A more Generic JR5

Hi JR Dev Team and Friends,

This thread started in the link below while discussion with Douglas who has been providing us with an awesome support. I am thankful.

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/forum/using-jamroom/845/video-genre-field

I have decided to start a new thread (separate topic) because the subject discussed here is so important to some of us JR users.




This is not an encouraging news at all.

We have been waiting for a standard and more generic JR for years. But today I just feel that we have been left behind again.

I love JR a lot because it is the BEST Media Sharing CMS on the web. JR5 is just a Masterpiece. What a Big Achievement and Great Script! Congratulations to the Team.

JR5 was aimed to be more generic and flexible to fit/suit any media industry and communication needs (with more generic words like "audio", "author", etc) than jR4, not music and artists only!.

It is something that many JR users and I have since resquested.

Please see the archive:

http://archive.jamroom.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=41398

and

http://archive.jamroom.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=39689

and many more...

The Dev Team promised to make everybody happy. I just can't understand why The Team failed to keep its promise and made the same mistake again?

As already mentionned in my previous posts:

Please bear in mind that we are not all using Jamroom to manage Artists and songs. In our case, most of our Audio Files are NOT NECESSARY SONGS. Also, not all our Audio Suppliers are Artists. We do have Audio recordings of conferences, meetings, debates etc. But Now unfortunately we have to call everything: "SONG" and Everyboby is an "ARTIST". That doesn't make any sense to me and I think that it is so confusing and misleading.

JR5 was supposed to be used by anyone, any company willing to broadcast or share his/its audio - video content.(Individuals, Schools, Universities, Churches, Political Parties, Business, TV and Radio Stations, Musicians etc)

How can a debate, conference, online course, university lecturing, church sermon, radio show etc simply be called "MUSIC"? with a URL like this: yoursite.com/music

How can a teacher or university lecture, ceo, politician, church preacher etc be simply called "ARTIST"? with a URL like this: yoursite.com/artists

I might sounds stupid but it doesn't make sense at all.

JR5 was supposed to fit any media industry and communication needs right out of the box and without any "file hacking".

Now to get rid of the word "Music" and "Artist" in the URL and to get JR5 more standard and generic, one must hack so many template files. Sorry I am not a coder, but this should'nt be good for both JR System (template) and JR Users. It will not be a good experience for some of us JR-based site owners.

I had tuff time trying to get rid of the text "Music" and "Artists" in the URLs back in JR4. Now, just the fact of thinking that I have to undergo the same nightmare in JR5, it is just a misery for me.

Please check out this post and see how I have suffered with JR4:

http://archive.jamroom.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=39689

I suggest the use of words/terms like: "Audio" and "Author". Indeed, the words "Audio" instead of "Songs" and "Authors" instead of "Artists" are Very Generic and General, and can be used to fit/suit any business type willing to use Jamroom as it Multimedia or Audiovisual system (Social Media Platform). It's called “FLEXIBILITY” .

We should have URLs like this:

yoursite.com/audio (not /music)
yoursite.com/author (not /artist)

Or maybe you should consider developing a system whereby the admin can enter whatever word (text) he/she want to use for "Music" and "Artsit" and the change will reflect in the URL.

I know there are already considerable efforts that have been already made to get JR5 more generic. I am thankful to that.

We have more generic URL like:

http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/richard-hefner/audio/1/deep-purple

but the following URLs (and probably many more) were left behind:

http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/music
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/artists
etc


Please Dev Team, Can't you hear us (non-music/artist-based sites)?

JR5 is still in its early stage. It is the right to find a solution and fix this issue making eveybody happy. It will also be of great benefit to you (Jamroom Company) since it will widen your range of Business opportunities and users/customers. More indstries (Business type) being able to easily use JR5 without too much file hacking means more Business for you. More Business means more money.

My apologies for my ignorance but hope you understand what I am trying to say.

Many Thanks

updated by @pch: 12/27/13 11:25:47PM

I didn't read through the entire post, but as someone who has run multiple Jamroom sites (almost none of which were music-related sites if I remember correctly), Jamroom 5 is a _significant_ improvement in making jamroom more "generic." Really all that's needed now is to change your templates, which I don't see a problem with - what was required before if you wanted to make it generic was to do some core changes and template hacks, none of which are needed now, so that's a huge thing for me. I ran it as a site for my lacrosse team, and "artists" quotas were used for "players" so it was really mindbending to set things up and make the URLs make sense and everything. Again - that stuff is not necessary now.

