Will Invision Community 5 be the end for customisation of existing apps?

[Michael_]

I'm currently building a new website which lead me to trying out a bunch of different CMS systems including

wordpress
joomla
drupal
typo3
woltlab suite (articles)
xenforo + xenaddons article management system
winter cms

I came to the conclusion that invision community despite originally being a forum software ironically has the best content management system. (Pages Application)
Paired with the "Axen Article System in Pages Plugin" + some custom Tweaks it allows me to run multiple independent article/blog sections, each with different custom fields and blocks on my website.
Something i simply cannot do with some of the other contenders.
With others like wordpress it's possible but you end up with a complex mess + plugin dependency hell.
Also if i want to add a forum/community features it's very simple with invision community. Not even possible with wordpress or joomla to the same extent.

But now it came to my attention that Invision Community 5 will remove many hooks. I've been told to a point where you can barely extend existing apps (like the pages/cms application) anymore.
Is this true? I think the pages/cms application is great, but if you cannot tweak/extend it to your needs with plugins i think it's also pretty useless unfortunately.
Sure in some cases customizing the templates will be enough but in others you will need features not included by default.

I'm really worried because NOTHING currently available beats/matches invision community but if you guys remove extensibility through plugins this will maybe force me to migrate CMS applications to wordpress.

By the way i've already been an ikonboard user.
So i'm using your products (on and off) for a long time now.

[Randy Calvert]

There will be big changes to how apps are developed, but before ANYONE rushes to judgement, wait and see what's done.  IPS has already been working with developers to add ways to do MANY things since certain other methods have been removed.  Anyone who has said that you can't do basically nothing has not seen the product in action and is just making a judgement call off high level explanations.  

We'll most likely not see everything be able to be perfectly carried over, but IPS has already said they'll continue to work to improve developer access throughout the 5.x line.  

[Jim M]

Customization is not going away in version 5. It is taking a different approach. You can read our developer blogs for detailed information on the change. If you are not technical, I would just suffice it to say our plan was to make the custimizability more robust for everyone and not have a lot of the complications of having hooks on every function.

Most of what is available today will be available in version 5 but it will be done differently. 

[Michael_]

Thanks for the quick replies.

27 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Customization is not going away in version 5.

I'm happy to hear that. 🙂

[Michael_]

I was just briefly looking at the developer blog posts.

I do not really understand how you would create something bigger (plugin) than a custom field some css/html and a menu entry though?
I mean at the end this requires "hooking in" php code at a specific point, right?

[Jim M]

23 minutes ago, Michael_ said:

I was just briefly looking at the developer blog posts.

I do not really understand how you would create something bigger (plugin) than a custom field some css/html and a menu entry though?
I mean at the end this requires "hooking in" php code at a specific point, right?

I'd advise reading all the developer blogs regarding version 5. CSS/HTML and a menu entry is not all of it 😉 

Development Blog - Invision Community

There are likely still changes to come as we are still in Alpha so I would wait to hold any concern or judgement till you see it fully 🙂 

[Daniel F]

46 minutes ago, Michael_ said:

I was just briefly looking at the developer blog posts.

I do not really understand how you would create something bigger (plugin) than a custom field some css/html and a menu entry though?
I mean at the end this requires "hooking in" php code at a specific point, right?

That’s why we’ll also have event listeners and extensions. They’re very similar to hooks, but much more stable, allowing us to modify the code and method headers without breaking 3rd party code 

[Michael_]

21 hours ago, Jim M said:

I'd advise reading all the developer blogs regarding version 5.

Well i might do that when i have a little spare time.
But if someone wants to put me in the right direction (links to the relevant article regarding the "extensions") that would be much appreciated. 🙂

21 hours ago, Daniel F said:

That’s why we’ll also have event listeners and extensions. They’re very similar to hooks, but much more stable, allowing us to modify the code and method headers without breaking 3rd party code 

I have seen the event listeners.
What you describe regarding extensions sounds great but i gotta admit i don't see how it's possible to change the codebase without breaking 3rd party code. Not saying it's not possible i just don't understand how this works but if it works that sounds cool.

[G17 Media]

There are definitely customizations that were possible before that won't be possible in IPS 5 for third parties.

Whilst I'm sure IPS will make their event listener and extension system quite extensive, there are definitely cases where it will not cover. Compare that to being able to edit any class and any template dynamically via hooking, the level of power for third party developers is definitely not as strong.

However, I'm looking forward to seeing the capabilities of the new system.

Edited August 3 by G17 Media

[Marc]

On 8/3/2024 at 7:16 PM, Michael_ said:

What you describe regarding extensions sounds great but i gotta admit i don't see how it's possible to change the codebase without breaking 3rd party code.

If you are referring here to existing extentions that were written for version 4 working in version 5, you are correct. Items would need to be rewritten for version 5