Composr Heah to Head with one of the big boys

Composr V Woltlab

So i run a project and we are evaluating Composr, the idea if sucessful is to roll out over 400 instilations of it.
Because its a non profit project we are running, we need to raise money. this is being done via another company we have set up, basically its taking forums and using them to generate an income, i wont go into details because what we are doing is slightly unique.

The forums we are buying/creating are mainly in similar niches, we are up against alot of competition, however we have discovered a neat way to use them to generate money. This side of the project is run by a board of directors, the board is different from the main project board.

To complicate things, its been decided that the money arm will use one of the paid for packages, so when we buy forums or create them we will use Woltlab or xenforo. Not my choice but that was the plan, things were going well with the new Woltlab until very recently, what i consider a serious problem has cropped up. It also seems no one there thinks its a big deal, and trust me it is a big deal!

So i have decided to try and change things and get the money arm to use Composr, this is obviously a really unfair test. Pitting a free open source program against the might of paid for software……….. Or is it?

I think many are going to be surprised at what I discover. So i will update as I go, I am mocking up two sites pretty much the same. One will be used the other ditched. One is done with Composr and one with Woltlab.

I will post my opinion on ease of use etc and changing the look etc etc to what we want/need. No paid for help is being used, i am also a novice with CSS etc. So lets see if my hunch is right or not ;).

BTW i may have to black out the logo…

Depending how long it takes to rough out the front page will dictate when i next update.

One final note, cost is not a factor in this, to make it fair if composr wins, the company will donate the amount of money it would have cost to buy the licenses for the other, to Composr, that way no one can say money influenced our decision.

Ok a pic of the part finished front of the paid site. This is roughly how the Composr one should look like as well.
Obviously it wont be exact but i will try and get it close.

Now this is where i tripped up with Composr, i managed to move the task bar to the top, and to fix its position using the browser developer tool. Great i thought, all i do is goto Admin and paste the code into the Global CSS sheet from the ACP panel…………….. Wrong

It messed the whole thing up! What worked in the browser, didnt work in the CSS sheet in the ACP. I assume this is because of the way styles are done with wizard, my gut feeling is there is a different way to do it.

So i need to find out how to alter things in the Composr CSS without causing havoc!

Because i was stupid and worked on the main template without copying it….I have to reinstall and start again, this is my fault for being stupid.

No reinstall, i cheated and copied the Global CSS from a blank install i had , so off we go again, at the moment the Composr site looks like this, note the logo isnt the size it should be at the moment. We will address that first, this time on a COPY of the main theme.


I should point out the Woltlab site took me 12 hours to get as far as i have! thats how much of a noob i am

I've been following all your "trials and tribulations" posts (in other threads too) up to this point. I think it's fascinating what you're attempting. 400 installs is a large task to accomplish, and I wish you success! What I'm wondering is, how you plan on doing all those installs (I know you'd like ocProducts to do the actual deployment)? Will all the sites be same/similar in appearance, or each completely different? Multiple administrators, or a single administrator, for the upkeep? (Not trying to take this thread off-course, so maybe answer is for another thread.)

You're not much more of a noob than I am. I've found (on 9.x and earlier [haven't attempted on composr yet]) making visual changes was fairly easy so I think you should be able to get something that will look and feel better than the Woltlab install.



Okay, now I have to poke a little fun…

lg11 said

I should point out the Woltlab site took me 12 hours to get as far as i have! thats how much of a noob i am

12 hours?!?
You might want to go back and spend a few more hours on the Woltlab site's logo to get the syntax correct.  

Ok, back to lurking mode…  

The delay has been due to me deciding to buy a couple of new TLD's, I am going to install a fresh copy into one, it will save me messing around and swapping it over later. I will post the address for anyone wanting to see live updates of progress, or maybe chip in with ideas .

sholzy said

I've been following all your "trials and tribulations" posts (in other threads too) up to this point. I think it's fascinating what you're attempting. 400 installs is a large task to accomplish, and I wish you success! What I'm wondering is, how you plan on doing all those installs (I know you'd like ocProducts to do the actual deployment)? Will all the sites be same/similar in appearance, or each completely different? Multiple administrators, or a single administrator, for the upkeep? (Not trying to take this thread off-course, so maybe answer is for another thread.)

