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Such discussions are very difficult for non native speakers but i try my best to harm nobody. since Norbert and Argos were members of my former community, too i have some thoughts on this topics and maybe the reasons of such wishes... We all came from a former real big community with worldwide devs and contributors. The former CMS we used was one of the real big ones that was in use, but in lack of marketing and a scary name "WebsiteBaker" it was not so big public visible.....kinda like PW too. This websitebaker was a great cms (now development is stagnate for the last years) with a easy mediaadministration, simple templatesystem (php), pagetree, one site could have a different template and unlimited sectionblocks where a sectionblock was a addon like a form, gallery, wysiwyg, poll and so on. Cons are that every addon produce own HTML output, not easy to setup, update for a dev. -> But easy to get a website up and running fast.....with strong borders and limits. -> Former CMS was like a setup a db -> install -> install a template ->install some addons ->fast result! But Processwire is a different thing and i've to strict confirm the "hero" and "distinguished" members on theire points! Just some background on my person the short story: - i'm a web-hobbyist, - i studied agrobusiness, - my family have a little farm in southgermany, - i work in a ngo, since a couple of years i've a small business helping people - especially from the agrobusiness to get a more "pro" website up and running than a "standard hoster websitebuilder" could even with a small budget and the very most important thing easy to use/update so they get along. My understanding for OpenSource was always that if you use such piece of code you have two options 1. contribute with your time 2. spend money to push such good work! Since my projects all have a small budget (with some less exceptions) i always try to invest some spare time to contribute, help in forum, try to code something....(In former CMS i was a forummod, wrote several tutorials, assisted several addondevs with translations and testing, started a project for a portable version with preinstalled version on a WAMP server2go) I've not a webdevbusiness to make a living - but since i'm a economist i understand one simple goal/rule: What is good for the client is usually good for me if i running a service with one big exception -> if the good thing is that the client don't need my work anymore! So we talk about "make it userfriendly" or "make it devfriendly" ? i think processwire is a great tool for both devs and users, since i could make the website (and the backend) for my clients real userfriendly without limitation like other cms have. So it is "friendly to me" and after all my work it is "friendly to the enduser"... I don't think that standarisation would be good here - i like particularly that a pro user could adapt a MFC template system and a nonpro like me use a simpler technique. Yes PW more a CMF than a CMS but this is great for everybody that creates professional websites or even apps. @Argos: i think there is a big misunderstanding about the "user" - i think you mean with user -> somebody that use/install/build a site with PW? but i think others here might think user -> client that use/work with a fine adjusted ready to work installation of PW? No offend to you (i honor your work that i know from the last couple of years) and like i said it is hard in a non native language but i try to ask: Since i'm a complete self educated person (no design education, no programming edu) i think that in current times of webdesign nobody without some skills in coding or a partner that devellops for him could stand in the long-range. We live in times of using explicit combination of javascript (if not required for a website - but surely for a app or mobile website), serverside javascript via node.js is on the way, the morst good CMS all works with PHP or even a own language like typo3, preprocessors for CSS like SASS and LESS, JSON data for serving different things, imagehandling for responsive design and so on... since we work with computers and software - all is code - i thought even drawing is just math? @Norbert: there could be indeed more examples, easyer entries for new users -> that wanna try out PW and install it. But hey that is something to do - nothing to write about it. I know you are a experienced programmer so you've no problems to setup a website for a customer "userfriendly" so why this is such a big topic? For my first project i take the time to setup the most things you've mentioned so i can recycle them easy for the next ones... PW is hard for the first beginning - if - you don't search the forum, don't look at the example code in the templates, read a lot of posts, dig through the doc is fun while you learn fast....the tuts in the wiki are old but working. To change this only simple things are to do. Take the 2.5 create template and fields and use the export - share it - so a new user easy get it work with one click and import such examples like a setup for a calendar, news and so on. Or write some tutorials.....if my first project is finished i will do share my learning for other newbees...like other users here did before. @all former other CMS users: PW will/should never be like a other CMS or your former used CMS. Just switch your minds and start to change the way you thinking before - and you will be surprised. I felt in love with pw in lets say about a 30 minutes trial I get the first grasp until lets say the next 3 hours I belief i'll stay for ever in the status Newbee since every day i read this forum i'll learn new things from this great community Best regards - Martin

