Does anyone here like the use of Smarty tags?

Suzanne,

I am working on a templateshop for also Amember. COntactt me ;-)-->PM if interested

I didn't realise the Smarty work-around affected performance.

I would support any changes or developments that helped increase the speed and performance of aMember - at the moment it does seem to be slow software.

I love everything about WordPress, especially the theming system.

I havent read all the arguments in this thread, but i think its a horrible idea to use a template system like wordpress (aka none) and move away from smarty. I have been working with smarty for 5 years now and I absolutely love it. Its by far the most flexible php template system and there are many benchmarks out there that prove this. Dont you think the fact that php.net officially supports it is a pretty good indication of its quality? Its also the worlds most widely used template engine. I specifically decided to use amember because of the fact that it uses smarty. Please do not switch away from it.

you must know something that the industry doesnt know then. Im definitely disappointed in this decision and am less likely to purchase this product for future projects. Smarty is not hard for shared enviroments at all. Its used in numerous CMS/CRM scripts and billing software as well. Like I said, its the most widely used template system out there. The fact that you disabled compiling for smarty proves right there that you werent using it correctly and thus the slow times. Smarty will work ANYWHERE if setup correctly.

Oh well, can't please them all

Whatever it takes to make aMember faster and easier to template/customize (look-wise), Alex, go for it...

Bro, that is just... WOW!

Would you be willing to do some custom work for me too, if need be in future? I'll pay

And yes, I totally agree... adding some user-friendly and idiot-proof features like widgets and whatnot WordPress uses to aMember would make it a whole lot easier to customize... and might work in your favour too, Alex (popularity?)

Alex, I'd get him to do a custom theme or two for the retail package of aMember

Agreed, would be well worth the money.

phpSavant is better option

What I love about the template system at the moment is the way it gives you incredible flexibility - just about anything is possible.

However, aMember performance is very slow, and if this is due to the current templating system as Alex says, I would support ANY changes that result in a significant performance boost.

I've had a look at phpSavant and it looks much better than Smarty. I'm looking forward to it being implemented!

We are going to create templates for Amember. If the future system will be in phpSavant we will just change it but all our designs are CSS and without tables. I think its not Smarty but more CSS and (X)HTML that throws people off. phpSavant uses the same basics. In the end I hope that Amember will not loose its flexibility whatever the new system will be.

Sorry guys I never see these replies cuz I must have notifications turned off. I konw it's likes months later, but thank you.

But first, I'm not a guy My name is Suzanne. I run a small iWeb template store at the URL I posted above.

I gotta tell you, I totally redesigned my site again and this version of my aMember design is even better. I'm just in love with it! It's clean, bright, easy... and it's absolutely seamless with my general site pages. I made a dummy account if you want to log in and see. Just don't download anything or the account sharing will disable the account obviously. If you're a Mac user, you can create your own accuont and get all that free stuff for use with iWeb.

Login page: http://mystuff.11mystics.com
Account (which I'll keep for a few weeks): amember/amember

Anyway, it is really not that hard to make your aMember pages look just like your site. But I did have to rewrite most of the template code first. Changing to this new design then wasn't hard - it was almost just changes to the CSS and that's what true theming should be.

P.S. Keep me posted on the theme engine. I can make themes using the current code, but the tables are very limiting. Most advanced designs would require rewriting the current themplate pages to use DIVs with CSS positioning. I'm not sure what the impact of that is when upgrade time comes. But I'm open to helping make aMember themes become a bigger part of your product benefits list. Keep up the great work. aMember made a business owner out of me I'm going to enjoy watching it evolve into a really superior system.

And, yes, I am open to doing some themes for others, but I'd have to figure out how to create a staging area first. Maybe I need a second installation of aMember? Not sure - if anyone can suggest a solution, I'd appreciate that. I'd also want to get more information from Alex and team regarding the impact of messing with the template code as much as I did.

I turned on notifications this time so I won't miss any conversation - SB

Ooops I see now that the official decision to go phpSavant was made. Yippee!

Now I'm really excited. This should put aMember in a far better position in terms of market reach and exposure. If a theme community arises out of this, by default, you will attract a crowd. One of the biggest complaints I get from business owners is the difficulty of theming across all the applications then need to run on thier site: aMember (heh), blog, forums, etc. It's costly to hire someone to do that. But as application move more toward a common approach like this, it's really going to make those participating applications so much more desireable to the folks who just can't afford $20k sites.

I can't speak to the performace stuff, but there's a good relationship between PHP programmers and graphic designers out there. WordPress is only one example where plug-ins and themes have really blossomed together to provide so much fun and individuality to a huge, demanding audience. PHP programmers can easily write neat new functionality and themers can pick that stuff up and stylize it with ease. You're really creating a new canvas for these kinds of folks. I gotta get my PHP book out now

What kind of timeline are we looking at for version 4? And would you consider a beta test so we could start developing themes under the new framework when it's feasable?