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Nice job Khan! Perhaps we should integrate this as an option into the main Comments fieldtype? Or should be be a separate fieldtype (under a different name)?

Dear PW-ers. I would like to inform you that I’ve been in need of Tree View commenting system for a project being developed by me at the moment, thus, I’ve decided to make some additions to the commenting system developed by Ryan. Hereunder, I’d like to share the code with you for your kind information. You can also practice it in case of need. Some screenshots: Download link: FieldtypeComments.zip List of changed files: small change in main.css: Archive updated.

Ok I thought there maybe a way to construct PageArray's. You can't alter the children built in property I think as it is in fact a method to retrieve the children from the DB on runtime using selectors $page->children($selector), but you could add a custom value on runtime memory and make it another PageArray. Then add some children to it. Since you can't use "children" just have to name it different for example "mychildren" and it works. You can also then use all the PageArray methods on them as ususal. You will just have still the children() and parent(), siblings() etc available but they would be in the original context of where the page originally is and not in your pseudo PageArray. Here's a test script might useful for many others too. // note just simple test pseudo code // base array object $pa = new PageArray(); // get some pages to work with $category = $pages->get("/templates/"); $about = $pages->get("/about/"); $home = $pages->get("/"); // add new PageArray property "mychildren" $category->mychildren = new PageArray(); // add other pages in $category->mychildren->add($about); $category->mychildren->add($home); // you can sort them $category->mychildren->sort("-created"); // add the $category to the base array $pa->add($category); // output the nested PageArray using mychildren echo "<ul>"; foreach($pa as $p){ echo "<li><a href='$p->url'>$p->title</a>"; echo "<ul>"; foreach($p->mychildren as $child){ echo "<li><a href='$child->url'>$child->title</a></li>"; } echo "</ul>"; } echo "</li></ul>"; Gives a nested list: Templates About 2 Home

Hi all, this is first complete version of czech localization pack for ProcessWire 2.3. Almost 100% of text strings are translated. Please download and test this pack. Send me any comments to improve it. I decided that version 1.0 will be published after longer testing period. Current version: 0.9.1 pw_czech_091.zip

Hello there - and no worries, all questions are welcome In terms of logic and doing it "ProcessWire way" I think you've pretty much nailed it. Page fields are exactly what you'd want to use for these kinds of situations. Regarding your code sample there are two things I'd like to point out: PageArray acts just like regular PHP array in many ways, so you don't have to convert it to array with explode etc. before count or foreach. When you're looping through PageArray, you can access each pages content directly, so that way there's no need for new $pages->get() call each time This is probably how I'd rewrite that code of yours: if ($page->related->count()) { echo '<h2>'.$page->related->getTotal().' Related Entries</h2>'; echo '<ul>'; foreach ($page->related as $related_page) { echo '<li><a href="'.$related_page->httpUrl.'">'.$related_page->title.'</a></li>'; } echo '</ul>'; } Hope this helps!

But don't forget to use $sanitize on the GET

One way is to put all the PHPGoogleMaps folder inside the templates folder and load the library like this require( 'PHPGoogleMaps/Core/Autoloader.php' ); If you want more flexibility you can do this require( $config->paths->templates . 'PHPGoogleMaps/Core/Autoloader.php' );

@Soma: You are right, the naming does not really matter in this case, but I still prefer to comply with PW naming conventions. I also added a callback to delete the thumbs generated from cropimages if the parent image is deleted. And added the module to the modules directory Thank you everybody for their feedback!

Matthew, that would still work. But the strtotime calls you have there are unnecessary. If you need to wrap those components in spans, using $page->getUnformatted() might be more efficient than strtotime: <div id="news_date_box"> <span class="month"><?php echo date("M", $page->getUnformatted('created_date')); ?></span> <span class="day"><?php echo date("d", $page->getUnformatted('created_date')); ?></span> <span class="year"><?php echo date("Y", $page->getUnformatted('created_date')); ?></span> </div> or: <div id="news_date_box"> <?php $date = $page->getUnformatted('created_date'); ?> <span class="month"><?=date("M", $date)?></span> <span class="day"><?=date("d", $date)?></span> <span class="year"><?=date("Y", $date)?></span> </div>

No, again you can't add children or have parents on a self created PageArray or WireArray. For the other thing I think there's some easy solution, just can't make any sense atm with those sub categories... however to get it to work I think you can simply check against all children of the category. if($children = $pages->find("template=offer,product_category={$category->children}")){ ...

