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Cloud Theme/Theme As A Service?

Started by rickey29, June 23, 2016, 03:31:16 AM

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rickey29

All,

How about we provide the themes from a cloud server -- Theme As A Service?

When web sites need a new theme, the current solution is, web site owners download it from simplemachines.org and install it on their web sites.  My idea is, theme developer uploads the theme to a cloud server; web sites send data (title, author, date, content...) to this cloud server; server combines the data with the theme, and returns new style web pages; web sites then forward/display these pages to end users.

The point is, web site owners can get the new style web pages, but can not get the theme package directly.

I know there will be security and performance issues.  While, since other cloud solutions (various aaS) have the same problems, we can make our solution as secure and fast as others.

Any comments are welcome.

If there is no block issue, I will try to make a simple demo, and then ask your feedback.

Rickey

Kindred

ummmm..... no.

The entire idea of SMF and other forum softwares is to give admins a SELF-CONTAINED installation.

Additionally, what you suggest is distinctly insecure...


I fail to see the point of your concept. "the cloud" is not some magical unicorn, farting rainbows that become websites....
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Not sure if people would really like it if a theme designer suddenly decides to completely overhaul the look and feel, and then their site immediately takes over those changes. For bugfixes it might be reasonable, but then it would probably be better served to have some other update mechanism.

Other than that, this indeed sounds horribly insecure. And if I understood correctly from your proposal that the design elements are constantly loaded from "the cloud" (whatever), rather than from the local server: that's one hell of a single point of failure and absolutely undesirable. Not really sure why you would want that. SMF should be able to run stand-alone, and not rely on third-party hosted solutions to function... Everything must run local without having to constantly depend on an external source. (Not to mention potential privacy implications.)

Now, if you were proposing an update mechanism that would simply update the packages on the local server (so the user *does* have access to it, contrary to what you're suggesting), that might be different and probably more user-friendly. (Though doing that automagically still doesn't sound very secure.)
What if people make some custom changes to a theme? To match certain icons or change a bit of spacing? Will it get overwritten? Etc.

Questions, questions. ;)
Whilst the idea may sound nice, I don't think there's much of a practical application; and the security aspect + relying on third parties for all SMF sites using this mechanism really sound like an absolute no-go.
But perhaps we misunderstood what you meant.
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