Johan Janssen’s presentation about the Nooku Server
Watch this presentation from 2:20 about the Nooku Framework and Nooku Server to learn why we have decided to use Nooku Server instead of Joomla 1.6
Tagged: joomla RSS
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Rastin Mehr
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Antonio
Antonio are discussing. 
Rastin Mehr
Anahita is not a Joomla extension
Some of our good members specially those who are coming from the Joomla community are under the impression that Anahita is a Joomla extension or an extension developed for Joomla. We even had a couple of people who paid a membership fee expecting to download an installable Joomla extension from Anahitapolis. That is despite that fact that nowhere on our website is presented in that context. Look on this page for instance. In fact you have found any, please let us know and we will remove it. So if we haven’t been clear enough here is another announcement:
The Anahita™ social networking engine is not a Joomla extension! nor distributed as a Joomla extension.
What are the building blocks of Anahita™?
The truth is that 2 years ago, we did build the early releases of Anahita as a Joomla extension. We even released the alpha1 as an installable extension. It was only over time that we have developed a through framework specialized for developing social apps (over 7000 code commits) and Anahita evolved to become a stand alone platform and framework as a social networking solution.
Today Anahita™ is the collection of 3 powerful frameworks (Anahita, Nooku, and Gantry) that are shipped in a container called Joomla!. In this context Joomla is only used as a web platform and stepping stone for developing the first releases of Anahita technology. In fact 99% of Anahita code is developed using the Anahita and Nooku Frameworks where:
- Anahita™ Framework: provides the software framework and API specialized for developing Social Apps.
- Nooku Framework: provides the basic MVC agile software development framework.
- Gantry Framework: provides a superb themeing framework
For the Anahita™ we are using a stripped down version of Joomla! 1.5, because the platform aspects of Joomla such as it’s extension management, menu management, and user authentication did the job quite nicely and there was no point for us to rebuild those from scratch. We have also made some upgrades to the Joomla so it can better accommodates Anahita social networking engine and Apps.
For the later releases we have a keen interest to use the Nooku Server as a much lighter web platform for building Anahita which could provide some really neat features such as multisite-social networks!
If you think this is odd, consider this: Joomla! itself has been developed using many other open source technologies. Same goes for technologies such as Mac OSX, Aptana, or Ubuntu.
The fact that Joomla! is used as the web platform, it also provides some other perks too. For example it comes with a basic CMS that is shipped with Joomla. A lot of Joomla extensions can be installed on the Anahita™ as well. That is something that you need to test and find out. We are not married to the concept of making sure that all Joomla extensions should work on with Anahita. They certainly do not suddenly become social applications either!
A CMS is a CMS
A social network is 2 generations ahead of a Content Management System. Here is the evolution path:
- CMS: few people publish, many people read
- Read/Write Web (web2.0): many people publish and many people read.
- Social Web: all the aspects of read/write web, except that information is propagated and shared in small bits (stories, status updates, micro posts, tweets!) based on the directions and relationships defined by the social graph.
Joomla is a great CMS! We love Joomla for that purpose. However our goal for the Anahita project is to build next generation technologies that help people connect and collaborate in highly effective and efficient ways. Our goal is not to build and nurture CMS technologies. That responsibility is left to projects such as Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal.
We also do not think that attaching social networking to a CMS will work out quite well. It is like trying to attach wings to a car and make it fly. It will be a lot more sensible to help the passengers get out of the car and get on an airplane!
Having said that Anahita is still a commercial GPL project. Which means you can always check out the Anahita™ libraries and extension from the svn http://svn.anahitapolis.com (only Anahitapolis paid members can do that) and try to install them on your Joomla installation. If you take that approach, that will be your codebase and you will be responsible to maintain it the Joomla way.
We are going to develop automated tools that will help you easily update the Anahita social networking engine and apps right from your administration panel. Most likely these tools will not be functioning with your Joomla installation.
So how about people who already have a Joomla! powered website?
