r' => array('r', 'ř', 'ŕ', 'ŗ', 'р', 'ρ'),
                  's' => array('š', 's', 'ş', 'ś', 'ŝ', 'с', 'σ', 'ς'),
                  'ss' => array('ß', 'ſ'),
                  'sh' => array('ш'),
                  'shch' => array('щ'),
                  't' => array('t', 'ţ', 'ť', 'ŧ', 'τ', 'т'),
                  'th' => array('þ', 'θ'),
                  'u' => array('ù', 'ú', 'û', 'u', 'µ', 'ũ', 'ū', 'ŭ', 'ů', 'ű', 'ų', 'у'),
                  'ue' => array('ü'),
                  'v' => array('в', 'β'),
                  'w' => array('ŵ'),
                  'x' => array('χ'),
                  'y' => array('ÿ', 'ý', 'ŷ', 'υ', 'ύ', 'ϋ', 'ΰ'),
                  'z' => array('ž', 'z', 'ż', 'ź', 'з', 'ж', 'ζ'),
              );
          }


      2nd question
      2) Secondly, although I have checked the available settings repeatedly, I can't seem to find a way to have "Related Items" (either by Tag or Meta-Keywords) be automatically pulled from the database and displayed (in a customizable way, e.g. by creation date, higher relevance etc, or from one category or several) to the site visitor.
      ZOO allows for specific items to be selected/added by the author, but doesn't seem to offer the "Related Articles" feature as it has been implemented in Joomla or other CCKs like K2. My question is:
      - Can ZOO automatically/dynamically pull "Related Items" for a given item based on certain settings (from selected categories, by what order etc) ?
      Reply
      2) Please check www.yootheme.com/zoo/documentation/elements/related-items
      It can configured in the Assign Element section


      3d Question
      3) Last but not least, I have observed tha ZOO seems to use a complex system for storing content in the database. It kind of codifies the content but also converts all unicode characters to another "language". For example "Σχετικά Άρθρα" (="Related Articles" in Greek) is converted to "\u03a3\u03c7\u03b5\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03ac \u0386\u03c1\u03b8\u03c1\u03b1
      As a result ZOO database tables are at least DOUBLE THE SIZE of the corresponding Joomla ones (after migrating the content from J2.5). The content tables in Joomla make up 2.1mb of space while the Zoo item tables are about 5.6mb!
      This concerns me a little bit...I can't think how much the database will grow over time and how that may impact performance. My question is:
      - What does this particular codification of databases serve (the insertion of so many extra characters and the onversion of unicode ones) and how is this impacting site speed - and what steps is Yootheme taking to counter any such impart?
      Moreoever, to be honest, moving away from Joomla core content may be a necessity feature-wise, but i'd like to maintain the possibility of converting back if I am forced to for whatever reason and this particularity in database storage makes me uncomfortable, as it seems it would make such a forced move a very hard one
      .
      Reply
      3) The format is called JSON and in JSON the unicode characters are escaped as you've already observed. I don't think that this will impact the performance. Storing the item data in this format is what makes ZOO very flexible. Reverting back to Joomla won't be possible without a custom script. If you have a script like that, however, it will not have any problems reverting the encoded characters back to their unicode representation.
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    Re: Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?

    Posted 12 years 8 months ago
    • "Reverting back to Joomla won't be possible without a custom script. If you have a script like that,..."

      Very interesting, and where did you get this code? That costs extra then probably again!
  • Re: Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?

    Posted 12 years 8 months ago
    • Um, I don't really get your comment...

      There is a non-commercial ZOO component out there, so no need for someone to buy it in the first place...so, no need to pay for such script again...

      Still, I don't know of any 3rd party CCK component out there that offer scripts for migration away from their component...
      There are such components however that offer import functionality from other 3rd party CCK extensions and Joomla...

      Truth is, committing to any 3rd party article component carries certain risks if one wants to go back...
      A custom script will then be needed in any case, whether that component is ZOO, K2 or Seblod etc
    • You can call me George
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