• Hello Fabrik Community

    Fabrik is now in the hands of the development team that brought you Fabrik for Joomla 4. We have recently transitioned the Fabrik site over to a new server and are busy trying to clean it up. We have upgraded the site to Joomla 4 and are running the latest version of Fabrik 4. We have also upgraded the Xenforo forum software to the latest version. Many of the widgets you might have been used to on the forum are no longer operational, many abandoned by the developers. We hope to bring back some of the important ones as we have time.

    Exciting times to be sure.

    The Fabrik 4.0 Official release is now available. In addition, the Fabrik codebase is now available in a public repository. See the notices about these in the announcements section

    We wish to shout out a very big Thank You to all of you who have made donations. They have really helped. But we can always use more...wink..wink..

    Also a big Thank You to those of you who have been assisting others in the forum. This takes a very big burden off of us as we work on bugs, the website and the future of Fabrik.

Future of Fabrik Meeting

Why the hectic, why the panic?
Fabrik is working fine with J!3, and J!3 will be around for another long time.
Well, with the non-existing roadmap of @mediaateam (at least no one published) and official stop of J!3 support in August 2023 I see the problem, too.

It doesn't make much sense to start new projects with J!3, so you can't use Fabrik with new projects, so you have already to move on without Fabrik for projects which should last for more than a year.

I'm pessimistic because I don't believe in a pure community, voluntary etc. Fabrik4 (stable, in reasonable time, where you can run existing Fabrik applications without doing all new) and I can't see any "professional" effort (even if it's "only" project managament, decisions what to do, what to merge from community contributions etc).
 
@troester, I totally agree, as "community project", maybe even with endless powwow among a large number of people, it won't go anywhere.
So, yes, IMHO there'll need money to be put on the table, and me thinks/hopes that the planned meeting could help clarifying at least a few points around the topic.

As small as the chance for a "pro" route seems, admittedly, once that were set, it could go at a somewhat decent pace. So, while there are definitely reasons for pessimism -- nope, I'm not willing to give up before "pro" options have been thoroughly evaluated.

Yeah, time keeps passing, and that's not great at all. Always something we have no control over.

TL;DR:
Either way, there won't be a "Fabrik 4" real quick. If ever.
Meanwhile life goes on, and so do the Interwebs. As we want or need to keep our sites running, or build new sites, what's wrong about using working, stable, known and available tools for the time being? Especially since no equivalent is known, and at present that new model "F4" or so is only a wet dream?


Read on if you like:

It just seems that a few users must switch to J!4 here and now. Noticed that in other forums and circles, too. While this may be doable for some sites, it is not and won't be for all. Because many extensions are not yet J!4-ready (or buggy), it'll take their devs another while, if they'll ever make it -- Fabrik is just one of those. Maybe those fellow users don't know what it takes to make their wish come true? That I'd understand.

Anyway, I bet we'll see many, many J!3 sites -- not only with Fabrik -- staying live long after J!3's end of support, just like today we still see many, many live sites on J!3.5/3.6/3.7 (two of which I definitely know: site owners have decided there's no budget for upgrading...), eventually under PHP 5.4/5.5/5.6...
Compare with J!2.5 -> J!3. Remember, J!2.5 sites kept running for years after EOS/EOL. And probably even quite a number of them is still up, haha!
Yes yes, I know, all not good, and sure not advisable.

I'm in preps of a larger project these weeks/days. As it looks, Fabrik would come in really handy. Thanks to the benefits of Fabrik, I'd have no problem -- actually, I'd prefer -- sticking with J!3 but get dev work started now and the site live within a foreseeable time, rather than going with J!4 and whatever workarounds I'll be able to find, or putting it on ice and "waiting for Fabrik 4", however long that might take, if ever.
Supposedly, J!3.10.x gives us an upgrade route to J!4. So, either I'll make use of this later once either Fabrik 4 falls out of the blue sky or, if not, I've managed to find an alternative during the many moons to come, or the site might end up running under J!3 beyond official EOS... until there is an efficient better way?