Jamroom started off as a music-centric cms, so the majority of the sites (I would say) are still using Jamroom for music-related sites, which is why the default templates are still all set that way. The templates have always been just a "jumping off" point though to be customized. A lot of people use it for producers and beats, and they know they have to customize the templates to change instances of artists/audio to producers/beats or whatever they're doing.

So when it comes down to it, really it's just the templates that need to be changed to make it generic, which is something a new site owner is going to do anyways to make their site different from what everyone else starts out with.

Anyways, just my 2 cents.

Kyle

A big post. Thanks for bringing it up. These are just my immediate thoughts, and not necessarily those of the rest of the team.
I think that its very rare for Jamroom to be just what a user wants, 'out of the box', and everyone will need/want to make modifications to the templates, small or large. Its also impossible for us to design a 'one size fits all' Jamroom.
I sympathise with what you are saying, but unless I'm misunderstanding you (and I will admit to not having read all your archived JR4 posts), what I believe you are trying to do is is relatively straightforward, but there again, I'm very familiar with JR5 and have been coding it for the past year. When you say that you are not a coder, I do understand that it can seem a daunting task.
As for more generic module names, I'm not sure what else we could do. Audio is what the module handles. We didn't call it the jrSong module. And we have a Profile module, not an Artist module.
There is one trick that may not have been mentioned - You can easily changed the module name that shows in the URL. From the ACP goto the Info tab of the jrAudio module. There's a field there for Module URL that says 'audio'. Change that to 'conference', say. Assuming that we have coded all the templates correctly, the word 'conference' will show in the URLs instead of 'audio'. Will that help?
Sorry, no immediate answers, but we do apprecriate your post. Hopefully others will add to this discussion.


--
Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

@pch I think you are confusing skin and module.

You can name your module url to anything you wnat.

In your skin you can name your template to anything you want.

Does that about cover it?


What planet do you live on?


--
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Wow - I'm surprised to read this. JR5 is as "generic" as you want it to be. What I do see however, based on your posts, is that you are frustrated we did not build Jamroom to suit your specific needs 100%. I find it ironic that you want us to add "genres" to the core setup, when this clearly would make Jamroom targeted even more specifically to music sites.

all URLs in JR5 can be renamed - you don't like the "audio" module using the URL "audio"? Change it to whatever you want (look in the Info tab).

We've spent years working with JR, listening to customers, and JR5 is the product that has come out of that. It's certainly not going to make 100% of our users happy 100% of the time - and at no time have we ever "promised" to make everyone happy. But you know that already, so I'm not sure why you would post that when you know it is not true.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net
updated by @brian: 11/22/13 03:16:08PM

Don't be too surprised Brian, it's a cynical numpty planet.

Delight in all things fixes that, paradoxically.


--
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

heres a quick video on what a skin is:

"Jamroom Skin Customization"
Jamroom Skin Customization

The most important thing to take away is that 'the skin defines what type of site it is'

and your currently using a skin created for a music site.

Since Jamroom is now MPL, you can take the elastic skin, change it, and release it to everyone for communities focused on other stuff.

@pch, seams to me you just need a different skin.

I hope others will build alternative skins meant for different purposes.

@Smith.kyle, @Paul, @Brian, @Steve,

Thanks a lot for your feedbacks. I think you misunderstood me. I am not denied the amazing work that the team has done at all. I am a great supporter of JR5 and I always thank you for the great work and the support we have been receiving.

Please please do not get me wrong. I apologies if I have hurt someone's feelings or if I didn't express myself well.

@Smith.kyle

yes I agree that is the templates that need to be changed.

@Paul

I can't agree more. Yes it is impossible for you, even any programer, to design a 'one size fits all' Jamroom.

I am not talking about module name. My thread is not about module URL.

@Steve

Once again, I am not talking about the module URL. That one is easy to do through ACP.

@Brian

Once again, please please do not get me wrong. I am not ungrateful, also I am not disrepecting your hard work and great accomplishment either. You and the Team have done a lot for us and I will always thank you for that. My sincere apologies if you feel that way.