I don't see any abuse here. $config is a good way to do it, it's there for such things.

pw.shorter way <?=$page->titsle?>

I'm happy to see this thread has fostered some interesting discussions. I'd like to clarify what my intention was when I started this thread. All I wanted to do was share my enthusiasm for ProcessWire and to discuss with you how the PW community, as a whole, could benefit from having EE people coming over to explore the system we've all come to love so much. I think this thread is an example of the interesting discussions that could come out of that interaction. Hopefully, this and other discussions will blossom into something tangible, concrete we can all benefit from. I also want to point out that I have nothing against EllisLab or EE, in fact, I've briefly used EE in the past and, in general, liked the system a lot. You guys have made some fabulous points throughout this discussion and there's no need for me to repeat what has already been eloquently expressed, but there's something Joss said that I really liked: That's it, isn't it? ProcessWire is here to help us create websites, better, and it does a fantastic job at doing so. It's like the great football (soccer) players like Messi, they make it look so easy you think you could do it. Don't know what I'm talking about? Try to build what you're building without ProcessWire and you'll see! ProcessWire does that, make us look like the world-class designers and developers we all are, right?

Greetings Everyone, I like checking those stats on BuiltWith... It's interesting to attempt an interpretation of what these numbers might mean. In general, I assume that, as we move from "top million" to "top 10,000" sites, we move up the ladder to more professional projects requiring greater scaling, security, and management capabilities. Building on that interpretation... - Drupal shows the greatest growth (from ~ 10% to 19% of the market) - WordPress drops in popularity at first, but then settles at a huge chunk (> 50% of the market) - ExpressionEngine does not change much along the way (goes from ~ 2% to 3% of the market) - Most surprisingly, Joomla drops out entirely as you move up (from ~ 9% to 0% of the market) There is about 2.4% unaccounted for -- maybe Joomla's share? Some of the numbers on that site seem a bit flaky. For example, the "Top CMS Technology" sidebar lists vBulletin and Yii as CMSs. It also lists Microsoft Word as a CMS! And yet it does not show CodeIgniter and Symfony at all in the list? I also doubt the accuracy of the "Content Management System Migration" chart. Thanks, Matthew

Antti has been developing a Shop module for ProcessWire and it is in successful use already. I'm not sure how many other users might be using it, but I think he's done a very nice job with this. However we don't have plans for e-commerce to be part of ProcessWire's core product, at least not in the current roadmap. So any e-commerce solutions for ProcessWire will be 3rd party solutions, whether running on ProcessWire or on an external service. I've developed and run an online store for many years and have quite a bit of experience with several self-hosted e-commerce software products, and more recently, hosted e-commerce products. When a client asks me what to do for e-commerce, I like to point them towards services like Shopify (my favorite), Volusion, BigCommerce, etc. These services are targeted specifically towards the needs of e-commerce in a way that no self hosted product can touch (at least for what matters to me and my clients). Plus they are hookable (at least Shopify is) making it easy to perform actions in your PW site based on an order, in real time. Paid membership sites suddenly become a piece of cake. This makes nearly anything possible, and IMO more powerful even than dedicated products like Magento. Now with PCI compliance (at least in the US) I really dislike the hassle and time expense of self hosted solutions for my own needs. I don't think ProcessWire needs to be all things to all people, and I'd rather focus our energy on the things where we are and can be better than everyone else. For the same reason, I don't want us to invest time in creating forum software when something like IP.Board exists. We want to empower web developers with the best solutions out there. This is a much bigger question for proprietary and non-open source products. It's a good question, but doesn't have the same gravity when applied towards an open source product with hundreds (or thousands) of people around the world familiar with the system and code. At least in our case, when a bug turns up, many times the user submits a fix with the bug. Beyond these forums, I also do some support email. But very little comes to me anymore. The forums and community here have been better than I could have ever imagined. I should also note that a goal for 2013 is to provide commercial support options for those that want it. I'm not yet certain if the market is there for it, but it's something I would like to have available. We are on a path for growth and I see us continuing our current strategy of building and improving the software and resources around it. My 5-year goal has been for us to power 3% of the PHP open source CMS-driven sites in the world and/or be top 10 (open source) in terms of usage. I think that our growth comes from WordPress users looking for more, and front-end developers getting into content management without a previous allegiance. We'll also get our users from other CMSs. But WordPress is the one building the audience, and the developer and non-blog-portion of that audience is using the wrong software. With that audience, ProcessWire answers everything that WordPress can't, while being simpler to use and develop for. There are other CMSs that are also good stepping stones, but all are significantly more complex.