People who are using Joomla have 2 options available. We can invest some time in building Joomla to Anahita migration tools for you. Or you can also start building your social networking project from ground up using the Anahita framework and platform.
Let’s clear up the miscommunication
It is stated on our Terms of Services that that all sales are final and no refunds will be made once you sign up as a member.
However for all of you who have signed up and paid us only on January 31st and Feb. 1st 2011 under the impression that Anahita was a Joomla extension, we will gladly refund your fees and change your account to basic free account. And please make sure you read the TOS and website content before you sign up for a service to prevent these sort of misunderstandings. To get a refund please contact us with your name and information.
If you are happy to use Anahita as it is, we will be glad to be working with you for the next 12 months. Let’s build the next generations of social web technologies together and make a difference.
User
A lot of the confusion probably comes from the RocketTheme discount page that links here. That’s how I got here and was under the impression it was an extension for Joomla.
Rastin Mehr
@User
RocketTheme is now supporting several platforms other than Joomla especially those that utilize the Gantry framework.
This page: http://demo.rockettheme.com/feb11/extensions/anahita
Clearly states that “Anahita is not a Joomla component … “
Vic Drover
As I am sure you know, there is no such thing as having a “no refund policy”. Not only is it bad for business, the payment processors require you to have one. And of course folks can just reverse payments.
Wouldn’t an easier solution be to but a big notice on the payment page making people aware that anahita is not an extension?
Rastin Mehr
@Vic “As I am sure you know, there is no such thing as having a ‘no refund policy’”
iPhone store, Facebook, and RocketTheme.com have a no refund policy as well. It is up to the vendor to set the terms, it is up to people to decide whether they want to commit or not. A lot of membership plans that you pay for online have a no refund policy.
On Anahitapolis people aren’t buying software licenses. They buy membership and access to the Anahitapolis resources for a limited time.
It is bad business if we don’t let people know ahead of time. People have to agree to the Terms of service before making a payment.
@Vic “Wouldn’t an easier solution be to but a big notice on the payment page making people aware that anahita is not an extension?”
We’ve only had that issue from some of the Joomla community members. Not all the people who join Anahitapolis are closely familiar with the Joomla. They are here to look for a social networking solution.
A
I guess you shoud remove the:
“Powerful CMS Functionality – Anahita™ is using Joomla! CMS as the web platform and therefore provides the full functionality of this immensely popular content management system to your Anahita™ powered social network.”
on http://www.anahitapolis.com/about/anahita-social-engine
It could mislead people to think Anahita is a Joomla extension, and think that they can build a site with Anahita and Joomla (1.5, 1.6 and future builds) using all the other many extensions that Joomla already have.
Anyway, awesome job on Anahita! 
Cosmic Fantasia - Web development
Totally understand your point and direction with Nooku server. But for what seems like not too much effort, why not opem up your customer base and reduce support and increase customer satisfaction, by support Joomla! 1.6 early?
Love Anahita
Rastin Mehr
@A we are indeed using Joomla as the platform in the Anahita so there is no reason to remove that statement. We are just not distributing Anahita as a joomla extension.
Rastin Mehr
@Cosmic Fantasia Joomla 1.6 is not a suitable light weight platform for our purpose. Nooku framework is. There is a topic in this regard on the Anahitapolis Atrium and Johan Janssens himself has participated in it too. You will be finding more detailed information there on why we have decided to choose Nooku Framework over J1.6
Rastin Mehr
Shiraz: a template for Anahita ™
Template is important. It skins and renders all the application user interfaces and delivers all the things that we are all obsessed about: The User Experience, the Branding, and all those good things!
We’ve had a basic template for Anahita which was quite good, except that it could only be used in one configuration. Anahita also uses the more recent version of the Mootools javascript library and since Joomla! was using the old mootools 1.1 for a while, that meant a lot of existing Joomla templates and modules could not be upgraded to work with the Anahita social networking engine.
