How useful is a portal page to you? (as a user)

[Jaxel]

I think Jaxel is about the first portal I have seen that really got it on the mark with forum software... admins however tend to still put too much information into blocks, as they don't know the golden rules for websites... less is better getting to content.

Thats because of the general dogma I have with my mods. My mods are NOT written for you, they are not written for XenForo.com, they are not written for anyone in particular, except ME. I write the mods for myself, but I do also make them easy to use so that I can give them out to other forum owners who wish to use them. A see a lot of mods being written based on the requests of users... and in that case, I fall back on a staple of programming...

The point of this is that somewhere along the lines, there is a problem with communication... and it all starts from the customer. Customers always claim to WANT something; and usually what they want doesn't work, because its not what they NEEDED. This usually leads to something called "feature creep"; as more features get added to a project, as bullet points in order to sell it, it bloats the software, makes it harder to use, or simply breaks things along the way. We saw this in vBulletin4.

So basically... if I wouldn't use it myself... I wont program it. Its why 95% of wiki features are actually missing from my XenCarta wiki.

 

[jonsidneyb]

Thats because of the general dogma I have with my mods. My mods are NOT written for you, they are not written for XenForo.com, they are not written for anyone in particular, except ME. I write the mods for myself, but I do also make them easy to use so that I can give them out to other forum owners who wish to use them. A see a lot of mods being written based on the requests of users... and in that case, I fall back on a staple of programming...

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The point of this is that somewhere along the lines, there is a problem with communication... and it all starts from the customer. Customers always claim to WANT something; and usually what they want doesn't work, because its not what they NEEDED. This usually leads to something called "feature creep"; as more features get added to a project, as bullet points in order to sell it, it bloats the software, makes it harder to use, or simply breaks things along the way. We saw this in vBulletin4.

So basically... if I wouldn't use it myself... I wont program it. Its why 95% of wiki features are actually missing from my XenCarta wiki.

I have no problem with anyone creating something for their own use and not considering how others would use it. What I do wonder is your posts saying things along the lines that xyz is all someone needs for their site when someone posts they are looking for something specific.

The fact is I know exactly what I want a portal or cms to do and the truth is it would not have that many features to meet what I am looking for, it just happens no one has the specific mix of features I want yet even though they are few in number.

Another thing you do solicit donations and I have no problem with that either. Donations might come easier if you can accomodate some users a little more, I don't mean me when I say this. I am more than happy to contribute financially to a project that will meet my needs and I think there are many others that would as well. The hard part is so many of us want something different.

On the part where the customer might not know what they want. Well at least in my case I do know the things I want. The things I want exist for other forum software packages and I am just waiting for somethings close enough to be available for XenForo. Some of know exactly what we want.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I wish I could like that a 100 times Jaxel... nicely stated.

 

[jmurrayhead]

I actually used portals for some sites. It was a great place to first visit to see recently active threads.