Extras and Add-on Naming (and more): What's Your Take?

What is the difference between an extra and an add-on anyway? Is there? Is it a legacy issue?

Quote from: markh at Nov 16, 2011, 05:13 PM

I'm all for unique, yet easy and descriptive names... don't have to be mutually exclusive

modBlog or Articles would be my fav names for the blog extra coming up, tho googling for "modx articles" probably isn't the best term to use on Google...

if i type Drupal Comments module the first result is the good enough.

How come modx can't do the same ?

And how can a beginner that he have to start is research with "modx modBlog" or "modx Quip" ?

@mark_hamstra Many people call "resources" just "articles" because they know the term from other CMS.

Names like "Wayfinder Menubilder" sound like a good basic naming scheme.

There's more people have to unlearn when coming from a CMS than the term "articles". It also depends where they come from. WP folks may call it "pages" or "posts"... and I don't want to start calling Template Variables "CCK" cause that's what's similar to it in Joomla either. With all respect - how other CMS call stuff shouldn't be a reason to not stick to something else.

Stephane, searching for "MODX Comments" brings up Jot, some stuff on the new comments tag in 2.2, a few support topics and the Quip docs.. that works okay-ish I guess, but could be better. Renaming the Quip addon now wont do much good tho - existing blogs, comments, forum posts and documentation will talk about somethign that has been superseded..

I agree some names (including Quip) are too cryptic for new users.. that's also why I said I prefer names that are both catchy and make it obvious what it does. VersionX indicates it has something to do with versions, right? HandyMan may already be too cryptic for new folks. ImportX is obvious. SubscribeMe sounds like a good mix of catchyness and obvious target.

Quote from: rnd at Nov 16, 2011, 05:17 PM

What is the difference between an extra and an add-on anyway? Is there? Is it a legacy issue?

There's a number of terms that both refer to the same in general.. not sure where all of them came from. Don't think it was named differently in older versions, tho I may've simply overwritten that in my memory.

Terms I know / sometimes use:
- Extra (official term iirc)
- Addon (or add-on)
- Extension
- Package
- Component
- Third Party Component / 3PC (think this may be the second official term)
- Custom Manager Page (usually part of an extra, in some cases the entire thing can be called this) / CMP

There's probably more. Extra/Addon have my preference as that's easy enough to understand.

I may be off here so forgive me, but I typically call entries "posts" whether for a blog, events section, or other blog like feature. Although I liked Article initially, I do believe it would cause issues for both users and search results when Googling. modBlog is just to specific considering the scope for which the module can be used.

I would suggest something like modPost or SimplePost. This is both descriptive yet broad.

My 2 cents.

@lossendae the answer is that when a person searches for MODX Comments they should get Quip as the top result and this is a matter of our search engine intelligence and SEO in general. It's no different than MODX in search results for CMF.

I am certainly for the ability for add-on creators to add flavour and personality as well as any of their own brand identity to the name. Our job should be to make it as easy for people to search and get the right results based on descriptions, keywords and categories. In addition we would hope that if people not problems of missing items in search results we can improve those.

@rnd As far as Extras and Add-ons, frankly at MODX we use these terms interchangeably to describe any script or code that functions with MODX including Snippets, Plugins, Templates or Extensions (which are scripts that extend the MODX core). Personally, I feel Add-ons is simpler but as our Plugins are a very specific type of add-on (as in they are snippets that relate to events) we don't use that term.

Moving back into product naming: My view is that you can have a name that is cryptic if you can give it a subtitle that just as quickly describes the product. The ideal is when you can combine unique feature and the product. I always feel the best example of this in product branding is LeanCuisine; it tells you it's low in calories or something and its tasty (while that's a matter of taste the implication has made its mark). So while Quip isn't a great name from that measure, SimpleSearch, AjaxSearch and ManagerManager are pretty good.

Again, it seems the opponents of using original or less obvious terms is the inability to quickly find the addon they want and know that they've found the right one nearly instantly.

Robert, Those aren't bad. I also received a list from RedToad by email I'll ask if I can share it.

Cheers,

Jay

Can't have it all...favor unique over descriptive same way quip and wayfinder are unique tho not descriptive, maybe 60-70% (mostly) uniqueness and 30-40% (more or less) descriptiveness.

Testing #discuss email subscriptions for the first time with this post...

Thank you, Tom

If I refer to my own experience as a noob, my first inclination when wanting to know what add-ons to use was to use Package Management, just as the DOCUMENTATION says. Which was fine, you need an app, you go to the app store. My issues were never naming conventions, though it helped to give me an idea. The issues were always real s$#%y descriptions and poor search within the manager. I think what would greatly help newbies is to continue streamlining the categorization but also set in place a standard for how extras are added.

Creating an extra tab for "under development" extras may help the confusion, a lot of times when I couldn't find an extra that was stable, I would get a little nervous using an alpha, beta, or RC extra. There should be a separation because of course you never use a testing extra in a live build. Removing versions from the extra's title would be good as well, add the version to a description place holder.

Also short and succinct descriptions would help, like this for Quip "A simple commenting system for MODx Revolution, complete with a backend management interface. Handles threaded and flat comments, with moderation, email notification, and more." Here if I found this under 'Commenting', the name wouldn't matter, I would know exactly what it does and what name to refer to if I needed support. This however, "getResources is a general-purpose listing and summarization snippet for MODx Revolution. It is NOT a replacement for Ditto, but rather an alternative component that can accomplish some of the things that the more specialized components do, i.e. Ditto, Wayfinder, Breadcrumbs; basically anything that output the properties for a list of Resources (formerly Documents in MODx Evolution).", is not helpful because it is jumbling it all with references to other builds and other extras. I had no idea what all the references were talking about as a newb.

I am all for unique (since getRelated was my idea ), but if we are expecting to expand MODX's popularity, we need to quit treating it like an exclusive club of special terms.

Let's not forget that you get to enter tags when you submit an extra. I don't know if they're used in the search process at the repository, but they certainly should be.

It might not be a bad idea for the team to go through and edit the tags (e.g., to make sure 'menus' is a tag for Wayfinder).

Another problem is the embedding of some functions inside another package. I don't think that anyone looking for a snippet to show or edit the user's profile would think to search for the Login package. I'm as guilty as the next guy on this. I'm working on a package called BotBlockX that contains a LogPageNotFound plugin (that's likely to be more popular than the package it's in)


What's the feeling on releasing things like UpdateProfile and LogPageNotFound as separate packages while still leaving them inside their current packages?