Resource quality review, standards, future development

[Dakis]

Just jumping in here fellows - reading this above:

Serious bug reports get buried in a thread quickly so that even the author may miss it

made me think: why in the new version (that being v.2 or any other) of the Resource Manager, don't you implement an additional tab/place for each addon, for users to report bugs for that add-on, and the owner to have the ability to change its status from reported to confirmed or not a bug, or fixed , etc.

This wouldn't solve all of the problems described in this thread, but would certainly give:

- another way of evaluating an add-on's quality
- another way of evaluating the author's support and responsiveness
- a great way for all authors to track bug reports
- great visibility to XF staff itself on these bugs and if any of them are serious

 

[Mert]

The resolution is defining standards and asking developers to follow standards. Magento faced similar issues in past and they find the solution implementing Magento Certified Developer program . You can search for existing companies , developers and Magento doesn't let any non certified developer release modifications on their marketplace.

Each developer needs to take an exam to become certified developer which includes many different aspects of Magento.

However code review can't be officially done by Xenforo team. They don't have enough users to review every version of a simple mod. That is not their responsibility. it is our responsibility to do so.

However i would love Xenforo to establish a Certification process after Xenforo 2.0 so website owners can at least see that the freelancer they hired has enough knowledge or not.

 

[Freelancer]

What about a standardized "modular" design/development concept? Have a module for every repeating elements in a layout like categories, forms, payment, upload, download, gallery, etc etc plus custom module "containers" but everything with standardized interfaces.

For example "Category Widgets". A lot of Add-ons use Categories – for Galleries, Groups, Articles, Showcases, Link Directories. As a designer I tear my hair out when I have 5 add-ons each with category widgets and I have to tailor every of the 5 category widgets for itself because the specific developer has used some slightly different classes and functionality although they are about to do exactly the same. Some work less, some as expected and some do not at all.

From a forum user perspective, where only the "User Interface Experience" does count ("oh that's nice coding, I appreciate that…" said no generic forum user ever...) it is essential that all elements on a website work consistent. No one wants to learn three different ways to open a web page or upload a picture or view a media item. Great User Experience with websites in general is equal to "Don't make me think!" (a real good book title by the way – for those interested in UI Design).

With a standardized modules toolbox, developers just set their pieces together and adjust the parameters and variables to put together a complete add-on and I as a designer only have to customize the style once. Since the code of the module is already in the toolbox library, it will work every time and save everybody frustration over bugs and style issues.

Market a "Module Licensing": Since the above approach needs the XF development team to produce a module toolbox, one possible marketing approach could be that every module is charging the add-on developer a certain amount of money that is taken as a fee as per every sold add-on. Therefore every effort for a module development is awarded. Simple add-ons will result in lower fees and complex add-ons will result in higher fees. The end-user does the payment, the add-on developer forwards the money. The add-on developer gets money for his creativity, the XF Core team for their work and the end-user an add-on with less headaches… A gain for everybody.

My 2 cents. I am new to this community, so ignore me if you feel better with it, but I am not a noob at all. Looking back at 20 years of marketing and design experience, I was really surprised that add-ons do NOT pay anything back to the XF Core developers and that no add-on is following standards in development and operating procedures (except for those add-ons from developers that voluntarily have a code of conduct - which are only a few.).