You're not much more of a noob than I am. I've found (on 9.x and earlier [haven't attempted on composr yet]) making visual changes was fairly easy so I think you should be able to get something that will look and feel better than the Woltlab install.



Okay, now I have to poke a little fun…

lg11 said

I should point out the Woltlab site took me 12 hours to get as far as i have! thats how much of a noob i am

12 hours?!?
You might want to go back and spend a few more hours on the Woltlab site's logo to get the syntax correct.  

Ok, back to lurking mode…  

From “Post #1,427”, 29th December 2016, 6:55 pm

It was original done on purpose that way, because of an existing site, however i now own a similar domain so dont have to fudge the wording .

I will post more about the major roll out, once we get over the holidays. Hand editing Woltlab wasnt much fun. I dont want to use the wizard in Composr because i need to tweak a few things. Plus its a learning thing. ALL 400 sites will be slightly different, we have NO idea yet how we will do it, OC have been a great help with suggestions.

Ok first of all a top tip, Composr is designed for a wide range of abilities. If your low ability dont overate yourself because it will bite you!

What do i mean by this? Well read the Docs and the tutorials that pop up on the right hand side in the admin panel. If it says do something X way because its easier, read this as ' if you dont know what your doing, we have put an idiots tool in for you'. USE the idiots tool if your an idiot!

I am mainly talking about the contextual editor tucked away at the bottom of most pages, this will give you a pop up box, you can edit CSS etc here. Sure you can play with the big boys and go diving into the ACP theme CSS. But those sheets have ALOT of stuff in to do with the wizard.

So one of two things happen if you dont know what your doing, first is simply frustrating, it dosnt hurt, you put your CSS in and…..NOTHING happens, its ignored. So you go looking for other places in the sheet, ah ha you find the tags, only this time it bites you.

Now i am making it sound hard, which it isnt. However it is not middle ground, and you do need to read the docs etc to get the best out of it, thats why the wizard is there, for most the wizard will do the job you want.

Having said all that, i am a true level one noob, i should read up on CSS but i am winging it. If your a bit more used to say Joomla, then your in for a treat, the code is British Army straight, neat and tidy! Its not scattered in every corner they could stuff it into.

The contextual editor has everything at the top, you click the class and it holds your hand and takes you to it in the editor! As was pointed out my original logo was a little strange, i cant tell you why but it was this way to avoid getting into trouble.

Now i own a similar TLD i will alter the logo when i get a chance. Now back to altering things and update you later.

It really is alot of fun!

This is what i have so far.
The menu bar is now at the top and fixed, the site i am kind of copying has this. I had to mess with padding settings to get the logo to fit correctly, now this has a problem. At the moment its stretched, if i make it the correct size i get white space, i will show you this in a bit.

The simple way around this is to put a background colour in, make it the same as the grey of the logo. Not too sure how i will handle the orange band yet, but first i need to change some colours (easier option ).

Yes it still the wrong logo! but thats so simple to change, it can be done later.

So now the logo is the correct size, what i should have done is make the logo just the size of the black area. the grey could have been left out. Then simply make the background of the page grey.

I need to read up more on CSS (i got a book!), there is sure to be a better way than the way i am doing it. Sorry this part is boring, later on i will show you where Composr blows me away, and where a major issue crops up in the other package!

I think i prefer the menu bar fixed in place, saves having to scroll to the top to move about. I hate doing logos, so time to tweak a few colours, i still have no idea how i am going to put a orange band on though. (more reading needed).

So we hit a problem, well several but only one might affect other people. Turns out if your host uses a apache addon for a firewall it may false trigger, this locks you out of the website and your control panel.

You need to get hold of customer support for the host and ask them to white list the firewall rule, the problem is, depending what you cange via the contextual editor means you can end up triggering all sorts of rules. in my case i tried to alter 6 colours and triggered 6 times, costing me 2 hours of time. The host white listed each rule, but each time i altered something else it would trigger again.

SO who is at fault here? Well NO ONE, the addon is there to prevent you being hacked, the editor is there to make life easier. The host is namecheap, i have no idea if the others have the same mod on. But be aware if your using the editor to change the CSS and cant get into the site or the Cpanel, dont panic, goto the host account and use live chat if they have it, ask for them to look at the apache logs and white list your ip. Be warned this might happen a few times.

