TechnocratTechnocrat’s Random Thoughts

I was talking to someone who was writing a blog post about different CMSs.  I am sure they are wondering why they picked me after my comments during the conversation.  Here are some of the things I responded to.

How do you think Nuke-Evolution is seen in the CMS world?
Very poorly!  We have never got any respect from anyone in the CMS world.  For example we have been a packetpub finalist twice.  TWICE!  How many other nuke versions have done that?  None!  Yet places like opensourcecms.com refuse to list us.  Why!?  I wish I could tell you but they seem to generally ignore us.

The people at Wikipedia didn’t feel that we had enough of a following to have our own page.  Really!?  We have the second highest user percentage behind only the original nuke flavor.  We are in the top five of total users on a nuke site.  We have had many translations and sister sites in different countries.  What else do you need to qualify?

I still get a bunch of grief on different sites when they find I work on a phpNuke project.  Their biggest argument is that it is insecure.  Well the original flavor was (probably still is) for sure.  Do you know how many times a major secruity flaw has been found that would allow hackers into your site with Evo?  Once.  One time and it was in the original Evo release.  We patched it one hour after it was found.  I don’t know for sure how many sites were affected by the number that were reported to us was 5.  5 sites seems like a pretty good number when it was downloaded 5,000 times at that point. Sure there have been other security issues found but none of them have the ability to get past the security we have implemented.  So the argument of poor security doesn’t fly.

They also state the phpNuke is slow and outdated.  That’s true to a degree.  We have done so many things to strengthen and improve Nuke that we barely recognize as it once was.  Evo and Nuke are not even in the same league anymore.  Is Evo perfect, no.  But I think it can hold its own against other CMSs.

What is the future of phpNuke?
There isn’t one.  Nuke is dying a slow death.  FB (the original author of Nuke) let Nuke fall apart.  He didn’t listen to his users, ignored security issues, and let the project become stale and outdated.  Now with phpBB ending the 2.0.x branch there is a nail slowly being hammered into Nuke’s coffin.  Is it the final nail?  Hard to say for sure.  My opinion is yes.

Nukes days are numbered.  I am not sure how big that number is but it’s counting down.

There were some other questions but they weren’t anything big.  I wonder if he will actually post this??

I recently made a post on Raven’s site about new CMS from Francisco Burzi ( FB ) called Smeego.
You can read the post here: http://ravenphpscripts.com/postxf15828-0-0.html Follow up at http://ravenphpscripts.com/postp121846.html#121846

For those that don’t know FB killed created PHPNuke. He recently sold it to some people who seem to be doing just as badly with it as he did, but anyways. FB closed the Smeego project after only a few months because of “In these months I received, as usual, lots of critics, attacks, bad comments, etc… it was on this way for about 7 years, and I must say that finally I’m tired of all this. I’ll not tolerate insults and destructive criticism anymore”

Really seriously what did you expect FB? Lets review. You ignored your community. Closed yourself off from anyone that would support you. Didn’t support your product. Improperly used the GPL license. Didn’t patch or repair your code. Left serious security flaws in version after version. Stole from other developers. Never really improved important current features but keep adding unneeded stuff. Let the project become stale. I could keep going but that’s the gist of it.

So after all that you expected a new project, which sounds like an STD you would get from a hooker, which appears to have the same issues all over again, would be well received by a community that for the most part hates you? People would cheer and dance? Give me a break.

He should get some credit for starting the project and bring it to the a certain level. But then should be blamed for killing it and making it the laughing stalk of the CMS and open source community.

What I really feel bad for is those people that drank the Smeego koolaid. They started sites based around the project and hung on him like a king. People like the person that runs axew3.com. You have to feel bad for these people when he took the project offline, or even starting to follow him in the first place with the way he handled Nuke. I guess they have learned a valuable life lesson.

In an effort to keep things current I keep an eye on other CMS and distros. I noticed today that at least 2 other Nukes have died. Its funny how many have come and gone since we started this project. But I guess that is what happens, people get tied of the project and quit.

Anyways the recoding is going slowly. I have the new donation module about 50% done. It will have more features than any other PP module out there. I think its GREAT!

Jeff has coded a new cache system and sped up the core some more. So its really starting to come along.

In the mean time we just got to finish everything else that needs to be pulled, plus work on fixing bugs and such. But we are moving forward people. Dont worry