Would I use Motilee? Well, maybe.. I’ll use it for sure in order to learn something new from its code. I bet it must be excellent sample of coding practices. Well, maybe not excellent but it’s always good to compare code written by the other experienced symfony developers with our own code. At least I was able to learn a few important tricks from sfSimpleCMS, sfSimpleBlog, sfSimpleForum. But along with sfSimpleCMS, sfSimpleBlog, sfSimpleForum I dont think I’ll be able to use Motilee for my projects.
There is no reason to use it as major forum platform because of there are formed leaders in this area. I dont think it will be able to fight somehow with phpBB, vBulletin, Vanilla, etc. Also there is no easy way to integrate it into own projects as it’s kinda stand-alone software (e.g. sfSimpleForum can be integrated but it’s quite overcomplicated as for me. The same I feel about sfSimpleCMS, sfSimpleBlog – yes they are fine and great but because of its complexicity it’s always more hard to customize them than simply write them from scratch).
So I’d like to bring here a thought.. maybe all of these sfSimple plugins should have simpler analogues. Just very simple bricks for bigger projects. Like sfPropelActAs plugins. I use them very often as they are really simple and can be integrated into everything I want and can be customized easily. So I give my vote for sfVerySimpleCMS and sfVerySimpleForum, etc. They must have an easy way to be integrated into layout of existing projects. Moreover I’m quite sure a lot of symfony developers already have such plugins but they are not sharing them maybe because of they think these plugins are too simple. Am I right?
As a sample I’d recommend the other plugin I cotributed somehow – sfSupportPlugin. This is what I called a brick for the bigger projects. I’m sure I’ll be able to use this helpdesk anywhere I need. There is no css or ajax but that’s not important for the brick. This can be customized later. It’s very-very important to have such plugins especially on prototyping stage – when you can go and in 1-2 hours get together all required plugins and have system ready for initial using.
So again in order to be undertood correctly – of course Motilee (oh and of course I forgot about Askeet) and sfSimpleCMS, sfSimpleBlog, sfSimpleForum plugins are great but there must be also sfSimplerAlernative 🙂
What ya think?