Tag: update

Migrate TYPO3 or move to Drupal or WordPress or Joomla?

Today with such huge leap in the changes to TYPO3, people are really moving over to WordPress and Drupal. There is a haphazard move to migrate to Druapl and WordPress. People are cashing in, and we at SCWEBS as a solution expert are not really happy about this extra bill. Financially this is extremely good, for an agency like ours.

We can just cash out by suggesting alternate solution, and justfy extra costs, and keep our company runing happy at the cost of my client’s money!

Is this really justified?

NO IT IS NOT!

There are more than 4 lac websites that are still running on TYPO3 version 4.5.x and TYPO3 version 4.6.x.

One of the major change was the move from PiBase to ExtBase. Developers were not ready to move, clients were not ready to move. And the real fact that whenver there is a change – no one really wants to be ready. But the one who makes the move will be the smart person.

Some of the large enterprises and NGOs are already migrating from TYPO3 4.x or TYPO3 6.x to the latest TYPO3 version. But the main debate was whether we should really stick to TYPO3?

Several companies have already moved from TYPO3 to other options like Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. Was it really a cost saving smart move? I don’t think so.

I have been working on Content Management Systems (CMS) since almost 18 years or more from now. That is as a student, I had been fond of Content Management Systems (CMS). When I saw Drupal, WordPress and Joomla I had even started writing my own CMS system during those times.

When I met TYPO3, I was totally surprised that this Content Management System (CMS) can take over everything. TYPO3 was not framed behind PiBase or ExtBase, but it came forward with a beautful idea from the king Kasper Skårhøj. His main ideas helped build this extremely flexible Enterprise class Content Management System (CMS) from day one!!!. TYPO3 surely needs time to learn, but one learnt there is no going back. You can make it work like a Blog like WordPress, as an E-Commerce system like Magento, WooCommerce, PrestaShop or anything out of those 100+ choices, TYPO3 can be a Comunity portal like Drupal’s strong features.

TYPO3 could become anything, and even today when I re-learnt Drupal and WordPress, I am not happy with the options. WordPress and Drupal surely do excel, but if you chose TYPO3 once, I do not see a point why one should move out.

But such a move will surely cost on a long run, because in-spite of learning Drupal, WordPress and other ssytems I am not happy with these systems. One can argue that this is my individual opinion, but trust me on a real long run – the cost of choosing other systems will be learnt.

Today at SCWEBS we still use TYPO3 as our main expert area, and when one needs a real blog, we still do prefer WordPress. But if it is very simple blog like feature, TYPO3 is all we prefer. For E-Commerce WooCommerce or Prestashop and we do prefer a TYPO3 based shop like tt_product on several occasions. Drupal or Joomla almost never come into picture untill and unless a customer really wants to get it done by us.

In many cases, we have built a totally custom solution using Symfony and Laravel but we are proud that till date have never moved a TYPO3 customer out. I feel that migrating to ExtBase and TYPO3 Version 9 is far easier than moving over to Drupal.

If you want to migrate your site to WordPress or Drupal, contact us, we will personally help you out. I will show why TYPO3 is still better than the rest. There are 100+ reasons and areas where TYPO3 excels.

If you are still running your website on one of the TYPO3 versions like TYPO3 version 3.8, TYPO3 version 4.5 or TYPO3 version 4.6, TYPO3 version 6.2 LTS then we suggest it is time to migrate to newer TYPO3 version.

TYPO3 is quite secure, and we can justify it. We still kept some of our site on versin 4.x to analyze how attacks happen, and to what level. Today, on one of our 4.5 site, the site goes down and comes back up within 10 minutes, all by itself. The hackers are trying twice every day to get in, and succeed to a level, but they can’t get much deeper. We are watching what all they can do. They could not do much harm as of now… but we can’t sayfor how long. We are not such big security experts like our friends in TYPO3 security team. So our advice – migrate before it is too late.

These older versions are slowly getting older, and they may soon be hacked by a smart thief. By now, agencies are all well prepared to handle TYPO3 migrations, and these days costs are quite lower too. If you are an agency with many TYPO3 sites that needs migration, we can help with several strategies to lower the costs much further.

If you have a TYPO3 migration query, do get in touch with us. We are curiously waiting.

Make Pibase extension compatible to TYPO3 6.2.x

1) Remove the line starting with “require_once”, that includes TYPO3 core files
For Ex:
require_once(PATH_tslib.’class.tslib_pibase.php’);
require_once(PATH_t3lib.’class.t3lib_tsparser.php’);

But keep the “require_once” line that includes custom class from current extension
For Ex:
require_once (PATH_site.”/typo3conf/ext/myextension/library/class.mylibclass.php”);

2. Download the TYPO3 source, in my case I am referring to TYPO3 6.2.2
Open the file “typo3-6.2.2\sysext\core\Migrations\Code\LegacyClassesForIde.php”.

This file has very important information regarding migrations.

3. Open the pi1.php file of the extension that you are going to update.

4. Replace the class names by referring to LegacyClassesForIde.php of TYPO3 core.
For Ex:
Replace “tslib_pibase” with “\TYPO3\CMS\Frontend\Plugin\AbstractPlugin”.
To do this, search for “tslib_pibase” on “LegacyClassesForIde.php” and replace with the part next to “extends”
“abstract class tslib_pibase extends \TYPO3\CMS\Frontend\Plugin\AbstractPlugin {}”

So
“class tx_myextension_pi1 extends tslib_pibase {”
becomes
“class tx_myextension_pi1 extends \TYPO3\CMS\Frontend\Plugin\AbstractPlugin {”

5. Similarly replace “t3lib_div” with “\TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility”.
We can do search and replace all occurrences.

6. Similarly replace “t3lib_extMgm” with “\TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\ExtensionManagementUtility”
and repeat this step until all the replacement availabilities are replaced.

7. And for custom class inclusions, replace
require_once (PATH_site.”/typo3conf/ext/myextension/library/class.mylibclass.php”);
with
require_once(\TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\ExtensionManagementUtility::extPath(‘myextension’).’library/class.mylibclass.php’);
“PATH_site” may not work in some cases.

8. Replace
t3lib_div::makeInstance(‘t3lib_TSparser’);
with
\TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility::makeInstance(‘TYPO3\\CMS\\Core\\TypoScript\\Parser\\TypoScriptParser’);
The paths comes in quotes should have double back slashes.

9. Remove the line
t3lib_div::loadTCA(“tt_content”);
that may be there in ext_tables.php
In TYPO3 6.2 version, all TCA are auto loaded. So we need not load again.