[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by DawnsWebDesigns

This is just for a couple of people who forget that while they have a couple of mods &/or themes to keep an eye on some of us are trying to plug several of both into our site in a few days time. I simply don't have time to waste on something currently under construction or completely dead with no hope of being revived.

I just moved my site & upgraded. I've been shopping again. I've tried several mods to have them not work. I come back through here & read several pages of stuff & find lil edits I try to no avail. It's bad enough but when you install a software to go with the mod & have the mod not work it's ridiculous. I just wasted half the night on such a mod the other night. So I've already uninstalled not only the mod but also the software.

The one big thing you've got to remember, that you've got to take into account or the question you've got to ask yourself, "how many people are not having the same problem you are?" Now notice I say, not having and not the people who are having the same issue, because that's not the same thing. What I mean is how many people have not bothered to post any issues because they haven't encountered any and the mod is working fine for them?

This is something you have to consider, because there are an infinite number of possibilities as to why the mod isn't working for you. You can be absolutely sure your doing everything your supposed to, and come back later and realize it was user error after all, or a forgotten file, or a missed edit or just something you didn't know. I would never advise anyone to take all night on installing a modification, because sometimes spending too much time too close to a product is what's causing your problems to begin with. You have to come back to it, sometimes months later.

I think if a mod or theme is buggy & under construction it should be taken off display 'til it's fixed versus expecting people to read through pages of stuff & attempt supposed edits to no avail. And if creators know they don't want to update or support it anymore they should either move or request it be moved to the graveyard before bailing. I've come across a few that are graveyard material but haven't been moved there yet.

But you see, that's the nature of the beast. Everything here is an at your own risk type deal. With the infinite number of combinations of things that can go wrong, anything from server configuration, to conflicting mods, to user error, to user misinterpretation, to a users lever of experience, every single mod on this site could end up being removed on such a criterion. Bear in mind, too, that we support ourselves a lot of the time. A modification moved to the Graveyard means no one else who's willing or able to deal with the modification can access it anymore, as Graveyard mods have their files deleted. That is, essentially, the reason we have the Supported/Unsupported option when posting a mod.

I'm not sure if you can download while looking at the titles of all the threads within a board...but you can mark them installed & uninstalled. If you don't let these people move their own stuff to the graveyard it would be cool if you could add "under construction" or "un-supported" there or to the titles & let these folks mark them should they become so.

But bear in mind, not all modifications need support to be functional. What if threads are marked unsupported in their thread titles, and your criterion for skipping over a thread is that marking? So you might end up skipping simple two line template edits, BBCodes that seldom require support, or files that just an XML import and nothing else. Marking a thread that way would give a fair number of modifications and unjustified reason to be skipped over by many members not aware that some of these things are in fact, plug'n play.

And "under construction" is a subjective term. As was stated, most of these mods can't be fully tested until they're released to the public. That's different from a BETA, which is a product that is known to still have some bugs in it prior to it's release and is known to be unstable.

I thought I'd suggest this because I actually know some html/css & have had almost 5 years experience installing softwares/themes/mods alone. I feel sorry for the newbies who don't even know html/css much less php/MySQL/etc.

Keep in mind, though, that not every "newbie" is coming in that way. I had no experience installing mods when I first came here, had a very rudimentary understanding of HTML and no knowledge of CSS. I still know nothing about PHP and MySQL. But I can't say I've ever had a tough time installing any modification. Not all have worked, but after coming back to them after my own knowledge increased I realized it was an error on my part. Or a small omission on the part of the author that I simply wouldn't have known back then. My point is, the setup we have now is about as fair and balanced a system as we're going to get. Anything else runs of the risk of being tyrannical or unbalanced, as we have a lot of users who think everything here should be plug 'n play, and malign an author who releases something that requires a little or a lot more effort then that.

Don't feel like the time you've spent trying to make something work has been a waste of time either. If anything, the time I've spent on stuff I couldn't make work has been the most valuable time I've spent working with vBulletin. Forcing me to look deeper has forced me to understand things I didn't think I was capable of understanding.