Now things have changed. The Joomla! team has finally, … FINALLY! came up with a solution to upgrade the mootools library. Also the wonderful Gantry Framework was released by the RocketTheme which provides an awesome 960 standard grid system, a very snazzy administration interface, and a wonderful framework to help us build flexible templates that are great not only for a CMS but also for more sophisticated software such as social networks. After doing some client projects with the Gantry framework, we really liked it and we have decided to develop the new default Anahita template using the Gantry Framework. That is how the Shiraz template was born.
The Shiraz template for Anahita ™ provides almost all the key features and main positions that the Gantry framework does, in 12 column positions, as well as all the styling for the Anahita ™ and the following list of social applications:
- Anahita Social ™ Discussions
- Anahita Social ™ Photos
- Anahita Social ™ Groups
- Anahita Social ™ Projects
The Shiraz template is not a done and finished template. It is a blueprint for all the Anahita developers to learn how to customize the develop their own templates while exploiting all the features that the Anahita and Gantry framework provide. This also means that Anahita powered social networks can now use other great extensions that are being distributed via the RocketTheme.com website as long as they are using the recent version of Mootools library.
To give you an example we are currently using the Shiraz template and the RocketTheme’s RokNavMenu extension on the Anahitapolis social network. We will be testing and using more of the RocketTheme’s extensions on the Shiraz template once we have merged the Anahitapolis.com and community.anahitapolis.com websites in a few weeks.
nick balestra are discussing. 
nick balestra
Looks gr8 and run fast! keep up the gr8 work guys!
Rastin Mehr
Thank you Nick!
Just to clarify: The speed is really due to the recent optimizations in the Anahita and Nooku Framework. We’ve also moved our servers to the Rackspace. Gantry provides the template flexibility without compromising the speed.
Hear us on BlogTalkRadio with Bob Bloom
We would like to thank you Mr. Bob Bloom who did an interview with us on his radio podcast show about the Anahita Social Engine project and Nooku.
Bob! thank you so much for having us on the show it was quite fun.
You can listen to the podcast here or subscribe to the BlogTalkRadio iTune feed here
and also we would like to invite you to listen to the last weeks Bob Bloom interview with Mr. Johan Janssens the Core Architect of Nooku Framework and Nooku Content projects. He is also the co-founder of Joomla! project and former lead developer of the Joomla! CMS and framework who developed a major part of the existing Joomla! 1.5.
Marking the 3000+ Code Commits
Last week we have made the alpha release of Anahita 0.9.4 available to the people and companies in the Anahita tribe of partners. This release did take a lot longer that we have estimated because this released wasn’t simply an overhaul of the previous release. We have rewritten the entire framework and platform from scratch based on a new design philosophy and that took us more than 400 hours of development hours.
We have also passed 3000 code commits to our repository (currently at revision 3077). That means over 1500 development hours since we have started coding together this project over a year ago. Anahita has gradually become the center piece and focus of our business as a commercial open source project that is enjoying a healthy organic growth.
(Right to left: Ash, Talia, and Myself) Many thanks to our friends at the Beyounic.com for making these shirts and presenting the Anahita project at the JoomlaDay, Rome, Italy
We didn’t get the chance to make a blog announcement last week (only tweeted here and here). After releasing the code packages to our tribe members, we all immediately started testing, debugging, and reviewing our task lists and planning for the stable release date. I was simply too distracted and excited to focus on writing a blog announcement.
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Ajmal
Many thanks for the writeup and updates!
Love the post when I went through everything especially the “Less is More!”.
Couldn’t agree less on that.
I am really excited...
I am excited to see the release of Anahitapolis, and would love to test drive it. If you come to the point of needing an additional beta tester, remember me! I have a social application site I am waiting to develop, and I believe I would like to use your software to do it. It is http://sociallyactivewebmasters.com.
Thanks!
Mark Jones
Great article, thanks!
My connection are slow or whatelse. I can´t see the video. There are a way to download it?