Is NinjaFORGE dead?

Dear all,

I am a lifetime member and paid for the future (yours and mine). But it seems that there is no future.

No new developement since months, no update of existing stuff to Joomla 1.7, only promises.

Do you have still developers? Or do you only administrate what you have as long as it goes and then close this site? Only selling out of the box without putting new items in the box. Or upgrade the exisiting items.

It is in your responsibility to give paid members what they paid for.

Please give me and all other paying members an schedule what you plan to do next and when.

Regards

Bob

05 Jan 12

Dear Bob,

We appreciate your fair comment.

I will try to clarify your questions.

NinjaForge is far from dead.
In fact we are working hard to get the most of our extensions on track onwards Joomla 1.7 and beyond.
Most of our extensions have regular updates, some have major and some have minor and some have none.
You can review this at the extensions page.
There are changelogs available per extension.
Also you can view which extensions are "tagged" Joomla 1.7 compatible.

We still do have developers, be it a few, but we have. Besides, they are really proffesional ones.
The amount of work we have to do is intensive as we might have a short of resources now and then.
But along the way we are proud to say that we are able to manage further development in the future.
We are a small team but with very good skills with great intentions.

So in the end I think it's fair to say that our members eventually get what they are paying for as we keep that always as a high priority. If it won't be by regular updates then it will be by requests from members at the NinjaForge Forums. To keep our customers as satisfied as possible.

At this time we can't give a solid timeline or schedule how development will proceed this year and in the future. This is also work in progress and eventually there will be clarification soon as we are strongly aware of the fact that NinjaForge needs to keep up with public demands.

We understand what your concerns are and respect those in a serious way.
We always try to make the best out of it.

I hope you understand our present situation.

Thanks for your contribution, trust and above all patience so far.

Best regards,
John

11 Jan 12

Hello John,

thank you for your reply and sorry for writing again.

I think NinjaForge died in march 2011.

There are no new modules or developement in 2011, only very few updates (and not upgraded to run under Joomla 1.7). There is no module updatet to run under Joomla 1.7 till today.

Below the list of your extensions where you can see most ended in march 2011.

And you wrote you have no schedule or timeline for this year or the future.

Sorry but how do you define DEAD?

All my customers are already upgraded to Joomla 1.7, I bought a lifetime membership with no future so why should anyone become a new member on NinjaForge?

There is no signal that you will at least one of your extension to the actual state of the art.

Maybe you will try your best to support old fashioned customers with Joomla 1.5 but if there is no new development (extensions) and no upgrades for exisiting extensions so you have found the definietion of DEAD.

