Looks like Bloc Got Competition: YAP (yet another portal)

[technodragon73]

See that is what I am talking about...ease of use...if I have to put too much effort into using something...it doesn't get used.

[TwinsX2Dad]

Very true, td - but being easy is a relative statement.

Most of us will do a bit more if the end result is what we want. For me, the steeper learning curve of something like Photoshop is worth it, to get what I want. For others, Paint is sufficient.

A medal to anyone who can make the cryptic arrangement in the SMF ACP more sensible and convenient. But while I wait to award that medal, I continue to use SMF for other reasons. On the other hand, the TP controls are straight forward and simple to understand - they do pretty much what you want them to do and are easy to figure out. The only thing I'd like to see more of are ready-made blocks.

[technodragon73]

Ya, but if a program is way too hard is it really worth it?  Remember power of an application does not neccesarily mean it has to be hard.

[TwinsX2Dad]

If it is way too hard, then the benefits may not be worth it. I used to think that about Photoshop, a program I would recommend to maybe .5% of those I know who need graphics editing capability.

Then again, there are programs that are too difficult no matter what, but they don't last too long on the market.

[iowamf]

I could easily see a site wanting more than one view (portal) within a single database and these alternatives might work out OK for that purpose (perhaps not as ideal as TinyPortal - but "OK").

Example, say you ran scouts - both boys and girls.  It would be nice to have a top-level all inclusive portal and then a boys-specific and a girls-specific portal. This cannot be done via membergroups alone - especially if a parent has both boys and girls involved.

In the above example, it would be great to have the following tabs:

  HOME BOYS GIRLS FORUM HELP SEARCH PROFILE LOGOUT

where BOYS and GIRLS are their own "subTinyPortal" - each with their own specific rt, lt, ctr blocks, shouts, etc ...

Just lookin' @ the bright-side and seeing the portal alternatives as complementors and validators rather than viewing them exclusively as competitors. 

It is great there is more than one portal solution to SMF - that in itself says the market is strong.

Eventually, Bloc may want to evolve TP to have sub-portals like above - personally, I think sub-portals would both be innovative and a better idea than re-inventing a gallery or a blog - but that is just my $0.02

edit: maybe blocks could be shown based on ?action=xyz for subportals

[TwinsX2Dad]

Stellar idea - I like it.

While you should NEVER come across anything mixing Boy Scouts with Girls Scouts (the structure of each is too different and they don't support each other), I do both Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. Or someone might have two sites, one for Chevy Camaros and the other for Pontiac Firebirds. Possibly sewing and cooking. The list is nearly endless.

This is one reason I have several sites running IPB - their Converge product (Beta) is outstanding at this. It allows single or multiple databases to share members, login details, etc., and even direct members to the default site of their choice. Of course, each site must use IPB.....   

[nend]

Hi, I'm from the dev team of YAP.

I just read about you guys talking about us.   I don't know if this post was made before or after I joined the project.

So there's four portals for SMF right? Enigma2, SimplePortal, TinyPortal, and Yet Another Portal.  I only knew about E2 and YAP until recently when I learned about TP, then SimplePortal after I read a reply on this topic saying YAP is a Simple Portal copy  .

Nice work though on TinyPortal.  :up:
It looks like the bar was set high before I even thought of making a portal.

[bloc]

Its about 4 yes..but also MKPortal and Joomla of course can thought of as "portal" solutions. They all take on somewhat different approach to it though. Luckily.

[Crip]

Just my own bias opinion Tinyportal is far Superior than all the rest.. 

     

[nend]

Just googled for them.  It looks like they give options to install other forum software also.

I just tested YAP on a local server here at work. It seems very basic for now. I know he's just getting started. He has some pretty good ideas of how to do things. But it lacks a ton of features compared to TP.  One of the things that I don't like is what it does to the default theme. Completely overhauls the index.template and styles. After installing it on new SMF install it seemed to put quite a load on the forum adding page load significantly for me. It doesn't have any front page options other than to change blocks. Doesn't appear to have a frontpage, just the forum with blocks.  I guess I should go tell Doug this eh? lol

LOL, check it out now.  
We decided that YAP now and in the future will only contain 3 features - Front Page News, PHP & HTML Blocks, and PHP & HTML Pages.  Anything else would be considered as a mod and is not shipped with YAP but has to be downloaded seperately.  

Time to keep my mouth   .

Thanks for posting about us.  Our upcoming YAP modules would probally be so light weight that they could be installed with any other portal(Including TP) or just plain old SMF itself.  Thats what we are aiming for.