Software Design and choosing the right platform

In 2005, the first version of PLU application was developed using Mambo CMS (  version 4.5.3 ) which is an Open Source Content Management System. Open Source meant that we were legally allowed to learn, modify and customize the source code for our project, and that was very important. In the first implementation of PLU, Mambo’s Access Control List (ACL) was completely modified, and also a lot of modification to the core code was done in order to bring Administration style user interfaces to the front-end of the application.

It worked just fine, until few months later that we needed to apply security patches, and we found it very difficult. Security patches were only suitable for a default installation of Mambo CMS, not a modified version. So for the version 2.0, PLU was developed as a separate component having the idea in mind to leave the mainframe core code intact and instead plan to extend the functionality of default CMS and turn it into a Learning Management System. This way we could apply security updates to our application without breaking it.

The Mambo Project was later on forked by their core development team and that was when Joomla! CMS was born. From the beginning it was apparent that Joomla’s community and core development were much more reliable than Mambo. Specially the Joomla! CMS 1.5 with a new more advanced API, Model View Controler ( MVC ) architecture, and a wonderful template management, was a very attractive option as a starting point for PLU 2.0; therefore: Joomla! CMS 1.5 became the platform of choice for us.

I would also like to mention that, for a while we did consider Moodle which was a well-known comprehensive Open Source eLearning application. The complete feature-set in Moodle was amazing, however at that time ( even today ), a Moodle installation could not be used to serve a large number of schools, and that was an essential feature that we could not do without.

In addition to that, Moodle in comparison to Joomla! or Mambo, lacked a good template manager. Moodle’s user interfaces also didn’t seem very exciting which was crucial for building a commercial software.

As a result of those observations, we decided it would be worthwhile if we could built a customized Learning Content Management System using Joomla or Mambo instead of attempting to customize Moodle for our purpose.