Hi support,

Where can we post topics about template design related issues...? I am not happy with the way this forum is setup right now.
Its not friendly to people who want to be able to improve Jomsocial and ask user experience questions. We need to be able to discuss template or customizations issues, with the support staff, in public because we can learn from each other. Not just we but also Jomsocial can learn from people who are not from inside the box.

Its important not to waste time every time the code changes and we don,t have access to some kind of detailed map to find the related files. I really hope this will improve soon.

Ideal situation would be...
I notice something i want to TWEAK change with CSS or deeper into the code. Go to this website. Search and find quick answers. Its not like this right now. Why not have a crystal clear document telling how(maybe) but most importantly where to find files in the folder structure...

Provide MORE customizations settings or better docs to find the related files faster...

So the goal is to get fast solutions when visiting this website for (interaction, modification, customization and design or user experience suggestions or problems) anytime. Technical and bugs are 1 part and this post is about the possibility to help improve and discuss Jomsocial for everyone. User experience and improving the customization time for everyone.

Example issues i always need to fix over and over:

Problem 1 - user experience and design related - I want to have a bigger video player size a maximum width of 640px is not optimal these days... It has to be a 2 minute job to set this to about 1280px. I fixed it years before after digging into the code and searching in files allot.

Problem 2 - user experience and design related - I don't want 4 video columns, 4 is totally strange in my opinion because the title will look super ugly in most situations.

Problem 3 - user experience and design related - Same as problem 2 but then for groups, events, members etcetera

Problem 4 - WHY have list set to a MINIMUM of 16. Some website designs look better with 4 items in a list/row and some pages load faster with less than 16 items in a list/row. Beter to change that setting from 1 to xxx?

After a new release all tweaks need to be done again this eats time (DAYS) and thats not necessary. Specially because files do change and we want to have new updated code also...

Why not have a crystal clear document telling how(maybe) but most importantly where to find all Jomsocial files or the exact location in the folder structure and or CSS or please provide MORE customizations settings or better docs to find the related files for customization and integration faster.

I want customization for video? Go to website and 3 minutes later i found a doc telling me - 4 files template files and this video.css is related. This is location and this are your options...

I forgot to say i am happy with loads of improvements already done and say thanks for that... I like Jomsocial but customizing needs to be less time consuming... And nobody likes to search for a fix on for the same customize 6 times in 3 years... Because the script is updated...

Hi Marcel,

The best place for sharing tweaks and have discussions about customization is in the community tips and tricks group. In there you can discuss anything to do with the code and also ask other members for ideas.

In regards to the other points you make they are good valid points but the solution is not as easy as it seams :)
1. Changing the video window size is actually done dynamically using java and the cwindows cant be changed by 1 simply pixel change or this would then affect how they behave when they are being shown on a responsive device. In jomsocial 3.3 there will be a lot of changes for modifying look and feel

2. Our layouts use standard bootstrap so these changes would be made by changing the span numbers in the code to give you how ever many columns you wish.
3. similar answer to point 2 and these changes can be done as overrides so you don't loose them during upgrades

4. i'm not sure what list you are referring to but we try to make all lists as user friendly and suitable for all our customers. This could be modified in the sql queries.

In regards to what files are changed during updates. These can be found in the patch set that we provide at every release. A quick check with a file comparison tool will then find the differences in your file set and the new files.

Please don't think i am trying to give you quick answers to each of your points they are good valid points. The biggest problem we see with users that customize their sites (which is great) is that because of the scale and size of the product major changes really need the user to run some kind of version control or tracking for which file have changed during each update. While this sounds easy for me to say this then turns some simple changes into a major development process which is not what our users want to do. The other issue is we release a lot with fixes. When we do, users complain its to much, when we don't users complain it's not enough, so we try to get a happy medium which can be difficult for some users

One thing that was are currently looking at is what you and many users has suggested is a better way for us to offer changes. For this to be efficient it needs to be automated in some what so you can quickly look up what file has changed.

In case you are not aware we have a tool in admin that is called troubleshooting and once run it will check the file checksum and will show you all the files that have had changes made to them. This in the short term will let you check your site files against the patch files and at least be able to show if you have modified a file that our patch will overwrite.

Thanks for your feedback and we are always happy to hear points like this form our customers. i will also add some of your points into our system so they are discussed when we have panning meetings and discussions regarding improvements