User-Friendly is very subjective, what's hard for someone is easy for another person. PW requires (and rightly so) that you invest some time in learning the basics (PHP, Jquery, CSS and HTML). These are skills you need anyway to be productive and secure when dealing with a modern day website. Without knowledge of how things work (i.e PHP, Jquery, CSS and HTML), you will never be able to realistically maintain a website. I sincerely hope PW is not "user-friendly" to the cookie-cutter variety out there. They will never take the time to learn the basics, because everything about web development/design is all magic to them. This will most certainly kill this wonderful forum with numerous and countless issues that are entirely based on their refusal to learn simple processes. That would be a shame and will hopefully be resisted. Suggestions on how to improve PW are encouraged and actively discussed on this forum. I enjoy reading the diversity of opinions and concepts. In 2 short years PW has blossomed. I originally had problems understanding why the PW palette was so open, but as time went on and I relearned PHP, Jquery, CSS and HTML I came to respect and appreciate PW. I have read the forum every day for these 2 years. I can say that I never did that with any other software. I hope that we don't inadvertently kill this golden goose on the magical chase for "user friendlyness" and more users. The funny thing is, no matter how "user friendly" PW gets, someone will always think it can be more friendly. That's just human nature at work. To me, PW is already very user friendly and useful. Every client of mine that has seen PW has been happy working with it.

Often times, creating a side project is first and foremost scratching your own itch Or to start differently: Currently, I'm developing a site where I need CKeditor (and later jQueryUI Datepicker) outside of the admin, in frontend. I searched Google and the forums and found an approach to follow - but during the research the site laravel-recipes.com came into my mind (since I'm currently also looking into this framework). It's content consists of small, spot-on bits of information, for example: http://laravel-recipes.com/recipes/269 Just to think out loudly here, wouldn't it be nice to have a ProcessWire counterpart of such a site? processwire-recipes.com for example? Target group: Developers, from beginner to advanced Difference to these forums: Stripping the discussion part, concentrating on the info; and if done properly: bypassing the mediocre forum search, better tagging Difference to the official tutorial section: Focusing on not creating a whole site, but modular parts of it. Single solutions. For example: First child redirects (shameless plug, but this is the format of information pieces I'm having in mind) Difference to the API documentation: Situation-based ("I need this and that") instead of architecture-based Laravel.io (forum), laravel.com (official, and doc) and laravel-recipies.com possibly prove that these type of sites can coexist in a framework ecosystem, so I guess a recipes site would not cannibalize this forum here nor the doc section. A recipe site like this would live and die with its content, of course. I would be ready to share all the small pieces of information I encounter that would make a good "recipe". But that alone wouldn't be enough so this project won't survive without contribution of the community. What's your opinion on this? Yea or nay? Update: ...it just took, erm, nearly three months,... but here it is: https://processwire-recipes.com/

I personally would not welcome PW becoming as popular as WP, and there is no need for it to be so. It is not competing with the mass market appeal of wordpress as it is in a completely different market sector. Huge numbers of users does not equate to a good product, just an overused one. It is not possible to have commercial templates for PW as it has no templating system - how would you know what people call their fields? Do you want to tie people down to only one sort of field name/type/strategy? Do you want to restrict people on how they construct templates? Many of the devs in here do not use a header/footer type system. As soon as you introduce a templating layer (Like Joomla has, for instance) where if you want to do something completely different you have to bung in a ton of overrides, you now have a bulky, slow system again. The advantage of PW is that this is completely missing - this is a good thing. As for standards, everything is built on the API and PHP - that is ALL standards. Any professional can build modules quickly and easily, though for most things like galleries, dancing frogs, and the rest there is no need whatsoever. Why limit people to restrictive module systems when they can just go and grab ANY bit of JavaScript out there and simply drop it in? As I said before, if you want to use PW as a WP clone, then create a profile that has all that sort of functionality - but that is a different product, not PW itself.

Hi, wow, what a vivid discussion. A lot of people seems to be very much concerned about this topic. I'm outing myself as member of the "please, PW, stay as you are" party! Honestly, I fear all this requests for more "user friendliness". It turns out, that I seem to have a completely different understanding of "user friendliness" as some colleagues have - to me, PW is the most user friendly CMS I've ever worked with. I started my career as web developer with Contao and got sick of it within one year. It simply didn't allow me to do what I want, or it was a tremendous effort, to put things in the right direction. I then discovered Textpattern (r.i.p) and it was kind of a relief - for the first time I was able to realize my ideas as I wanted it - not only in terms of design, but also in terms of content management (yes, it's all about that). When Textpattern aged, I came via the TXP forum to PW and immediately understood that this tool will give me the freedom I needed. Since then, PW has never disappointed me. I can keep my head up in every meeting with a prospect answering "yes, we can do that. No problem", and rest assured that I will be able to keep my promises. And I am not a developer at all (I studied design and marketing). Which other system can give you that? Imho, this users are not the target group of PW and I personally don't want them to become influential on the system. Sorry. Every powerful tool needs at last a minimum skillset to make proper use of it. How would you like to build a house if you don't know how to lay bricks? Apart from that, I strongly second Joss' postings. EDIT: reems was quicker ...