Still not panicking... ;)
 
Hello all, we have been talking with a few other companies, but still do not have any definitive answers on moving forward. We are planning the Community Meeting for the Future of Fabrik on May 11, 2022 at noon, 12:00 EDT. We will be sending out a link to all that have emailed and requested to join.
 
I'm not sure if this is a valid suggestion and I bow down to the superior knowledge of many users of this forum!
Would it be easier to maintain a forked version of J!3 for specific use with Fabrik going forward or would that be even more complex?
I generally only develop using Fabrik on core joomla with no other 3rd party components so if a "paired back" version of joomla3 for fabrik only use could be maintained then that cold be a possible "longer" term solution???
 
As announced in the "Is the project dead ?" issue on Github, I am hosting an open discussion about the future of Fabrik (as opposed to Media A-Team's closed invite-only meeting) on Discord at https://discord.gg/RQjv5V6wJK.

The flavour of the above comments seems to be that the future of Fabrik should be via a fork - which I am assuming is a vote-of-no-confidence in Media A-Team as the custodians of the Fabrik project (during which, due to lack of resources, community contributions have been ignored and Fabrik dropped out of the JED and was never fixed). Even @troester (who has been the most loyal of supporters - a good thing BTW) seems to be pessimistic. And yet, Media A-Team continues to try to set the agenda and control the discussion.

Personally, I am still hopeful that a deal can be done in which Media A-Team can play a part (despite their dreadful custodianship). But IMO any deal in which Media A-Team maintain control over what gets merged will NOT reverse the decline and lingering death of Fabrik, only postpone it. In my view, what is needed a a renaissance, under a community led model (with some sort of independent community leadership council), whereby Fabrik not only gets a Joomla 4 version, but where the various other aspects of technical debt also get remediated.

In my view what is needed is a genuinely open discussion / debate about all aspects of Fabrik's future - not just a Joomla 4 version, but also an improved governance model that genuinely reflects the ideals of open source, the various technical debt items, and a genuinely open discussion about what technical approach would be best.

Obviously, those users who are going to contribute more to this future - either by funding development or by contributing resources for development, testing or documentation - should have a greater say in deciding what the roadmap should be (and I genuinely hope that this group will include Media A-Team), but in my view an open and extended discussion about the pros and cons of various approaches is what is needed (rather than a one-off invitation-only meeting).

Everyone, including MAT, is welcome to join the Discord server, review the ideas that have already been put forward, and have their say both about the future of Fabrik and about how such discussions and decisions should proceed.
 
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I also emailed 3 times over the past 3 weeks, no invites. Less than impressed with MediaAteam........ I get the distinct feeling they are not invested in this at all.
 
Anyone see any invites yet? Meeting is 5 hours away.
I also emailed 3 times over the past 3 weeks, no invites. Less than impressed with MediaAteam........ I get the distinct feeling they are not invested in this at all.
AFAIK, as of last night some 20-ish emails have been received and responded to with the invite, so no blame on Media A-Team's investment in the matter.

No clue what could've gone wrong with your emails... maybe even Robbie couldn't tell, IDK... perhaps spam-filtered, perhaps else...

Also, for those who emailed only "just now" or so: please keep in mind that Media A-Team is at U.S. Central Time... so, currently still asleep, lol.

PM me your email (incl reply-to address, of course)? I'll pass it on from there!
 
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I have resent the invite to those of you that didn't receive it on the first round, everyone that expressed interest should have received the registration link. Talk soon!
 
Apologies missed the zoom - got my timezones in a twist.
Was the meeting recorded? What were the outcomes?
Thanks
 
Shortly, Fabrik codebase is huge and it uses outdated libraries, Joomla is constantly changing, so it's a big challenge to come up with a viable solution. Media A-Team is waiting for suggestions and ideas how to continue. No solution for now, so it's getting more and more less likely that there will be Fabrik 4 for J4.