Regards

Robert

Ninja RSS Syndicator 1.5 Ver. Undefined Released 11 Oct 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Content 1.5 Ver. 1.5.5 Released 25 Oct 2011 with Changelog
Ninjamonials 1.5 Ver. 1.10.1 Released 10 Dec 2011 with Changelog
Ninjaboard 1.5 Ver. 1.1.5 Stable Released 07 Aug 2011 with Changelog
NinjaXplorer 1.5 Ver. 1.0.6 Released 15 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Clicky 1.5/1.6 Ver. 2.0.0 Released 31 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Shadowbox 1.5 Ver. Undefined Released 17 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Access Module 1.5 Ver. Undefined Released 20 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Access Plugin 1.5 Ver. 1.2 Released 17 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Accordion 1.5/1.6 Ver. 3.5.1 Released 28 Oct 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Super sIFR 1.5 Ver. 1.1.10 Released 14 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Simple Icon Menu 1.5/1.6 Ver. 1.8.3 Released 25 Dec 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Zemanta 1.5 Ver. 1.0.4 Released 15 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Modulizer 1.5 Ver. 2.0 Released 15 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Slide 1.5 Ver. 1.5.6 Released 18 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Journal 1.5 Ver. 1.0.1 Stable Released 13 Jul 2011 no Change
Ninja Eye Menu 1.5/1.6 Ver. 1.8.1 Released 23 Aug 2011 with Changelog
Ninja MultiContent 1.5 Ver. 1.0.0 Released 17 Mar 2011 with Changelog starting update for Joomla 1.6 but never finished
Ninja ModuleHider 1.5 Ver. 2.2.3 Released 14 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Security 1.5 Ver. 1.0.7 Released 15 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Redirect 1.5 Ver. 2.0.1 Released 14 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja 3D Carousel 1.5 Ver. 1.6.5 Released 14 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja RSS to Content 1.5 Ver. Undefined Released 15 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja ShadowPanel 1.5 Ver. 1.1.0rc2 Released 14 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Breaking News 1.5 Ver. 1.2.0 Released 14 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja UserSplash 1.5 Ver. 1.0.2 Released 03 Dec 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Bot Control 1.5 Ver. 1.5 Released 14 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Date 1.5 Ver. 2.5 Released 14 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Ipsum 1.5/1.6 Ver. 2.0.0 Released 31 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Kwik Menu 1.5/1.6 Ver. 2.0.0 Released 02 Dec 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Buddy 1.5 Ver. 1.2 Released 14 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja IE De-Griefer 1.5 Ver. 1.0 Released 14 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Flashed 1.5 Ver. 1.0 Released 15 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Content Timer 1.5 Ver. 1.0 Released 15 Mar 2011 no Change
Monobridge 1.5 Ver. 1.0.1 Released 15 Mar 2011 no Change
Calculate Ninja 1.5 Ver. 1.0 Released 14 Mar 2011 no Change
NinjImage 1.5 Ver. 1.0.0 Released 14 Mar 2011 with Changelog
Ninja Plugoo 1.5 Ver. 1.0 Released 15 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Promo 1.5 Ver. Undefined Released 23 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Join Now 1.5 Ver. Undefined Released 23 Mar 2011 no Change
Ninja Site Styler 1.5 Ver. Undefined Released 23 Mar 2011 no Change
Chrome Frame Activator 1.5 Ver. 1.0.1 Released 01 Apr 2011 no Change

11 Jan 12

Hi Robert,

This is a better explanation of what happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

It's not that we've stopped/died, but that we've been far too ambitious. The massive collection of extensions to maintain and support have also put a strain on us and some of us burned out (but recovered).

Do we need to catch up? Yes. Is the current situation acceptable? No. Are we actively doing our best to get back on track? Of course!

You want a schedule and release dates. We do too, and when we do have that we'll surely share it with you. Anything else would be promises based on wishful thinking and rough estimates based on facts that don't exist yet.

So while we did make mistakes last year, we learned from them. We're also currently moving to Github to enable us to code more efficiently and organize tickets/issues that people report or request in a much better way.

Thanks,
Stian

13 Jan 12

Hi starrs1,

I just want to join John and Stian in reassuring you that NinjaForge is indeed not dead.

There is no denying that 2011 wasn't a great year for us, but we are committed to turning this around in 2012.

I for one depend on NinjaForge for my livelihood, and have every incentive to make this work.

Happy New Year :)
Mark

14 Jan 12

+1 to all that said above.

The first half of 2011 was occupied with us overhauling the site.

Then the biggest change over 2011 was that the 3 main developers, Myself, Richie and Stian all changed our full time jobs.

Those jobs became very busy, particularly in the second half of the year and prevented us making any headway into new development. They have slowed down now so you can expect to see some development starting up again.

The third major development is that my wife and I had a baby in 2010, which particularly over the last year as she becomes more active wipes out 2-4 hours a day for me that I used to use for development.

On top of that was the situation Stian mentioned that most of us got burnt out trying to juggle everything and having so many extensions to support. But we went through the extensions at the end of last year and started to think about which ones we would keep and update, and which ones we would have to drop going forward.