Quick hint: already saved snippets.pw and trying to create a blog/snippet collection so you get easier into pw. But it's only a concept at the moment.

I think this is the problem, the catering bit. PW is a one man company with a small group of talented and helpful contributors. The current situation is that there is just enough people to manage and support PW as it is. If it grew a complex layer on top of the existing system that would need to be monitored, continually updated and so on, then it would quickly become unmanageable. One of the reasons that there are so many CMS type system out there full of bugs (especially plugins) and have huge maintenance issues is because they grew beyond the ability of the original developers to control and maintain properly. In that way, growth does not add value, indeed it can undermine it. As several of us have said, the profile system allows for variants to be created that can be installed as part of the main installation. So, if some users want to create a profile that offers the same sort of plug and play features as WordPress or Joomla, then that is by far the better way to do it than to expect the core maintainers to do it and in the process risk the integrity and maintainability of the system as it stands now. Really, this is nothing to do with what CAN be added to ProcessWire in the way of additional functionality - we all know that anything is possible - really this is about WHO adds all that functionality and who has the time to maintain it properly: if even just a thousand people use that sort of system and want support, then that is a full time job on its own.

@argos Here is a prezzie for you: How to create a gallery without getting bogged down by someone else's module: https://processwire.com/docs/tutorials/galleries-short-and-long/ Brand new, I just wrote it while drinking my coffee.

CMSs make hand coding by editors obsolete (as it was usual in the ancient times), thus allowing content to be published quickly and easy. That's what I understand from this sentence. I don't understand, that CMSs allow to build web applications (sites, apps) without coding skills. Even WP requires coding skills if you want to take it one step further (in fact, it requires much more coding skills than PW does ...) .

One thing that is getting missed in this conversation is people like me. Anyone who reads my signiture might notice it says: Be nice - I am not a proper programmer and haven't the foggiest idea of what Soma/Apeisa/Ryan/et al are talking about. The point is that when I started my php knowledge was very, very, very minimal. I understood what it did, but I didn't know how to use it beyond the basics. It is not a hell of a lot better now, but it is better. The reason is that PW is a very good platform on which to LEARN php, and jquery and, of course, the PW API. So much so that one day I will create a profile that is expressly a tutorial profile - in other words, it will teach php to complete novices as well as teaching PW. ProcessWire is a developer tool - there is no getting away from that - and it requires a developers approach to use it. But, as I and others have proved to themselves, it does not shut out non-developers and can actually turn novices and others into devs. This is partly because of the design logic built in by Ryan and partly because of the community. But, despite that, despite the fact that an old composer/writer/advertising bloke like me can create websites, it is not any use for those with no knowledge at all who want a quick site without having to get any knowledge. They are better off using Wordpress.com or the plenty of other plug and play, ready hosted offerings - that is what they exist for.

The real problem here is that for some people processwire looks very unfamiliar to them in the beginning and never get out of that state of mind. A blind beginners spot so to speak not letting them see how easy processwire really is. It happened to me so I know what I am talking about. The only solution is to go through the tutorials and work them out, or experiment on your own e.g. find free picture slide shows out there and try to implement them in processwire, for one example. Thing is once you get out of that beginners state of mind blind spot, you can not understand why you haven't seen the concept of processwire in the beginning. Sounds familiar ? Happens with many other things in life, right ? If you have enough html/css skills you can already use processwire. With processwire you can directly use your html/css experience in any way you have learned it in the past. A blank slate and tons of options. But this is exactly why processwire is chosen over other cms'es !! Many other cms'es let you only grow with what is possible with a certain cms, limitation ! I tried many other cms'es before and all of them had a wall I was going to hit sooner or later. Talking about frustration. One cms had this right but something else not. All the cms'es I tried had something right and something wrong. There seemed to be no cms having only the goods of all the other cms'es. This is only a matter of time in the beginning. Setup a location (folder) and save there all your snippets of html, css, php, js, etc. that you find scattered in the forum and on the internet. Many people work with a snippet folder for re-usable html, css, php, js, etc. And the more you use them, the less you fall back on them because this is an automatic learning process. Let's see, how much php code does a beginner really need to know (already discussed before) to make websites with processwire: 1. href="<?php echo $config->urls->templates?>styles/your_css_style.css" /> 2. src="<?php echo $config->urls->templates?>scripts/your_java_script.js"> 3. <?php echo $page->your_field; ?> 4. foreach echo "html and code"; So it's actually 4 things a beginner has to know and there isn't much to learn here just follow a simple format, that is all. From there you can simply grow into php as far as your website really needs it.