That Twitter link is a pretty common occurrence. Things like that happen on the web every day as I'm sure everyone knows - I've seen things like "X looks like Y, must be a rip-off" due to things like colour schemes over the years and I don't think the users get confused over minor similarities (if you're logged out of the forum software here, the skin for that has green, square buttons at the top-right, and that's in the forum software's skin, nothing to do with EE or PW so nobody has the rights to a colour or shape in my mind ). Obviously it can go too far with whole interfaces copied, hence my earlier concern - I've had an entire one of my sites cloned in the past and that was annoying to say the least. On to the rest, there's some interesting stuff there - a lot of your questions can only be answered by ryan I think, but here are my personal thoughts on some other parts: It took me a while to understand what you meant by Blocks - I thought this was something to do with EE to begin with, but a search on Google shows it's a new CMS. The title is very clever - whilst it sends shivers down my spine ("blocks" to my mind brings back visions of the web when data was very much siloed into containers and is the realm of older CMS' in my mind, though I know a lot are still around that operate this way) it's also very clever, as that's a term most non-devs are familiar and comfortable with. I'm not suggesting that's how it works, just that it has a clever, simple, catchy title Hope Apeisa doesn't mind me giving my thoughts on the the ProcessWire e-commerce module and I hope I'm not miles off with this (correct me if I'm wrong Antti), but it is marked in the modules directory as being at proof of concept stage at present. I think I'm right in saying that it's in use on a couple of sites though so it does work. Apeisa, is part of a larger dev team in the company he works for (again, correct me if I'm wrong) and the module was built to fulfil the needs of a website for one of their clients. At some point personally think it will have developers building payment and shipping modules for it and it being one of the key modules, but I think it's fair to say that it is in the early stages at the moment. But it's one of the oddities of ProcessWire that you could technically whip up a payment module in an hour or two that will work with it and be using it quite happily - there's just lots of features that dedicated e-commerce solutions have that aren't there yet because nobody's picked it up and built those extra bits into it as they haven't had the need to yet. I know personally though of one ecommerce site I've built recently where I wished I'd built it in ProcessWire and expanded upon that module rather than pour as many hours as I have done into a full-blown e-commerce solution trying to bend it to my seemingly straightforward needs There is the potential issue at present (and I think I'm getting a sense of that from your post) that it's not apparent who is behind ProcessWire. I think (personal opinion again) that this is intentional as it's ryan in the driving seat with the rest of us contributing with support and tutorials on the forums, docs on the Wiki and of course the modules. There are also rare cases someone will write some code that makes it into the core, but the rarity there is no bad thing - it's just that ryan's built the system so well and it's already incredibly powerful. If you really get stuck in with it and experience the power, it all seems so elegant and well thought out, and at the same time there's so much in there that if I didn't know better I would expect it to be the work of a larger team rather than one person. I've honestly never seen anything this complicated work with so few issues or bugs - ryan has a rare gift (and a tonne of experience). I think it's fair to say that it's a community effort as a whole, and if you spend some time on the forums you can kind of get a sense of who does what (I talk lots and use brackets far too much in every post) but maybe one of the next steps is to loosely define a "team" with "roles and responsibilities" - the thing there though is that you're stuck between trying to do that to be helpful to newcomers to show who does what, and at the same sounding a bit like a big company-driven CMS and introducing hierarchies where those in the hierarchy aren't actually coherently linked to a company. It puts people's minds at ease, but it can be a bit smoke-and-mirrors. To me, the "next level" isn't about churning out modules, even if they are quality - that will come with time and I expect we'll be well into the hundreds in 12 months' time, but why have what others have? As a bad example, Wordpress has 125 pages of plugins just to do with the word "gallery" - that's over 1,000 gallery-related plugins - how many ways of delivering an image gallery are there?! Also consider that a normal gallery wouldn't even need a module in ProcessWire, just a template, a few lines of code and you're away - it's already there in the API functionality-wise. I hope that as we see more modules written for ProcessWire that when it looks like someone is re-inventing the wheel that we can persuade people to work together and have a modules combining different options where appropriate rather than lots of modules doing almost the same thing, but I think it's inevitable that we'll get to a point somewhere along our upward curve where that's too much to manage. The beauty of ProcessWire is that the basic requirements for the majority of small and large websites are already covered out of the box. It's just things like ecommerce that need some more attention at some point. (Another irrelevant personal view - for most developers I'd wager that unless you're specifically targetting shop owners the majority of your sites aren't shops anyway, but I can see how it would be off-putting if your business revolves around e-commerce - still, there are tools out there for that so there's no rush to have a full-featured solution for it in PW). The "next level" things to me are more about: Official docs on the website - something more coherent that gathers together the Wiki, the main Tutorials etc and has use cases (with code) for every function in the Cheatsheet Probably a structured series of screencasts to highlight some of the common things you can do - focusing on specific things like image galleries etc. They're almost the same thing, but it's important to cater for people that prefer to learn by reading and people that prefer to watch tutorials being built before their eyes. The more we show people what they can do if they get stuck in, the better, but ProcessWire's key differentiators are that it makes no assumptions about your markup or the type of site you want to build - therefore it makes you get your hands dirty with a little PHP, HTML and CSS. This will turn away a lot of people I'm sure, but I'd say that if you're not willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty just a little then why are you building a website instead of hiring someone to do it for you EDIT: Adam beat me to it by almost an hour, but his answer is a concise version of my waffle

