I'm thinking that one thing I miss from HCL is a way to change settings in the config files. Both core settings and Module settings are a pain for the lay person to change, or in my case, the lazy person (come on, I already have 6 Putty windows open!)
One of the things I'm proposing for the next version is the following:
- All configs other then database, are stored in the database, ala Zen Cart, and many other programs.
- All Module configurations files are read when "installing" a module. Thus if a module is not installed, the config file isn't even loaded. This should make setting up modules easier, and perhaps even more automated.
- Module installer, to allow modules to have a setup file which sets up database tables needed by the module, files, permissions, etc.
- Theme/template support would be a mite bit easier to manage.
- Modules would be more easily integrated into the system, and permissions to modules would be more managable (at this point there are two security levels in the admin portion, operator and admin)
As for drawbacks, this one is a bugger, what if the settings get pooched... The short and sweet answer is that you have to use something like phpMyAdmin to fix it, which is a little more complicated then using a file editor. On the other hand, I've never had that much problem with storing settings in MySQL.
The second drawback is that this is a time consuming project, however, I feel a lot of people would appreciate easier management of the system, not just the modules, but also the themes, which right now is a pain if your trying to test a theme (download file, edit, upload, repeat 4,000 times.) Most hosts do not have shell access, and as I found out yesterday, sometimes the editors for ftp programs are not very reliable about getting the new version up to the server...
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