Developers or Designers who have real talent have nothing to fear from others learning the trade. The PW forum is not populated by an elitist bunch of coders. Usability will be improved and believe or not you are an important part of that discussion. It's not a case of us against you. You are now a part of the PW community and we hope that you learn and succeed. I can only speak for myself, but my hope is for the PW core will remain as is (with continual enhancements). I support others creating all the usability functionality that has been proposed, just not in the core of PW.

@argos, great to hear that. I would feel a bit responsible if you would have the opposite reaction and give up on PW and on us... But, if you say you feel that you are getting behind and frustrated for not being able to implement your ideas, I would say that you arrived to PW at the right time. Go through the tutorial calmly, don't hurry. Start with replacing the content in your html by simple PHP like <?=$page->body?> and ignore all the complex stuff that people write in the forums some times, later you will understand them. Don't jump to the cheatsheet without first reading the API Docs. Read why Ryan decided not to use {{these kind of tags}} and use pure PHP instead. Give yourself time to learn something that you feel you needed for some time. By the time you will feel comfortable with PW, you will realize that you also know PHP. Oh the joy --- As I said, I understand the need of discussing the tool and also the way that it sells itself to people. But it's how the core of PW is structured that makes it such a flexible tool. Changing the way it works would start removing that flexibility and make it become heavier and heavier. It's what people will do with PW that will make it grow stronger and directed towards other publics, not as it's core, but as the tool behind each of those applications. Couldn't be closer to the truth! PW is a very friendly CMS to those that will use it as a content management system, your clients, and is a powerful tool for you, the developer, to make sure that they will get the absolute best experience. EDIT: totoff was faster

The only thing I am concerned about, is this repeated pressure on processwire to make it more user friendly for non coders. I really - really hope the pw core with it´s template/field/backend will stay untouched. The use of processwire is not based or focused on CMF at all. Processwire can be used as a cms / a cmf / and even as a cme, (thanks to the core) which is a content management engine (thanks to Joss). We should find a way to learn beginners to focus on how widely processwire can be used.

I take it 'clndr' is the repeater-field? Your code is slow because you are executing a find on each chalet. You should be able to do the whole thing with a single selector (that uses sub-field selectors), e.g. $selector = "template=chalet, clndr.arrival={$dates}|{$todate}, clndr.book=0"; This should be very fast. If this doesn't solve your problem please elaborate on your design.

Continuing on this slightly off-topic path, but may I ask, how you have tried to teach yourself PHP? I'm asking because I've recently been trying to learn it more systematically myself. I'm not a math guy either, but I really don't think it matters as we are not trying to build game engines or graphics algorithms here. From what I gather, you are concerned with display logic code and not stuff that would require you to grasp object oriented programming. When I built sites with Joomla's CCKs, I had to learn how to create display logic, too. Combined with the point'n'click interfaces and Joomla's templating system and framework, it was a lot more to learn than PW. Have you customized the way Joomla or K2 display stuff in the PHP template level? Do you find it easier than PW? To display stuff with PW you have to know what are variables how to do if statements how to use foreach echo how to use PW selectors maybe how to create and call a function (or not) Maybe the trickiest of these (for me at least, to get the syntax right) are the PW selectors, is it true for you? Or is it something other that is difficult? I agree that the opaqueness of how programming is done today is a real problem and I'm happy to see people like Bret Victor and Chris Granger wanting to solve it. But a little display logic sprinkled on top of HTML is in a completely different league and not really suffering from this.

Last reply for today, and only because I sneaked in the phone when I shouldn't anymore if you are a professional site creator, and want to do it well, honestly you have two options: or you partner with a coder or you become a coder. As you said, it will make your life much easier. If you want to become a coder, in my opinion there's no better tool than PW, and no better place than this forum. I hope you won't feel discouraged by this talk, and that you stick around. start with the basics, without hurrying, and I'm sure that in some months you will be surprised with how much you learned.