But the answer isn't very hard! The year 2013 is a year of 3 things we'd like to accomplish: Continue with this nice growth we are currently experiencing Get the documentation in the top notch shape (so the forums don't explode with the same questions and confused people) Keep on improving website All of these of course while improving the CMS (and the ecosystem as well) itself. Note: this is my opinion, not official statement from PW Team

This is somehow related: https://www.acquia.com/blog/open-source-community-and-freedom

We have many users that have come over from EE, just like we have many users that have come over from WordPress, Drupal, MODx and Joomla, among other platforms. These users are enthusiastic about ProcessWire and like to share their enthusiasm with friends. Please don't confuse the title of this thread as being something the project is trying to pursue, because it's not. I'm assuming the OP is a current/former EE user that is enthusiastic about PW and wants to share that. We are not actively trying to benefit from changes at EllisLab or trying to pursue EE users. If I were an EE user, I would want what's best for the company behind it and would stick with it. When those changes were announced, I went to the #eecms hashtag to see what all the fuss was about. There were other projects being opportunistic about it (the Perch one was actually kind of cute). We were silent on it. Just because there were current/former EE users talking about ProcessWire does not mean that ProcessWire is trying to pursue EE. EE has nothing to do with any "cause" here. I changed the theme shown on the homepage because users here thought it would be better if it showed exactly what you see when you install, until we get the rotation up. We have several sets that are going to go in there (rotating) and the one that was there previously is one of them. Now that the default admin theme is in there, there have still been folks that say "that looks like EE". I designed that admin theme and can say for certain it takes no inspiration from EE. I really don't know if the other admin theme that was in there takes inspiration from EE or not. But looking through screenshots, it seems like there are similarities and differences. I'm not convinced anyone was trying to copy the look of EE. Design trends and interfaces for similar tasks are bound to bear some resemblances to each other. People need to step out their front door. There is one thing I can be certain of though, and that's that I'm glad people might say "that looks like EE" and not "that looks like Joomla". I was glad to see this. It came along at the right time. If I was an EE user, this would make me a lot less concerned about the changes in support plans. Glad to hear PW and others are being looked at. We are thrilled to welcome any EE users. Still, if folks are happy with everything about EE from the software side (even if a little angry about EllisLab changes in the short term), they shouldn't abandon it. CMSs aren't religions, and it's okay to use more than one. It is curious to me that Blocks gets mentioned despite not even being out. Blocks appears to be built as a platform specifically targeted towards EE users, and that's probably why. The model behind that one is ultimately a paid model. EE itself is inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. Blocks apparently takes that further by just making the core free instead (a little bit of a trap). But the end result is the same: you'll be spending significant amounts of money on either, because both are built around a paid model. They are there for the money. And that's perfectly fine so long as the user understands that. But with EE, at least you are getting an experienced platform, history and track record. My opinion is that EE users looking for a change should look outward (beyond the money model) not inward. One you have your "a ha" moment with ProcessWire, you'd lose all interest in EE or anything like it. But EE users have to be willing to let go of learned complexity, baggage and preconceptions about CMSs in their mind. And not everyone is ready for that. If an EE user either isn't ready or doesn't find what they are looking for by looking outward, then they should instead look beyond the short term angry EE chatter. EllisLab is making long term decisions for the benefit of the company and the software, and it's actually a good reason for those folks that really like it, to stick with it. Individual developers are not going to be the ones paying these $20k yearly support fees, so it shouldn't be an issue. It's the big enterprise clients that will pay those fees, and they'll think it's a great deal relative to their old CMS monsters. What's good for EllisLab will ultimately be good for the people that want to implement and use their software. This is confusing quantity with quality. If quantity is the measurement, then EE isn't there yet either. If it was, I don't think EllisLab would be changing their business model. For better or worse, the EE ecosystem is also built around a money model. That ecosystem rises and falls with a business rather than the product. PW has always been about quality and has never been about quantity. I started this project as the only user for many years. When I put it out there, I intended to keep it going for the long term regardless of how many users we had. We don't get paid here. We do the work because we love it. They may be huge now, but Drupal and Joomla will really have to fight hard to be relevant in the future. They carry a lot of legacy ideas and methodology, and they kind of have to. They can only lose market share from here, so it seems like they are pursuing defensive growth strategies. When a Drupal, Joomla or WordPress developer gets a taste of ProcessWire--and really gets it--they are changed. I think that ProcessWire and systems like it will make it difficult for the likes of Drupal and Joomla to stay relevant in the long term. I'm sure EllisLab sees this too. But EE users should at least feel good that EllisLab is pursuing a growth strategy that seems geared towards growth rather than maintenance. WordPress is not great software either, but we can all learn something from the way they've grown and likely will continue to. I wouldn't trade our ecosystem or software with any of theirs. And for those that measure by quantity, we'll get there too, but we won't be counting. People from EE are totally welcome here. I'm glad you've joined the discussion. But want to be clear we are not hoping to achieve anything in that regard. If our strategy were to pursue users from other CMSs, we wouldn't be pursuing EE -- it only represents a tiny sliver of the CMS pie. We only want to gain users based purely on the quality of our software and community, and the good reputation that accompanies it. This is an open community and we don't control what gets posted. The only reason you see EE mentioned here is because of EE users that are now using ProcessWire. I appreciate their enthusiasm. While I have positive feelings for EllisLab and EE, it is not on the radar here as having anything to do with our project, goals or strategy.

