to Fabrik again?

[jsnider]

Hi All,
I love Fabrik and have been using it since 2010. The issue I have had is the upgrading along the way - the difficulty of updating Joomla and then Fabrik through GitHub, and having to rebuild things etc. I reached a point where my current setup is ridiculously out of date. I moved away from Joomla for general websites because Wordpress updating is night and day simpler.

I need to build a new system and would love to do it on Fabrik again...Has the updating of Joomla and Fabrik gotten easier? "click to update" vs. reinstalls of new versions etc.?

Grateful for any thoughts.

 

[cheesegrits]

Joomla has had a web based updater on the back end for many years, and Fabrik uses it.

You still have to use github if you want to pick up bug fixes between releases, but to update to new releases you just select all the Fabrik "things" on the backend updater and hit "Update". And there's a dedicated "Joomlar updater" component for handling J! itself.

We still recommend testing updates on a sandbox first, but that's just good admin 101.

-- hugh

 

[jsnider]

Thanks for the fast response. Awesome. That is great news. Side note. My host doesn't have great mysql connections and times it out, which was causing issues when I connected to mysql through MS Access. Is it possible to have the joomla interface and Fabrik admin on one host server, with Fabrik connecting to a separate mysql database on a different host / server for the data??

 

[jsnider]

Hi Everyone - Any thoughts on above? Thanks!

 

[cheesegrits]

I thought I'd replied, but I was on my phone in the airport, may have fat fingered hitting Send.

My advice would be find another host. I mean, yes, you can create multiple connections (to other databases, optionally on different servers), then when you create a Fabrik list you can select which connection the table is on. But that does impose some limitations, like you can't then do cross-database joins back to J! (for things like user IDs). Hosting opptions are plentiful and cheap. Much better to just find one that doesn't time out.

But if for whatever reason you can't, then yes - with some limitations, you can have your Fabrik data anywhere.

-- hugh

 

[jsnider]

Thanks, Hugh! Great to know...to anybody else out there, anybody have any good webhosts? I have used Go Daddy, Green Geeks, Lunar Pages, and Blue Host over the years. Go Daddy and Green Geeks time out on me pretty quickly. Lunar Pages worked, but at a dedicated server level which is way more expensive.

 

[cheesegrits]

I like Liquid Web and SiteGround. Maybe not the cheapest, but you really do get what you pay for.

Liquid Web's support is stellar. You'll always get through to a knowledgeable person who can fix your issue, 24*7, within minutes. No teried support, no "we'll escalate and call you back". These guys have saved my ass at 3am on Christmas morning.

SiteGround has decent support, not quite LQ level, but they win on performance, their sites are rocket ships.

I haven't checked their entry level shared offerings for a while.

-- hugh