donations and a thank you.

[porl]

Is there anywhere that we can donate to Ryan as thanks for his work? Not only has he built an incredible system here but he is both helpful and humble in his interactions with us.

Even if there is no plans for a donation function I just wanted to say thanks.

[ryan]

I appreciate the interest. There isn't currently a donation capability here right now, though I hope to figure it out this year. Since I incorporated my business a long time ago (2003), ProcessWire is technically built by RCD (Ryan Cramer Design, LLC), so not really sure how to handle donations given that it's a corporation. I think I just need to do more reading, but I find the material hard to understand, so it's slow reading. Probably what I will do is move ProcessWire to it's own legal entity (non-profit entity or foundation if possible). And that should make it straightforward to accept donations as well as make them tax-deductible for the people that donate. But until then, the best way you can donate to the project is staying involved and active, and spreading the word online when and where possible. I think that are a lot of people that may benefit from ProcessWire that don't yet know about it.

[Pete]

Another way to do it could be some sort of paid support package, though there are pros and cons to that as you would need to offer something like "5 support tickets with 24 hour guaranteed response time" or something like that and you're only one person with other demands on your time.

Plus it's nicer for queries to come through the forums so everyone benefits from the discussions.

That said, might not be a bad idea for more corporate-based companies in the future where they need some sort of SLA.

Don't mind me, I'm just rambling

[diogo]

Another way to do it could be some sort of paid support package

Downside to this is that, when there is a paid package (support, or some kind of pro version) people tend to think that the free version is somehow incomplete.

[Pete]

Yup. Probably not the best way to go the more I think about it, plus it might suggest the forum support isn't the best, but it I'd probably the best support I've ever had with a software product.

[teppo]

Paid corporate / enterprise service offered by core developer(s) isn't such a bad thing, really. IMHO it would actually add to the credibility of ProcessWire as a high-quality "enterprise level" CMF/CMS -- though I do agree that it requires some serious planning. Anyway, isn't that exactly what Acquia is doing with Drupal?

[ryan]

Another way to do it could be some sort of paid support package, though there are pros and cons to that as you would need to offer something like "5 support tickets with 24 hour guaranteed response time" or something like that and you're only one person with other demands on your time.

I would like to provide this for sure. But so far I haven't seen that there is any demand for it. I'm sure the time will come.

Downside to this is that, when there is a paid package (support, or some kind of pro version) people tend to think that the free version is somehow incomplete.

Well if they didn't think it was somehow incomplete, there wouldn't be any real incentive to have a paid package? But I know what you are saying, and that's why I'm not interested in having anything but the pure open source and free ProcessWire. On the other hand, I do like the idea of support packages and commercial modules-- they are special add-ons (separate from the core software) for people that want them.

Yup. Probably not the best way to go the more I think about it, plus it might suggest the forum support isn't the best, but it I'd probably the best support I've ever had with a software product.

I don't think that having paid support options devalues anything else. The way I see it, it just is a form of insurance… a form of insurance that doesn't exist at present. None of us are obligated to support anything. We do it because we like to. But that's not a good enough answer for a company that depends on their web site. They want to know that if something happens that they can't solve, there is somebody obligated to help them in a timely manner. You can find that here in the forum, but it's based purely on the goodwill of the people here. I think it works now because our community is a nice size where it's easy to keep up with everything. When and if we get to the point of having 10x as many daily posts as we get now, it won't technically be possible for any individual to keep up with them all, at least not nearly as quickly. At that point, I think having more support options becomes a benefit to the perception of the project and helps attract big scale users that might otherwise look elsewhere. So it doesn't hurt to explore how best to handle the growth, even if we don't necessarily need it now.

Here are some examples of commercial support for other platforms:

• WordPress: http://vip.wordpress.com/our-services/
  
• Drupal: http://www.acquia.com/acquia-network-subscriptions
  
• MODX: http://modx.com/complete-maintenance-and-support/
  
• Symphony: http://getsymphony.com/get-support/
  

[teppo]

I'll add one more to that list, and that would be Zend Framework: http://framework.zen...rvices/overview. ZF being backed by Zend Technologies itself is one of the reasons why it's so popular. Short quote from a 2009 blog post by Jim Plush titled "Why I chose Zend Framework for Enterprise" where he explains why they decided to use ZF at Panasonic:

"After a few weeks of evaluations I settled on Zend for a few reasons. #1 It has a company behind it. It means a lot to me to be able to pay out some budget money to get proper training for developers or have people on the ready for support issues." -- http://www.litfuel.n...ush/?postid=177

That's right; there being a company with paid services behind ZF was their number one reason. Just saying.

Healthy community is a must for any proper open source project and community support is enough for most small to medium companies - especially if they have enough technical expertise available in-house - but when it comes to enterprise level applications you really need to know that if you're in trouble, there's someone who can help you right there and then (and even when your own CMS guru happens to be on a long vacation at Tahiti.)

[Lance O.]

If provided the opportunity, I would like to donate $ to ProcessWire. Perhaps as a local/regional sponsor?

[ryan]

If provided the opportunity, I would like to donate $ to ProcessWire. Perhaps as a local/regional sponsor?

Thanks Lance!

For people that want to donate, one good way might be to maintain a PPC campaign promoting ProcessWire, or to advertise on a site like cmscritic.com or others. In the past, we've also done PW feature-sponsorships, where a company can sponsor some or all of the cost of developing a new feature or module for ProcessWire (see Avoine). Ultimately, if there are donations I think it would be great to have them go directly towards growing ProcessWire's user base or capabilities.

[Adam Kiss]

We absolutely need something for db migrations / versioning db with git or such, if anyone wants to throw money at Ryan