I know it was not you saying it, but if you also think that by simply calling PW a CMS we are attracting... what would you say about offering them a couple of ready to use thingies with the basics and then telling them that they have to construct everything else by themselves? Maybe it would help PW to attract more people to download it, but wouldn't it lead to more frustration and loss of time?

First: I think such thing is easy possible with the upcoming 2.5 that have a import/export for fields: https://processwire.com/talk/topic/2117-continuous-integration-of-field-and-template-changes/page-6#entry68899 So such examples could get some demofiles.... Second: I find PW is for me a educational system!! Really like this aspect maybe we should advertice this on the homepage!! This is the reason while users are here (and i'm so happy to found it) i can reinvent the wheel i like - i coun't do that with any other cms - and serve my clients with the result that i believe it's good. So please argos and norbert take a breath, read the letters from the experienced users here and accept there strong opinion - there is no fear, there is no need... @Joss - could the old wiki entries that are mostly complete transformed in some tuts....wiki is badly linked (i found it via some older posts) but they helped me very much to get first results special this four would be great: http://wiki.processwire.com/index.php/Small_Project_Walkthrough http://wiki.processwire.com/index.php/Basic_Website_Tutorial http://wiki.processwire.com/index.php/Simple_Gallery_System http://wiki.processwire.com/index.php/Simple_News_System or link it in the docs for now?

I was reading all the posts in this topic with big interest. When I first read the title of this topic I was thinking "what exactly are you talking about? ProcessWire is the most userfriendly CMS I've ever seen". As I read further (the first post) I understood the big difference in what people in this forum think is a user. For me a user is a person that uses the backend of PW and because PW IS a CMS this means the user is able to manage contents. Nothing more, nothing less. If you are in that mindset PW delievers a great user experience, because everything the user sees is exactly what he/she needs. There are no useless fields and there are no complicated mechanisms to publish different types of content. This is a real additional value for the user as this kind of CMS is way easier to grasp. (in opposite to let's say 5 plugins/addons/modules which are all from different devs and therefore have all a different workflow) On the other hand, this means there has to be a real web designer/developer, beause the user will never be able to get new features by themselfs. This person is not in the user role, he/she is the webmaster/administrator. This makes PW perfect for professional use and personally I think this is the right direction.

It's been a while that I used ProcessWire to build a 'regular' website. (Not that I really know what a regular website is). Recently I finished a planboard system for managing newsletters and placing banners for multiple Portals. At home I have a personal little project a Ajax driven website for a band (Friends of mine). So my context of 'improving usability' is expanding API capabilities. The devs here do understand really well that there are many use cases for ProcessWire. The sky is the limit, and beyond. You have to know that ProcessWire thrives on good will of the community. It probably only takes 1 man to stand up and start building a commercial themes download website. This theme-able profile should have some standards. So that there are plug-ins that are interchange-able. This all can be done with PW, because of the power of the API. This discussion is a really good discussion so we're all glad that these stories come up.

Guys, thanks for all the comments, hints, tips and encouragement to keep on trying. I appreciate that. Reading back I also notice I was rather grumpy last night. Sorry about that, I should not engage in these kind of forum discussions in the middle of the night. Being very tired I have a tendency to be much blunter than I normally am. Some people made the remark that modern website creation often involves some form of coding, more than 5 to 10 years ago. That's true, and indeed at the heart of my frustration. While my general site building skills have improved with the demands of the market, my coding skills lag behind. So the discrepance between what I CAN and what I WANT is becoming bigger. What I want is the more or less ready to use functionality of a CMS like WebsiteBaker, Joomla or Wordpress, combined with the flexibility and power of PW. My first impression was that I would be able to create custom stuff pretty easily, but after trying for a week orso I was disappointed. Partly in myself and my lacking skills, partly in my expectations that turned out to be too high (in relation to my skills), and partly in PW because a number of things are really not user friendly (enough) in my opinion. I do feel that PW could benefit from having ready to use functions/modules/profiles/whatever-you-call-them that can be regarded as absolute core functions of any website: regular pages, blog/news, form, gallery. I'm not talking about time management, full blown ecommerce, forum, or anything fancy like that. No one expects that in a core CMS setup. Just the basic stuff to build any regular informational website, like a typical small business website. It's not important if that would be part of the core, or separate addons, they just need to be readily avaliable without having to heavily edit underlying code. I don't see why that would harm PW as a developers framework. That aside, I do feel I need to PW another go, if I have the time. All comments have given me a new impulse to try again to overcome my own current limitations.