Greetings Everyone, I sensed a buzzing in my ears... Oh, hello Joss! Quick bit of relevant history: Joss and I have tag-teamed on numerous, lengthy discussions on core CMS issues, stretching back into some obscure Joomla technical groups where he and I voiced loudly the need for that CMS to adopt better custom-field options, as well as other issues. Those were heated discussions, zeroing in on gaps in Joomla's central functioning. But even in those inherently critical discussions, Joss and I both stayed positive and constructive and tried to do our part to move Joomla forward to improve. In those discussions (which I could dig up for anyone who is interested) I often made comparisons between Joomla and other systems as a way of exemplifying what I thought Joomla could become -- again trying to do so in a constructive way. Joss and I remained a virtual tag-team throughout those discussions, online and offline. Which brings us back to the current discussion... I spent a good portion of 2011, and most of 2012, on a quest to test several CMSs and make an honest assessment of them. By the end of 2012, I had deeply tested the following systems: ProcessWire PyroCMS ModX ExpressionEngine Joomla Drupal Concrete5 It's pretty clear which system I have chosen! But that's not the point. The point is, I gave all these systems an unbiased try, and I learned a lot by looking at them honestly. (With Joomla, I did more than "try," as it was my core system for about four years.) Some of these systems have such large gaps in their capabilities I could not continue using then for the kind of sites I want to develop. But others on this list have strong benefits. Still, in the end, the flexibility and complete openness of ProcessWire's API made it a winner across the board for me. The systems that come closest in my mind to ProcessWire's capabilities are EE, ModX, and PyroCMS. Again, each of those systems has its benefits that ProcessWire could learn from (perhaps we could get into specifics in another discussion). But again and again ProcessWire proved itself to be a more natural and flexible system. We should acknowledge that there is a development philosophy behind each system that appeals to certain kinds of users. For example, users who do not want to look at code, and users who want templates that lay out specifically what goes where in their sites, will be happier with systems like Joomla or Drupal. If someone is just counting the number of available extensions, ProcessWire can't compete with Joomla or Drupal (which have tens of thousands). I don't think the raw number of extensions is meaningful at all, but that is also for another discussion. To many users, there is comfort in high numbers. For people who want a fairly open system, with control of their URLs, but which still make some templating assumptions, Concrete5 and PyroCMS are good. When you get into "completely open" systems you can seriously compare EE, ModX, and ProcessWire, at which point there are more refined choices like the use of tags, how files are handled, the speed of the interface, and more. The specific comparisons go on and on... I much prefer positive discussions. That does not mean we cannot be critical. It's more a comment on the goals of a discussion. It's depressing when all you have achieved is a slamming of something (or someone) else. It's much more exciting if in the end you improve your system (or yourself) by taking an honest look around you. Also, to be blunt, it is smarter to be constructive. Of course, it's also more work: it's just so easy to slam someone or something, especially in a forum where you know everyone already agrees with you! The fact is, EE, PyroCMS, ModX (and other systems) were built by very capable and creative people. We should strive to learn whatever we can from their strengths and weaknesses, while simultaneously stating clearly where ProcessWire does something better. In these forums, we are always communicating to at least two vast audiences: 1. People already dedicated to ProcessWire 2. People testing the waters or shopping around For both audiences, we are better off being positive and constructive. Although there is lots of anger and criticism on public forums, I believe that most people are attracted to a positive environment. For audience #1, we are better off pinpointing where ProcessWire can improve (while being constructive). For audience #2, it is important to point out where ProcessWire is better than other systems (while being constructive). Bottom line: I have found that ProcessWire is better across the board in significant ways. There is definite value to pointing out where ProcessWire is better. We just need to do so while being aware of the intelligence of other systems. Thanks, Matthew

