[Koha] A general query about UI customization

[Paul]

At 07:15 AM 1/21/2013 +1300, Chris Cormack and Indranil Das Gupta wrote:

a) hand edit the template file
b) use a bit of jquery in either intranetuserjs / opacuserjs for on-the-fly 
replacement
c) use the translation tools to create a local .po file, edit that and 
generate a new set of templates.

>b) Is almost always the best option, Next best is c). The last resort, if 
>you can do nothing else is a).
>What usually happens is if people do a few a) they then decide
>upgrading is hard, and don't upgrade for things like bug or security
>releases and make a rod for their own backs.

Very good, logical advice; however, very respectfully, there is perhaps a 
different perspective. Editing a template is quick, simple and easily 
reversible; writing javascript might be more daunting, and writing a .po, 
etc., is more time consuming.  Keeping notes is paramount, e.g.
$ sudo vi 
/usr/share/koha/opac/htdocs/opac-tmpl/prog/en/lib/jquery/plugins/ui.tabs.css
edit line 68 to transparent background

It is the "upgrade" situation that poses the problems. When I upgraded from 
3.6 to 3.8, I had a list of 11 "customizations" to carry out (now 23 and 
growing) -- ranging from simple replacement of images to more obscure Perl 
mods, but the prior preparation of notes made things relatively easy.

The question is: how often do Koha users upgrade their *production* 
instance of Koha? It probably comes down to budgets, available time of IT 
staff, and policy. Does policy encourage "adding bells and whistles" or 
tend to stick to "if it ain't broken, don't fix it." [Security upgrades are 
definitely a thing to be looked into, despite it being quite time consuming 
to go through each set of release notes looking for show stoppers.]

It would be interesting and informative if other participants in this list 
could briefly describe their "production upgrade policy."

Best regards,
Paul

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