You can also search repeater direct and get the page they're on. Look how the repeater template is named and use that $selector = "template=repeater-chalet, ..."; then on the result $chaletpage = $repeaterpage->getForPage();

My opinion? I think PW is already very userfriendly seeing the clear API and it's possibilities and the freedom in creating templates etc. Afcourse you have to have at least a basic understanding of PHP (that's where I was when I started with PW). If you really need a top of the bill user friendly cms and don't want to learn PHP, then PW is maybe just not the right cms for you. For the ones as me that start with PW and are willing to learn a (little) bit more PHP to really enjoy all the possibilities of PW indeed a central place with more snippets would be an idea. But, on the other hand, reading through the forum, posting questions and googling when I had a problem helped me I think more in learning then having a maybe to easy big copy and paste snippets library. I'm still struggling frequently but that's then more with PHP then with PW and I still enjoy the learning involved.

I think that's been the case for quite some time. If you're after an alternative there are plenty of lightboxes around. I've used Magnific popup (which is used in the PW admin) recently and that's been ok: http://dimsemenov.com/plugins/magnific-popup/

The dange is in making PW user-friendly for non-devs it suddenly becomes very unfriendly for developers. A major mistake we all make is comparing ProcessWire to AMS (Article management systems) like Wordpress and Joomla. The point is that ProcessWire, as presented on this site, is not that type of system - it is a content management framework that allows developers to build the CMS or AMS of their own design. Because of the profile system, it would be perfectly possible to build a WordPress clone on top of ProcessWire that would probably be faster and stronger than WordPress - but this would then be a different product "based" on ProcessWire and should have its own related identity, own support structure, own developers and so on. Likewise, I think Apesia's shop module could be expanded hugely into a full profile that again would warrant it's own site, support and so on. But these would not be the core framework that is ProcessWire and should be separate systems and not replace PW.

How does one define a Content Management System? Topic starter has his own set of criteria, others may have other. To my mind ProcessWire (PW) is a great content management system, on top of a rock-solid framework and API. Modeling your content exactly the way you want and managing it in the PW back-end couldn't be easier, while still remaining very powerful. Where i notice a slight disconnect with some users, is that PW does not make any assumptions on the way you display that content on the public facing part of your website. The soon to be released PW 2.5 does give you some good site profiles to choose from, including a multi-language profile. Studying the code in the /site/ directory will give you a very good basis to understanding how you can interact with your managed content. I see this freedom as a major strength, and not a weakness. If you go from this it will only take a very minimal understanding of PHP to customize things to your needs. For common needs that you might not be able to code yourself in the beginning, like navigation structures or forms, there are really great modules available on the website. A thing to remember is that, because it's all just PHP and some API instructions, everything you do learn will all make you a better website builder / aspiring coder in the long run. There might be systems that are more point and click friendly, but sooner rather than later every project needs some customizations and for that i can't think of a better tool than PW. So -while not needed- some programming skills will help you to get the most out of PW but to discredit it as a developers tool only is not exactly fair in my opinion. That is not to say that PW could not be made (even) more newbie friendly, but i see this more of a task for third-party profiles and/or modules and not something the ProcessWire core project should really aim for.

Have to agree with diogo here. Where does it end? I'd like an invoicing and time-keeping aspect, perhaps a jquery gallery? Anyone else want some goodies? The beauty of PW to me is that the core is light, quick and is actually pretty easy to get you head around once you delve a little out of your comfort zone. The API is superb and allows you to do so much so easily, add modules and you have the perfect base. Please, it's not broken stop trying to fix it ;-)

And what else should be in the core? Forum? E-commerce? Local finances tax systems? Should we vote and have in the core the most popular features? Or should we leave the core light and efficient so that even an average developer can quickly create any of those for their clients? Should PW be aimed at the regular Joe that wants a blog like all the others in one day, or should it be aimed at the regular Joe that is willing to pay a competent PRO to create a customised solution? There are dozens of good CMSs made especially for that public, like http://www.couchcms.com/ or http://www.surrealcms.com/ or even http://grabaperch.com/ . These tools don't try to be more than that. They have a focus, they follow it, and they do it well. Pw is actually a very simple system (in the way you mean it), but yes, it is directed at coders and everyone willing to learn a bit of code. But it's not only usable by coders, they are only intermediaries who make it usable by anyone with a business who wants a website. In that context, the potencial users that know HTML/CSS but are not willing to learn a bit of PHP become a much smaller percentage.

What you described here is the opposite of PW. Call it what you want, but if these are your requirements for a tool to call itself a CMS, than PW is not —and won't be— one. This can happen with site profiles though. We only have to wait that they appear, and they will with time.