I think it is always difficult, but quite natural to talk about the competition. However, the nature of the internet makes it rather more complicated than before. In the "old world" (which I find I miss more and more) this conversation would have taken place down the pub (that is a "bar" to you foreigners!), would have been full of idle speculation and pure BS and that is where it would have stayed. Now, of course, not only is the conversation "published" but is also searchable - and therefore it is good that this conversation is congenial. I have never used EE, and since my main income is not from web design it is unlikely that I will ever do so. I have seen screen shots of the admin and it looks exactly like the one I had on my own-designed Dreamweaver based CMS back in 2001 (A web oddity). However, since that was only ever used by 20 financial journalists I can more or less guarantee that none of the EE people ever saw it, so it is coincidence, nothing more. At the end of the day, you should never design a UI to be "different" you should design it to be workable, and by that criteria, in the end everyone's UI is going to be pretty similar, I suspect. There are four things that make a good application: Strong, under-the-hood design Easy to use and logical interface (so, probably not designed by a coder! ) Versatility to allow the client to achieve what they require and to get their true money's worth. A good design team that works to produce a strong, competitive product rather than achieve some sort of philosophical goal (even if the product is ultimately free) But there is one other aspect that sometimes gets overlooked - the application must have a clearly defined market. Being all things to all people can seem very glamorous and noble when chatting round the water cooler, but if that becomes the driving force behind the product, the result can be confused, messy and fragmented. I think ProcessWire has a clear goal, that is what makes it attractive to me, and I think it is why (with a bit of a push) it can have mass market appeal. That goal: Create a website. Because for 99% of the time, that is exactly what people will want to do with it - create a website with 'n' number of pages, all pretty similar with some bits of dancing and fun attached. Not wonderfully headline making, but the practical day to day job of business website design. ProcessWire does have the ability to address far more complex needs too, of course, and the fact that it can be hooked into other systems (or they be hooked into it, perhaps) means that it is wonderfully extendible for the knowledgeable designer. But that does not distract from the basic fact that it is a great way to produce a solid, secure, well balanced website and I think as long as that is kept front and centre, it will do well. As for the competition? Well, as I said at the beginning, it is natural to talk about them, and it is wise if one sees the competition getting something wrong to learn from that - there is nothing more idiotic than repeating someone else's mistakes - but in the end, the real focus has to be in getting one's own project right, whatever the competition are up to. As Matthew Scheneker knows, I like to be optimistic about the future of a project and get very grumpy when my optimism is undermined by idiotic, egotistical, idealogical battles that have nothing to do with good business or good R&D. And strangely, that is what I have been enjoying most over the last couple of months - a developer and a supportive community that has a healthy and realistic "can-do" approach that is of real benefit to the users. On that basis, the fact that ProcessWire is also a very good and solid tool is a very sweet bonus! Joss (PS: Years ago I had a very interesting bit of advice from Victor Kiam who was a client. He said that when a project is your baby, then keep it as your baby, keep control and don't share it. Once it gets to a size where you have to share it or you are getting a little weary of it, sell it completely and go and find a new baby. )

Any topic like this is bound to get negative at some point, whether it be people like me balking at the price of things or others with different dislikes. All that aside, what would we achieve from more hands on deck? Well let's see - the majority of people here help each other out. Many people contribute ny way of modules (which are simple to write compared to other systems). Others spread the word because they like the project so much. It's not a case of bums on seats - we've got a growing commmunity of active users who help each other and enrich the project going forwards. We've been lucky enough to attract a lot of talented people who used to work with other well-developed systems who now prefer ProcessWire because it genuinely saves them time and stress and makes building websites fun and quick. It's not for everyone though - you can use it to build pretty much everything you might need in a website but you might want to take a step back if you were thinking of building a specific web application or other project that requires complex relationships in the database (although some folks here are managing to build those in ProcessWire too). We're no Wordpress/Joomla rival in terms of numbers, but all I see with those platforms is clunkyness and bloat personally. Modules for both are hit and miss as most here are aware, and clients will often push one of those systems for the sole reason that they've heard of them before and trust the name. I'm glad we're not that big yet because we're at a stage where we have some quality modules and can keep an eye on them and suggest improvements to them. It's not imposed quality control, it's helping each other out. Not sure where my train of thought is rolling off to, but I think the bit about what we would achieve by people coming here from other systems is that we often then have the skills as a community to help others who come from those systems. We often see questions like "I do this in my old CMS, how would I do it in PW?" which is great as the more experience we have in the community the quicker we can help those people out. As for any perceived plagiarism with any of the admin themes (I've not used EE so don't know which theme you're referring to, hence my choice of wording), if there is an issue then please inform ryan and I'm sure he will look into it. If nobody makes a complaint then we can't take action. I hope none of that has come across as negative. I'm not the best at being impartial on forums and I'm just trying to get my own points across. EDIT: @Antti - fixed, there are a few styling issues left I think.