When I was talking about "genres", I meant "Categories" (Audio Category). Since for audio, it has always been called "genres" in JR. There is no way to call a "conference" a "genre". I have been always planning to call (rename) "audio genre", "audio category".

Of course, at no time have you ever "promised" to make everyone happy. That was just my way of speaking trying to explain mysef. The fact is the Team did promise that we will be able to change Audio URLs to whatever we want. (more flexibility in URLs). Please read the link to the archive I posted in my previous post. That is the reason why since that time I have deduced that in the new JR5 we will have more generic URLs and we will be able to change/rename them from probably the ACP without file hacking or maybe with few (I mean very few) template file hacking.


Once again, my post is not about changing the Audio module. That is why I said that you all misunderstood me.

Changing a module name or URL is extreamely easy in JR5. The JR Team has done an awesome work. Congratulations.

Let me explain myself again in few words to clarify things.

I will just give you an example:

The second and third menu in the top menu bar are: "Artists" and "Music"

Their URLs are:

http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/artists
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/music

Even the sub-pagessub-menus like: Newest Artists, Top Artist, Music by play, Music by rating, Music Charts, Music Charts Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, etc... have the word/text: "ARTISTS" or "MUSIC" in their URLs.

Unlike other modules (audio, video etc) there is no way to change/rename the words "Artists" or "Music" from the ACP and change them in the URLs.

At this moment, the only solution is to edit/hack template files, even to rename music.tpl and artists.tpl files.

Then you would need to modify all the links in the skin templates that lead to the music and artist page so they match the name of the templates you just renamed.

It is a huge Skin modification, on a large scale, almost all the template files need to be edited/hacked.

Ok, once the skin modification has been done, what about the template update now? How easy will the skin update be?

Now here is where the "Generic" concept enter the scene. If JR5 was more generic with standard/generic words like "Authors" instead of "Artists" or "Audio" instead of "Music" we would have URLs like these:

http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/authors
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/authors/by_newest
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/authors/most_viewed

http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/audio
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/audio/by_plays
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/audio/by_ratings
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/audio_charts
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/audio_charts_monthly
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/audio_charts_monthly

It could have avoided us so many template files hacking. Also It could have been the middle point for both music/artist-based sites and non-music/artist-based sites. None of these groups could have needed to hack the template/skin file again.

Developing a system with front URLs that have the words "Artists" and "Music" in them and which are hard to edit requiring so many template file hacking, still prouves that JR5 is not Completely Generic out of the box yet and still has a few steps to go to be more generic. It was still built with Music and Artist in mind.

I think the most effective way to solve this issue is to add the possiblity to change the "Artist", "Music" and "Music chart" URLs from the ACP without any template file hacking the exact same way you did it with the audio, video modules. It gives the Admin the flexibility to change them to whatever word he/she needs without template file hacking at all.

As I mentionned in my previous post, I say it again:

I know there are already considerable efforts that have been already made to get JR5 more generic. I am thankful to that.

We have more generic URL like:

http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/richard-hefner/audio/1/deep-purple

but the following URLs (and probably many more) were left behind:

http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/music
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/artists
etc

Do you understand now why I am talking about a more Generic JR5?

Thanks a lot for your understanding.

Thanks Michael. I will go and watch the video. You have been doing a great job with your video tutorial.

Many Thanks

You have misunderstood.

You can easily change the urls. All of them.


--
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

How?

In the info tab for the module - you can change the text that shows in the URL.

Kyle

Hey kyle, I think @pch understands how to change the module URL's but his issue is that the projam5 skin contains a template called music.tpl which causes the url to be:
http://demo.jamroomnetwork.com/music

Seams to me that not all skins need to be generic. Some skins can be setup for a specific purpose and I don't see that as a detriment.

jrElastic is a very generic skin.
jrProjam is a skin for running a band website.

@pch needs a more complex skin more suited to the type of site he wants to run. (im not sure what that is).

Perhaps someone will build one.

changing projam's music.tpl to another name would take a bit of fiddling.
* First, copy music.tpl to another name, perhaps "lectures.tpl"?
* second, change the link in the menu to point to /lectures instead of /music
* third, look for locations that point to /music and point them to /lectures

Sorry - wasn't reading the entirety of the thread/post!

I think that was mentioned in a different thread.