This module may get put into the core. Not sure yet. But it does seem like something that may be useful to most PW installs, so seriously considering it once it's fully refined and has a few miles on it, etc. No need to worry – if you click it, the next screen tells you that it is a downgrade. Though it's perfectly fine to downgrade or upgrade between master and dev, unless using something that's only in dev. I've been doing it all week. This is consistent with how PW currently renders all system notices: at superuser login. If it's an error, it shows up red. Otherwise it shows up green. Upgrades to core or modules in PW aren't particularly important most of the time (since it isn't WordPress). It's more just an "FYI", "if you are looking for it" kind of thing. The info is always available in Setup > Upgrades. But I hear what you are saying and you aren't the first to say they tune out PW's green messages. Antti and I are working on a new notifications system and I expect we're going to do some great things there. This module will be one of a few we use to test the new notifications system. But until then I thought it best to keep consistent with the way PW currently does things with regard to system notices. So just wanted to mention there are some nice new things coming here, but for the overall system rather than just 1 module.

The devil is in the details. To make something complete and ready to use it has to come along with a lot of baggage which can actually make it harder to figure out what's going on. You cant easily tell the essential stuff that makes the gallery or whatever special apart from the stuff that's just there to make it a complete example. There are tools though which are getting better all the time and will make it easier to have your cake and eat it too. The ProcessMigrator module "Allows automated migration and sharing of page tree content along with their templates and fields via JSON files. These JSON files can be imported into another PW installation to recreate the entire structure and content, including files and images." The Upgrade tool Ryan's put out very recently will also be a help to new users. Currently people are pretty good about supplying some cut and paste code you can use to do a quick test. That's fine if you're comfortable with PHP and the DIY aspect. I'm picturing a near future where people publish a module and provide the ready to use examples you want as content you install with the migrator or something like that.

I think the issue, why this doesn't exist in this form, is that, according to the pw core priciples, most people here don't want to glorify one way of solving things, but much rather tell you how to do it yourself. I can understand that this is not the best way to appeal to newbies and I also think there could be done more to ease the entry of working with pw. One would like to have a big teaser image on their blog, while others want a "x" layers deep categorization for their thoughts. If you want to add all possible scenarios you'll likely end up with bloat. Most other CMS's out there just tell you which content you have to use. A standard Wordpress installation can manage exactly four types of content: articles, pages (more or less the same as articles), comments and "media", while telling you how all those type should look like. It just gives you a blog. Only all those plugins try to make it something more.

The reason that, for instance, there is no gallery module as part of the default offering is several fold: What gallery functionality would be offered? What fields would it use and what would they be called? What JQuery plugin would it use? (Or Mootools, or something else?) Who would maintain that plugin? What markup would it use? Would it be usable within a framework like Bootstrap? And so on. One of the main reasons I eventually dumped Joomla entirely is that I got fed up trawling through gallery or similar plugins and never being able to find one that did precisely what I wanted. And because they were trying to be everything to everyone, they were hugely bigger than the basic bit of JQuery they were initially based on. On top of that, they broke every time Joomla turned left at update, were often full of bugs or left gaping security holes, did not have enough staff to support them and then the devs went and charged for the wretched things. ProcessWire for me as a non-developer, means I can tailor make my sites exactly as I want them with no compromise and only have myself to blame if it goes wrong. But that does not mean that third party developers cannot, working independently, create exactly what you are talking about - if you dig through the forums there is already a blog module that is very feature rich and there is also basic shop functionality developed by users. But it is not practicable to expect the core developer (one clever chappy called Ryan) to add to his todo list and then support.

Some upgrades to the upgrade module. It now scans for module upgrades too, and provides notifications of upgrades that show up when superuser logs in: Main screen: Login notifications: Note that you have to have the latest PW (2.4.19 or hopefully 2.5 later today) in order to use the modules upgrades or login notifications. The core upgrades portion will work with old PW versions. Also the screenshot says it's called "Core Upgrade", but that's because I already had it installed. If you install it anew now, it's simply called "Upgrades".

Taken a closer look, you are right this one is great. Now i understand why they say use your own Jquery and plugins in the frontend...

I now see your problem, Alexander. Unfortunately that is how Repeater-fields work. I would recommend switching to PageTables, that provide the functionality you need out of the box. PageTable is a feature of 2.5, which will be out any day now. You would define your selector like $selector = "template=chalet, clndr.id=[template=clndr, arrival={$dates}|{$todate}, booked=0]"; PageTables have been available in the dev-branch for quite a while and we are already using them heavily. They are superior to Repeaters in every way. Of course you would have to write a simple script that saves your repeaters to the new PageTable-field - the script would be trivial though and I'd be happy to help with it.