Nate, thanks for the good and honest post. You mention few great points that I do agree. I wasn't too keen on the general tone of this topic and it is great to hear your thoughts. But there are few things I would like to mention: I disagree. For most of us there is a lot more and on higher level than EE or any other CMS out there - that is the reason why we use PW. I had the freedom to choose the next CMS platform for our company. I did evaluate most of the products out there (open source or not, in our projects EE license fees are next to nothing) and PW came out as clear winner (there were 0 third party modules / themes then by the way, January 2011 - PW 2.0 was just released). Now two years later I couldn't be happier - PW has been great for us. Well... I think it is natural that people want to share the good stuff they know. I think for all the people here in this topic the basic intention has been purely honest and nice: "hey, there might be EE users that aren't happy - I hope they find PW since that might solve their problem". But that kind of discussion easily goes to little attacking tone that can annoy people. About to step up our game: I think if Ryan can keep even 25% of the phase that he is developing the core and the growing flow with 3rd party developers and designers keeps up, we are doing just fine No need to try actively catch people from other products - but no need to be shy or shamed about using this great product. EDIT: Pete, alert alert - IP.board is messing my quotes!

I get mixed feelings replying to this topic to be honest though, let's do it: The title says "...and how ProcessWire could benefit" but, nobody goes into any detail about how or why PW would benefit from having EE devs come to PW. Or for that matter why EE devs would benefit from PW minus it being free (there are other CMS that are free I might add.) Posting in the EL forums wouldn't be cool by the way. Thankfully that idea looks like it was shot down! Seems like you are having fun with the Alternative.to which, is find, whatever. Having admin themes which look like EE isn't helping your "cause" if you want to call it that. I know these are user submitted though, putting them on the homepage gives off the wrong impression especially to EE devs I've talked with. Most of which do not like "plagiarism" even if only closely resembling the EE CP. Glad you changed them out for the default ones. You guys know why you like PW though, someone who has been using another CMS everyday for the past 5 years, for example, might just see PW as noise along with all the other CMS out there. I've talked about it before though, there are plenty of people who prefer a template engine over strait PHP or PW API however much you might think the API is just as easy. Is PW like theming for Drupal or Wordpress? Not even close and I commend you on your work with the API though, like I said, it may not be everyone's cup of tea. To be honest there is currently quite a bit of CMS "research" taking place within the EE community though, I'd say most people are just testing the waters and probably a bit less now that the initial shock of the EL changes have settled down a bit. Plus, folks are getting help via the new ExpressionEngine StackExchange site so free support is better than ever and there are more options for support then ever as well. Some people have abandoned EE altogether though, that's common with any CMS or Framework when there are major changes. With that said, PW is being looked at yes though, so is PyroCMS, Statamic, Perch and very importantly Blockscms which probably is most likely to put a dent in EE if any significant dent are to be made. Others are being looked at as well (maybe even some RoR and Node stuff.) PyroCMS is moving over the Laravel 4 (away from CI) which might just propel it's future use. Hard to say. I'm sure there will be other Larvel CMS popping up (other than pongo that is.)Statamic is different in that it's a static CMS similar to say Jekyll though PHP based (and commercial I might add which believe it or not allot of people do like.) In it's current state it could definitely compete with Perch in the "Lite" CMS arena which by the way isn't so small any longer (the Lite CMS arena that is.)Perch is another one people have been looking at though, of course that's for smaller sites too. I need to give v2 a try.Now Blockscms is a whole different story altogether and is the most anticipated to compete directly with EE once it's out of private beta. I'm not going to go into all the details though, yeah, it's coming. We'll have to see what this new year brings for that. This is really a topic in itself so I won't extend this already long post out any more on that. WIth the recent changes I think allot of people might consider using some of the other options I listed especially for personal sites or smaller client sites where as in the past they would have just used EE for everything. Allot of this stuff wasn't even there two years ago so, sometimes it's all about timing. Currently there really isn't anything that is on the same level as EE especially in regards eco system. No offense but you're not there yet. You have Drupal, WP and even Joomla of course (all are "free") which have huge eco systems but, yeah, let's not talk about those any more than I hear Drupal 8 is suppose to go Symfony 2 so I'm curious to see how that turns out. Anyway, I guess I'm not quite sure what you guys are hoping to achieve by having people come over from EE especially since there isn't anything for you to gain other than more hands on deck (which I guess I understand.) Trying to reach any users via a forum post is just senseless if you ask me and you're going to have to step up your game in many areas to compete with what's coming down the pipe. I look forward to seeing the future as things unravel for PW and all those involved.

Most of what you see in ProcessWire was developed long before I'd ever used or seen ExpressionEngine in action (or any other CMS for that matter). I can't speak for some of the 3rd party admin themes that apparently have some similarity, but ProcessWire itself has had no influence from EE. Still, I think it's a compliment when people think there are similarities, because that suggests to me that they are familiar with EE and finding points of comfort with ProcessWire. I also think that ProcessWire and EE have a similar audience, often trying to accomplish similar things. Personally, I don't have a sense of what the similarities are because I see them as opposites in many ways. ProcessWire is tree-hierarchy based, EE is bucket based. ProcessWire is PHP-API based, EE is tag/template-engine based based. These are huge differences. I suppose the main similarity I can find is that they keep the developer in control of the markup. But of course, a lot of other systems do too. Honestly, while I've used EE2 before, I've never gotten deep enough into it to be able to evaluate all the differences fairly. What other points of similarity have you guys found? Also if there are areas where EE seems more 'pro' perhaps it would be good for us to evaluate and learn from these things.