We have also started opening development up the free extensions and are moving all of them to github - https://github.com/NinjaForge/

This is in the hopes that by opening up development it will let the community contribute directly to these free extensions and help push along development instead of asking for things to change - which means we need to take time off the paid for extensions to do so.

We all love Ninja Forge and want her to keep going so she is far from dead. We just had a few problems last year that we are seeking to rectify.

15 Jan 12

Dear all,

your answers shows me your really existing interest to keep NinjaForge alive. I understand all these described problems and so why there was no progress.

Mainly your honesty and the fact to see this thread showing to the public (and not deleted by admin) give me trust in the developers behind NinjaForge and their promises.

Now I'm looking forward to see what's coming up next and when.

Also Happy New Year to all of you.

Best regards,

Robert

17 Jan 12

Hi Robert,

I think this thread might be very valuable for others having the same thoughts and questions about the whereabouts of Ninjaforge.

So, thanks everyone for their honest contributions.

We are looking forward to a good year too.

Best regards,
John

03 Mar 12

To all developer and responsible persons at ninja forge...

Where are the progress on updating your programs you promised two month ago???

Several persons of your team promised developing is going on. Soon we will see updated items. Nice that you gave us your information to look at https://github.com/NinjaForge/ because every one can see: no progress since 2 month and before that also no progress, only shifting all extensions to github without updating anything.

Why are you not honest? Give all your customers a honest answer and no more promises. Give us a timetable what you plan next.

Only short time and Joomla 1.5 is official dead. Joomla 1.7 is also gone. And again 2 month where all members waiting.

It seems you gave us your answer to my initial question wether NinjaForge is dead or not.

A real shame.

Robert

03 Mar 12

Work on NinjaBoard (NB) is progressing as you can see here - https://github.com/stipsan

The development takes place outside of the core repository, then gets merged back in when it is ready. Which is why it looks like nothing is happening. It would make more sense if there were more developers working on things, which is what we are preparing for.

Also, NB, NinjaContent, Ninja RSS2 (90% done), Ninja Journal, and Ninjamonials 2 (just started development) all run on Nooku, so we have been working to get NB running on 2.5 and Nooku running on 2.5 which will let us then convert the others shortly after. They are mostly paid extensions so you won't see them on the public github repositories either.

I also just bundled up a dozen or so extensions for a developer last week to get them converted to 2.5. You won't see that in the list either until they are done.

Yes it looks like things are dead if you only look at the git hub repo, but things have most definitely restarted. But development takes time, we can't just snap our fingers and have it all done as much as I wish we could.

14 Mar 12

I think that what concerns me the most are the little things which make no sense to me on this site.

No dates on this forum/thread?
Extensions page has no visual indicator of Joomla 2.5 status...doesn't compare well with the JED.

It doesn't seem like a developer site, lacking those features, i.e. no development, or management.

14 Mar 12

Hi Ken,

If you move your mouse over a post, the date appears in the top left hand corner. It is hidden by default to unclutter the posts for easier reading. There are also dates on the main forum pages as well. I will grant you that there are no dates on the module on the dashboard, but it is the latest posts so they are as new as they get.

You are right that the extensions list page itself has no indication, but there is one when you go into the individual pages for an extension (in the top left again)

This was also to reduce clutter. Given how many radically different versions there are, having them all on the list page would make it look nasty indeed with potentially up to 5 different icons (1, 1.5,1.6,1.7,2.5) all fighting for space.

Please don't confuse ascetics with no development or management.

15 Mar 12

Hi Daniel,

fighting for space in an overview page seems to be the smallest problem ninjaforge has. As you see in my overview above there is no module for Joomla 1.0, all modules for Joomla 1.5, six module for Joomla 1.6 and (0, zero) modules for Joomla 1.7 or Joomla 2.5.

Please tell me where in your overview page problems in space are? I think the reason is not to show that there are no current modules on the page. It is more comfortable to see at one sight which version this module is for instead of clicking inside each module to have a look there.