Pushed an update to the module: New settings: Path to TemplatesIf you use a delegated template approach, please provide your path to the templates (relative to templates directory). Collapse unpublished rowsIf checked, unpublished PageTable parts are rendered collapsed and can be opened on click. (hidden) CSS classes for PageTable page statusThe rendered parts (the div.renderedLayout) get the status of the page as CSS class: ".pte-hidden" for hidden pages ".pte-unpublished" for unpublished pages ".pte-locked" for locked pages @titanium: Could you please test the new version (0.2.0.) with your template delegate approach. I don't use it, so I can't test it quickly. But should work

send me a pm i you need help or something else - i'm absolute not skilled enought with pw but i did build several tutorials and wrote for others (in german - my english is to bad) so maybe i could share some experience on this. that is something indeed i'm missing since i am not so skilled. my workflow is to search the cheatsheet and copy&paste the calls in the Google Forum Search so i get some examples from some interesting posts....but this is not good handling for people willing to learn more.

Something like when you click on "more" on the cheatsheet items -> ie. http://cheatsheet.processwire.com/pages/built-in-methods-reference/pages-find-selector/ ?

Edit: Just to make this clear. Let's say you have the following scenario Chalet ARepeater 1Arrival=2014-09-12 Booked=1 Repeater 2Arrival=2014-09-11 Booked=0 Chalet BRepeater 1Arrival=2014-09-12 Booked=0 Repeater 2Arrival=2014-09-11 Booked=0 When searched with the dates 2014-09-11 and 2014-09-12, do you want the selector to return Chalet A and Chalet B, or Just Chalet B?

<irony>Smoking is still very popular, drinking too, drugs too .... it must be good .</irony> Btw. we should be happy about Argos telling us what kind of problems he has, most people just test , got stuck and throw it away. So thanks to Argos ! We should listen to this.

I'm giving my opinion as much as you are, right? I wasn't a coder when I started playing around with pw, I was a graphic designer that knew a little of html, but liked PW because I understood that it was more flexible than other easier systems. All I'm saying is that, from the moment you understand that you have a powerful tool in your hands, either you are willing to learn it or you don't. Both choices are perfectly fine. I'm not looking down to anyone, and I'm sorry if it came out that way. Again, just giving my personal and absolutely independent opinion.

Thanks Martijn - just knocked it up for my new web design site (that I am losing sleep over) Here is a screen of the front page - all those are animations. I really am not an artist, but since I can't afford to employ one, I will have to do!

Yes version 1, that one is free (Think you need an old jQuery to run it as it relies on $.browser, or you've to patch it manually) Marty's magnific suggestion is a great one

Er ... at least I am working on that. .... Cough!

Yes and No. When a non coder clicks on "more", he sees only more scary php stuff Well, at least when one is no coder and very new to PW. Maybe I am the only one, but if a see a piece of php code, I try to understand it and I may understand it correctly or not. In any case it takes me quite some time. On the other hand, if I see a piece of code and its immediate html output the learning is much faster, more easier and more accurate. So I am missing html output examples. @Nico Knoll: Yes from the domain name it sounds like something I would love to see.

Okay, solved it. But something must have changed in Dev that I have missed. Basically, I forgot to check if the image existed before outputting it. (Embarrassing since I make a big thing about that on my tutorials!) Normally, this would scream a huge great error at you, but for some reason it didn't. Because the basic-page is rendering two child pages (currently) and the second one did not have an image, that threw a server error which impacted on the foundation aside code, though I really don't know how. Putting the check to make sure the field had an image in it solved the problem.

Maybe the OP is right about one thing, it is good to know who you are and what you are and I think clearly if there "has" to be a choice, then ProcessWire would be a tool for web developers rather than a plug and play system. Could it be both? Possibly, and as more profiles come about, the community will grow but I don't think we will ever see Ryan deviating from his beliefs and they have got him an awful long way towards what is probably the best PHP content framework on the market. The other point is, as Diogo says, there are an awful lot more systems out there that appeal to the OP's market than Processwire and although that isn't necessarily a reason to shun that market, I'm pretty happy with where the system is at the moment and direction its headed.

@Thomas108, something like this: http://wiki.processwire.com/index.php/Basic_Website_Tutorial Thanks Joss