But sometimes miracles happen and it's not ruled out entirely. There is a discussion in Discord channel, but no clear solution yet there either.
 
The thing is: as I've written elsewhere, I created a really big project for our local library using Joomla, only because it has Fabrik. So for me letting it die (as no perspectives mean just that) is a huge (warning: understatement alert) problem. It looks like at some point I have to isolate the whole site and keep it running as long as possible on the unsupported by then Joomla 3.x. And in the meantime I will have to redo the whole thing using WHATEVER that resembles what Fabrik can do. No matter what - CMS, some PHP framework... anything. Seems like a nightmare, so I really really keep my fingers crossed for Fabrik's bright future. As they say: hope springs eternal.
 
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The thing is: as I've written elsewhere, I created a really big project for our local library using Joomla, only because it has Fabrik. So for me letting it die (as no perspectives mean just that) is a huge (warning: understatement alert) problem. It looks like at some point I have to isolate the whole site and keep it running as long as possible on the unsupported by then Joomla 3.x. And in the meantime I will have to redo the whole thing using WHATEVER that resembles what Fabrik can do. No matter what - CMS, some PHP framework... anything. Seems like a nightmare, so I really really keep my fingers crossed for Fabrik's bright future. As some they: hope springs eternal.

In similar position, and probably past the responsible point where I should be rebuilding the site on the side. Let me/us know what solution you go for here if you will. Would love to find something Joomla driven, but realistically given the user trends that doesn't seem so likely to appear.
 
Out of curiosity, has there been discussion with at least moving forward with a "lite" version of Fabrik, where only the essential core elements (which I know that is a lot just in themselves!!) and a handful of plugins are ported over? Many of the applications we create mainly use the core element types (Field, Dropdown, Database Join, etc), couple of the Validations plugins (Not Empty, PHP), couple of the Form plugins (Redirect, Email, PHP), and at times a couple of the List plugins (Can Edit/Delete, PHP) - with our main need being how quick and easy it easy to build the data collecting forms, that goes into the separate Db tables of our making, and creating the filterable and exportable lists from those Db tables. A lite version would be plenty for us; and actually, if we just had the core elements and a PHP plugin for Validation/Form/List we could make that work.

Saying that however, I do realize that even a lite version is a large complicated project requiring many hours and an ongoing commitment, and as well considering what to include in a "lite" package may be difficult since what some may considered essential others may not.
 
Hello, super worried about what is the future of fabrik, because i use it in all my projects, and i am working on some right now, It is a dificult challenge to overcome, but we are a big community, i have read some post about the future and i understand is not and easy task, also we need money for that, i will love to help as developer but i dont think i have the skills and 1 person is not enoght, but i will love to contribute $$$, and maybe this is what fabrik need to doo, i been trying for months to be pay supported but was not able to find the way, i am sure more than 1 person or 100 persons will contribut like pay subscription to collect enoght money to pay developers before joomla 3 die. , simple solution for a big problem, lets work as community on this and solve it,
 
Out of curiosity, has there been discussion with at least moving forward with a "lite" version of Fabrik, where only the essential core elements (which I know that is a lot just in themselves!!) and a handful of plugins are ported over? Many of the applications we create mainly use the core element types (Field, Dropdown, Database Join, etc), couple of the Validations plugins (Not Empty, PHP), couple of the Form plugins (Redirect, Email, PHP), and at times a couple of the List plugins (Can Edit/Delete, PHP) - with our main need being how quick and easy it easy to build the data collecting forms, that goes into the separate Db tables of our making, and creating the filterable and exportable lists from those Db tables. A lite version would be plenty for us; and actually, if we just had the core elements and a PHP plugin for Validation/Form/List we could make that work.

Saying that however, I do realize that even a lite version is a large complicated project requiring many hours and an ongoing commitment, and as well considering what to include in a "lite" package may be difficult since what some may considered essential others may not.

LITE VERSION is a good idea, while other pluggins are converted, maybe we can help on that.
 
We are in need of some funding.
More details.

Thank you.

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