In an other thread you wrote all of your developement depends on framework nooku. But a look at this site shows there are the nearly same information about developement to Joomla 2.5 as on your site: nothing. Your site is a little better because you have a forum where I can ask question and where I get answers (thank you for that). But the result is the same:

No schedule, no dates, no information except somebody ask for them.

You gave the promise you are working on updates for all modules but when your works depends on that framework and that framework also seems to be dead (because there are no indication on developement on their site, all Joomla 1.5, also no 1.6/1.7/2.5) what are you working on?

Sorry for annoy you again.

15 Mar 12

Seriously.

The implications from the last couple of posts is that we are deliberately hiding the versions - which we are not they are clearly on the detail pages and on the JED listings for every extension.

We like clean looking lists, not cluttered ones that is all. We built those lists when 1.6 was still a twinkle in the core team's eye, and all of our extensions were running on the latest J1.5.

@Nooku : Nooku Dev is more active than Joomla Core - just check their repositories

The thing holding us up is our intermediate work, between nooku and our extensions most of which relies on Ninjaboard getting up to date, as Stian built the intermediary bit and is the only one who really understands it well.

Most of our smaller extensions are not Nooku powered and they are currently being redeveloped for J2.5 and I hope to have the first of them within this month.

I can't give an exact schedule, or dates because they will get done as soon as we get them done.

Asking the same questions over and over and making the same points - basically that we aren't working hard enough for you - is not going to speed things up. If anything, it will have the opposite effect and demotivate us.

We have tried to be as open and honest as we can, but the snide remarks and insinuations make me wonder why we even bother.

16 Mar 12

Daniel,

It's good to hear things are progressing. I have loved and supported NinjaForge since you guys were ninjoomla. I do have to say, blog updates would be nice to nekkidninjas and I too found the hiding of the date stamps to be a pain in the ass for what it's worth. It's more effort for me to get information on when these issues were last addressed, usability etc.

I'm glad you guys are moving forward, you can understand the frustration of some people here though because I know if they are like my case they are consultants and cannot migrate their installs until they get updates. They are obviously in a panic and perhaps aren't as technically inclined as you or I. I have just wrote some bareb bones components while waiting for things like Testimonials 2.0, mine is no where near as comprehensive but works as a stop-gap. If I was not familiar with Joomla and PHP all these years I would probably also be in quite the panic.

With all the nice things I have to say, I still think ninjaforge is dead. Internal updates are great, but I can't be the only one who feels once Ninjaboard got started everything else took a back seat. That could totally just be perception though and once again I like and appreciate all your guys here learnt a lot from so many of them, no hard feelings.

Finally, I'm glad you updated us, I couldn't help but feel bad for John having to bear the brunt of this while having almost no information to share. This is my eyes was something you should have handled Daniel, and months ago at that. To be frank "We have tried to be as open and honest as we can, but the snide remarks and insinuations make me wonder why we even bother." Is incredibly rude to your customers (regardless of how they are acting). It also is a lie, you should have been the one to answer this question personally in January, not throw John under the bus!

Please take my critiques as constructive. I have made friends here and always liked and got along with the people. I just find that your last posts come too little, too late (and end quite sour). These forum posts should have been on nekkidninjas months ago.

17 Mar 12

Hi Spent,

I do appreciate your concerns and motivations but I have to say that Daniel didn't throw me anywhere or make me bear the burden of this whole discussion.

This is not how it works.
We are all having our part in responsibilities, every one has his tasks. Besides that, we are trying to back up each other if the workload gets to heavy on one person.
One of my tasks is to provide support to the people at the forums, answering questions and all what comes around. And I will try to do my task as good as I can while the others do theirs at their best.
This way, the other Ninja's, can fully concentrate themselves on further development.
Which is needed and is indeed work in progress. We all are fully aware of this and working on that with every pride and joy we have for Ninjaforge.