I am currently in the process of setting up a site with ProcessWire and pretty much the only alternatives for me were ExpressionEngine and WordPress. WordPress just isn't built for anything but blog posts (I am aware of the 'custom post types' but it's a real pain requiring tons of hacks) and while I used to be a fan of ExpressionEngine it's just not a good fit if you don't have $ to spend. There are excellent add-ons for EE but I'd need quite a couple of them to get the same functionality that PW provides (Playa versus multiple related pages/PageArray in PW, Matrix versus Repeaters in PW). Additionally the limitations of the free version (e.g. the discussion forums being missing) and the license fee kicking in as soon as I try to monetize a site in any way kind of make me hesitate building the kind of "Let's see how this works out" projects that I often mess with on EE. I am not sure whether the concept of EE served as an inspiration or blueprint for PW, as they are really quite similar but as others have pointed out in this thread, the whole transition should be super-easy as a lot of the site building blocks are the same. Even if you didn't intend to do so (and I don't think so at all), you have created quite the 'ExpressionEngine killer' here... and eventually the word will spread. That said, ExpressionEngine is a great product and I hope EE (the product), the community and EllisLab keep on going strong. And if you can afford it and your customer feels better about using a 'commercial' product backed and supported by a company, definitely go for it. From what I have seen so far the EE backend still seems more 'pro' and if you use the right add-ons, a couple of parts are more convenient and polished. (That won't stay like that forever though.)

ProcessWire will have support contract options available in 2013. I'm still working out the details, but wanted to let you know that option will be there for those that want it. Most of us here don't and won't need support contracts, because we can get pretty much anything resolved in a manner of minutes via these forums. But I would gather that a large portion of PW's user base doesn't actually participate in these forums. I also think that there are companies out there that would feel much better having the insurance of guaranteed support when they need it. Basically, if someone feels they need a support contract, I want to make sure we can accommodate that. I also see this as a way to further support growth of the project. As for EllisLab, I think they may be in a tough spot and trying to find the best way to survive and hopefully thrive. I had heard unsubstantiated rumors on Twitter several months ago that they might make EE free. To me suggested they might not be thriving as a business the way I would have thought. In such a case, change could be necessary in order to grow rather than contract. I have no idea if this is true (it's all guessing), and it's a little hard for me to imagine how they could not be profitable… given that their entire user base pays to use the software. But I don't think they would have made such drastic changes if everything was okay with the business model and finances before. My guess is they were faced with the choice of having to make cutbacks (like staff), stagnate, or make big changes. It appears they opted for big changes and are trying to re-focus their resources towards the high-end. That being the 20% of the audience that can pay the big bucks, at the expense of the other 80% that doesn't pay as well. And have probably accepted the sacrifices that go along with it. For that 20%, these costs are not really that big, and are probably seen to strengthen the B2B commitment (greater cost sometimes feels like greater insurance and less risk). There are other big players out there paying hundreds of thousands of dollars (every year) to companies with products that are inferior to EE. There are more opportunities to grow for them there than there are on the open source side. After all, products like ProcessWire and others are just as capable (and many would say more-so). It's not sustainable and makes little sense in a for-profit business to plan growth competing against a worldwide network of developers working for free. It's hard to grow a business when most of your competition is at least as good, and free. Whereas, I think it makes good business sense for them to carve out some new space where there is opportunity and partnership with bigger players. That's the side where the service matters as much, or more, than the software itself. And they can do well at both. I'm hoping that ProcessWire and other open source CMSs can benefit and grow as a result of changes with EllisLab. But I also hope that EllisLab and ExpressionEngine benefit and grow in the way they want to. Looking at where they are and what they are, it's not hard to understand why they've refocused. Though I say that as an outsider that's not negatively affected by their decision. Regardless of whether you like EE or not, it is in a fairly unique spot in the CMS landscape as a commercial product that is often listed with, and interchanged with, open source products. It's not something that I think could be repeated today, and I've always had a lot of respect for what they've been able to do and the influence they've had. EE is a good software with good people behind it. I'd like to see them do well and think that they will.

Interesting, but too little too late as far as I'm concerned. I was all set to build my first EE site a month ago when they pulled that "license simplification" malarkey overnight, which sent me on a lengthy exploration of various CMS systems and eventually led me here. I can't really think of a reason I'd ever go back.