The other problem is a me problem, i can change many things, but changing the gradient colours via the CSS sheets just dosnt happen for me! Too much wizard code amongst it, makes it alien to work on.

This isnt a complaint, i need to get to grips with this, in the browser its easy to change things, but in the file you see alot of other things amongst the CSS, tread really carefully around this.

Once i crack this i might do a noobs guide to changing a few things, it isnt likely to matter to most people. Its only a concern to me because of how i want the site, for most i doubt you will need to delve this deep.

But hey no harm trying , oh and back up your main theme several times!! I am eating them alive lol.

So it seems the top menu bar (.global_navigation) is referenced twice. once inline and once in Global.css
as seen here.

So this could well be why i cant change the colour, if i use the page editor at the bottom of the page, i then click on the section in blue thats required, it takes me to an alien load of stuff that has some CSS in it, changing this dosnt help.

So next step find out how to do it .

YES i COULD bother Chris and go the easy route, but the point of me doing this, is to give feedback as a normal no nothing webuser. So i prefer to use Chris (who works longer hours than i do!!) only when essential!

Much better i think if we leave him coding away in some dark corner .

A side note, its unlikely you will see much more of the head to head, the other package has a serious flaw (well 2), the company tell me its a kind of feature lol, and unlikely to be fixed or even looked at until the next major release. I wont out them on this yet, i prefer to give them a chance to think things through. But i will tell you now, if they dont reconsider then i will show you exactly what i found wrong with it!

I am angry yes, because the software in question is not cheap, and yet here we are using a FREE program, that has customer support that would put just about most companies to shame, let alone the ones you pay alot of money for.
Have i donated to the project? NO not yet, I cant authorise payments from the project on my own, will we donate?
In all honesty even if we find something major, and decide we cant use Composr. We will still be donating.

 OCportal IMHO was awful, I can see why Composr has kept a similar look. But i do wonder if it puts people who have used OCportal off using it,  If your a OCportal user then dont hesitate to switch. They look the same, they feel slightly different, but they are completely different.

Unless you try both you wont understand what that means, but as an analogy, lets assume the two are cars, Composr feels hand made with love and care, OCportal felt like a kit car!

No idea why my posts end up more like Blog entries! Its the way i work i guess, i will do a shorter thread, and just do a pic tuttorial of the important bits, this thread is mostly my thought dump. Hopefully deleted in the future .

So after another white listing! It seems the theme broke!

I know Chris has been looking into this, but i am more and more sure this has more to do with the server i am on. Sometimes a cache clear solves it, and sometimes a theme swap and them change back clears it. In this case its broken!

So i am happy i followed my advice and copied the theme. I think i will download the theme folder each time i make a successful change, and then when it goes wrong i dont have so much to redo.

i expect the pro's have a better way of working, but this is the diary of a noob not a pro. When i get this site sorted, i will do a tutorial of how i did it, mainly in picture form.

Do me a big favour though, if i do a tutorial and it gets you out of a hole, please kindly donate a few $ or£ to OC non patreon or whatever its called. every couple of quid/dollars helps, the last thing we want to see is OC portal having to close because people are cheap!

Super-quick reply about modsecurity (no time to read the rest of this right now)…

A particularly harsh modsecurity was triggering. It blocked any use of "background:" and "background-image:". i.e. even use of background images caused it to trigger.

We want to make it so users are never bothered about modsecurity, so Composr contains a selective workaround. We apply the workaround only on particular screens where we think modsecurity will be triggered so that we can test those particular screens individually and not worry our workaround will make other things randomly break, and not worry we are subverting modsecurity when it might be legitimate in other areas of the system.

The CSS editing is now going to be subject to the workaround, I didn't think it would need to be before. The workaround has been tweaked a bit so CSS syntax is altered a bit so it doesn't look like CSS. We filter it when we send the request to the server, then back at the other end. It's very robust.

I've tested on lg11s site and it seems to work fine now .

Chris Graham said

Super-quick reply about modsecurity (no time to read the rest of this right now)…

A particularly harsh modsecurity was triggering. It blocked any use of "background:" and "background-image:". i.e. even use of background images caused it to trigger.