I take full responsibility of what I wrote in my first comment based on what I know and what is useful to give as an explanation.
Daniel only tried to back me up in a fair way by providing more background info on how the situation currently is, although I do have access too to that kind of information.
But I do appreciate it much he did so.

So if there's any obscurity caused by me then I also take that as my own full responsibility.
And I'm sorry if there is but I think I did it the right way.

I know you are a member long before I came. And I respect that very much but I think it's not fair to blame Daniel. We are a team and we have to do the job all together and that's what we do (and did) at the moment.
We all believe in good progressions and results and hopefully there will be a positive publication very soon.

I'm not trying to say that there's anybody right or wrong here, because I can only take any ones opinion as valuable critiques, be it positive and/or negative. It's something to learn from and to do with in a sensible way.

I hope this all makes sense to every one who reads this.

Kind regards,
John

18 Mar 12

Hi John,

Please don't think I was unsatisfied with your response. I think you have done a great job, I suggested it was Daniel that should touch base here because he is the Leader and a full explanation from the horses mouth I don't think is too much to ask (and we got it, so Daniel agrees, to which I give kudos!)

Seriously though, nekkidninjas... it hasn't been updated in over a year. There was a time it was great, constantly keeping us updated, sometimes little Joomla tips etc. It was a great way to keep up with what was going on. It's been over a year since Dan has updated his twitter too. Communication goes a long way and though you may be the main PR guy, I think when big changes/delays are involved it's important for the CEO/leader to be the one to step up.

The last post on nekkidninjas is about plan and pricing changes, which happened a year ago I suppose, but we have seen very little progress in this time. To me it says that changing pricing plans was important enough for a blog update but state of development is not.

19 Apr 12

Dear All,

just as reminder: I always interested in Ninja Forge and still looking forward for upgraded NF extensions working with Joomla 2.5.x and above.

Kindly regards

Bob

21 Apr 12

Note to those following this thread:
I've just deleted a post, but only because it was spam (screenshot attached).

You don't have access to view the attachments in this post.

30 May 12

I deleted a post,but when i try to post another one, it did not work...why?

30 May 12

Hi Jessica,

I'm not sure what you mean? Could you please create another thead and post your problem there. Be sure to explain clearly what happened... where did you create this post, on NInjaforge.com, or on your own forum? Are you a super administrator? Is posting not working at all on your forum? Is it just you, or can nobody post on your forum?

Thanks

30 May 12

well, I create dthe post in Ninjaforge.com only......

30 May 12

It's possible that our spam catcher removed your post.

Please post again in a new thread.

Thanks

31 May 12

And now we are a month later and still no progress.

This post to be followed with various NinjaForge members trying to string us all along for another month or so.

31 May 12

So may it be. :)

As also posted here:

http://ninjaforge.com/component/ninjaboard/topic/25934-i-guess-ninjaforge-is-dead-or-not/31722

***************

No need to double post.

We should have made an announcement, but we are in the last stages of testing the following extensions on 2.5:

Ninjamonials
Ninja Multicontent
Ninja Access (Module)
Ninja Content Timer
Ninja Redirect
Ninja Modulehider
Ninja Zemanta
Ninja Access (plugin)
Ninja Explorer

I know this is just my word, which isn't worth much these days, but here is a screenie of the tickets we are working on for the last few bugs:

https://img.skitch.com/20120531-1tgxfcgmsnt8xexfpqi5h3i9y3.jpg

We also have betas out for Ninjaboard and Ninjacontent on 2.5, but we need some help testing them as both are pretty huge extensions.

As seen here: http://ninjaforge.com/blog

We went over the rest of the extensions, and most of them aren't worth converting to 2.5 for one reason or another (redundant, better extensions out there, not needed in 2.5 etc) so we will be releasing them in a few months on github with our current ones that are there and you guys can do what you like with them.

This is so we can start to refocus on these extensions and make them as good as they can be.