JOOMLA! Word Association and Semantics
Posted on 24. Jan, 2009 by Rick in Blog
I posted this on the JOOMLA forums but thought it pertinent for the site at well:
After doing so many sites for clients over the years, I’ve noticed a trend when going to train them in cms and blogging systems like Wordpress and Joomla.
Both systems, I feel, have fairly good naming conventions, as related to the core features. i.e. “plugins, modules, templates, menus” etc. I was glad to see Joomla change terminology from “mambots” to “plugins”. Every time I would use that word “mambot” to a client their eyes would glaze over and wander into infinity. The point: Semantics and word association is very important in this business. It’s the difference between relating a complicated system and a simple system.
Magento, for example, has horrible word association. A theme, template, and layout are different things in their system. This is horribly confusing to anyone in the industry as we say “Wordpress themes”, “Joomla templates”, etc. They are taking associative words and making them different. The result is having to relearn the words and break apart the semantics!JOOMLA! has done a great job at separating the core terminology. The only one left where I’ve seen clients drift into neverneverland is upon hearing the word “Component”. I feel this is mainly because “component” can be associated with many other things. A “component” of Joomla could be associated with a “feature” or an “aspect” of Joomla.
I have found myself describing “components” to clients as “apps”. As soon as I do that, I always get an “Oh! ok” moment.
So how much earth shaking do you think it’ll take to get that core change approved?
What say ye?
5 Comments
Louis Landry
24. Jan, 2009
Your reasoning is sound, but we already have the concept of applications within Joomla. The Site is an application, the Installer is an application and the Administrator is an application. I have always sort of looked at the components as sub-applications though obviously that probably wouldn’t serve to “unglaze” your clients’ eyes.
We do take a lot of time in thinking about our semantic naming and I really would love to see a brainstorm on what other potential better names may exist for components.
Good thoughts.
Rick
24. Jan, 2009
Yeh Rob mentioned changing the terminology is more than just changing a word. I didn’t even think about how it could actually affect the API. Cheesh, was it a nightmare changing mambots to plugins?! I, too, think of components as “sub-applications”, much like Facebook has applications. From the different systems I’ve worked with, Joomla and Wordpress have the best naming conventions out there!
Louis Landry
24. Jan, 2009
Changing mambots to plugins was one of my first commits to the core. It was a big deal, but the changes to the way the events system worked were more substantial and far-reaching than the name. Changing something like components would obviously have some far-reaching effects, but that does not mean we shouldn’t consider it. I doubt that it is something we could really do in the 1.x series… but then again if you come up with a good idea… and present it well… its amazing what can be done :)
Rick
24. Jan, 2009
Implementing a change in the 1.X line would render lots of existing extensions useless, no?
Louis Landry
24. Jan, 2009
It would depend upon the change implemented :) Text strings are easy, filesystem paths and database table names are harder. All depends on the ideas.
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