We want to make it so users are never bothered about modsecurity, so Composr contains a selective workaround. We apply the workaround only on particular screens where we think modsecurity will be triggered so that we can test those particular screens individually and not worry our workaround will make other things randomly break, and not worry we are subverting modsecurity when it might be legitimate in other areas of the system.

The CSS editing is now going to be subject to the workaround, I didn't think it would need to be before. The workaround has been tweaked a bit so CSS syntax is altered a bit so it doesn't look like CSS. We filter it when we send the request to the server, then back at the other end. It's very robust.

I've tested on lg11s site and it seems to work fine now .

From “Post #1,456”, 30th December 2016, 11:22 pm

Chris dont bother reading the rest!! Its mostly mumblings and random blurb!!

i will email you a question that might be relevant.

Well i am sort of getting there, I have everything in completely the wrong place though and the wrong colour lol. But it is slowly starting to make more sense.

This BTW has nothing to do with software, this is a CSS virgin having a go at theming. If you know a little CSS then theming and changing Composr should be a doddle. I am surprised just how much you can change in it.

The trick however is knowing what to change and in what order .

Ok an update and recap.

This is roughly the idea i am looking at creating, its not exact but gives you an idea.

This is what we start with with Composr

And this is what i have so far, ignore the graphics and logo, that will be dealt with later.

All the blue arrows point to things fixed in position on the screen, ok they are not in the right position yet, but one step at a time lol. the Black arrow indicates which bits i have to get swapped around.

Its taking some time, but for a noob i am happy i am making some kind of progress. Now yes i could of used the wizard, and maybe should have, but i wanted to have a go at doing it by hand and learning some CSS. I know some elements i have done the wrong way. But its all about the learning.

if i pull this off i will do a detailed picture tutorial for anyone wanting to have a go with this. Really the wizard will do a decent job for most people, but some of us like to mess . The admin editor i prefer to the bottom of the page editor.
Not sure what the minify=1 does but it has kind of made it a little easier somehow.

Who knows, if i get good at this i might try and do some themes for people to use .

ok progress is more steady now,


the arrows shows the bits that are fixed and dont scroll now (which is what i want). yes i still have to sort out the logo and the 1970's table cloth background!!

Chris does great code but let him do interior design work! I wonder if that pic is actually his table cloth??

all joking aside, its slowly sinking in, now i need to move the main elements down below the fixed portion, i am avoiding doing colours at the moment, i mess them up normally!

I change my mind, the logo i like above the main bar! So that will stay, i have had to sacrifice the banner, i couldnt get it to work properly the way i now have the top set, i intend to maybe move the banner elswhere at some point, but thats not a major issue at this time.

So i changed a file and oh dear broke it again! Only this time to my advantage . I had a site with no styling!! deep panic set in. Then i realised that every colour had a double ## in front of it, so somewhere i have messed something and every gradient/colour (near enough) is crossed out because the colour declaration is ## colour.

This is great! Fantastic in fact. So i went through the Global style sheet bit by bit and started adding my own colours, i know gradients are the in thing, but i am a dinosaur i like normal colours in most places.

The colours you see are not permanent, i8 put them in while drunk last night , just as place holders. so now my site is at this stage.

Yes i have to mess with margins etc because some elements have hidden themselves, but slowly its drifting towards what i want.

The great thing about breaking the colours has been, now i can comment out all the {get this,get that} stuff and simply put my CSS in .

Much less alien to a dinosaur like me .

The other point woth mentioning, even if you manage to break things, it still keeps going!! Prett impressive.

So progress is faster today!

Seems once you get the hang of it then its not so bad. Still alot of things to tidy up and colours still missing from the drop down menus, i cant find these yet, but I am sure i will. I dont know why i still have the 1970's table cloth background for the logo!! Its growing on me, now that greatly concerns me ,.

I havnt been able to do much on this today, but maybe later tonight. Once you start diving in its really not as bad as you think it will be!

This is some very clever software. I havnt scratched the surface yet! Anyone know of any good design sites? ones that show which colours look good together etc? i am partly colour blind, Also i was a teenager in the 1970's so my colour sense is er………….well google 1970's fashion .

I never got past the 1970's colour wise , or the 1980's music wise!