Is PW becoming more popular?

[dragan]

5 hours ago, sambadave said:

After Installing PW... what next?

Perhaps a dashboard with all kinds of infos, links etc. would be useful, when you enter the PW-backend for the first time.

Such a dashboard should of course be able to be de-activated, or easily modified.

Or a dedicated help page instead (that you could also be free to modify, or be able to show or hide, depending on user-permissions/-roles).

[sambadave]

Good shout @dragan

These links could point to any new resources as and when new builds are released. Things like intro videos, the PW cheatsheet, some basics on templating/setting up a field and adding it to a template.

I find that when I show a new guy the relationship between fields, templates and some simple back end logic, it sparks a "Are you serious, it can't be that easy!?" comment every time. There's nothing that I can see in the ProcessWire journey that introduces this at the right point... the point of installing and going "What's next?" It might be that people are downloading it, but maybe they're dropping off once they see a blank installation and aren't sure where to go for a really simple breakdown of how to get started with templating.

There's a tonne of great content already on proceswire.com explaining this, but it's maybe not structured into this journey in a way that a new user would naturally expect to find it.

[matt.bryant]

Hi Folks,

I'm new to this forum, and only recently discovered PW. I'm coming from recently giving October and Craft and WordPress serious goes, but have been very curious to try a flat file approach. I must say for what it is worth, I spent hours and days bouncing around the web trying to find and then compare CMSs generally, and flat file CMSs specifically. PW didn't show up at first at all...which is unfortunate, as this seems like a great CMS and I look forward to giving it a go and following this forum. Most of the buzz seemed to be around Grav and Kirby. As a newbie who just discovered PW, I will point out that one of the things I look at when considering a CMS is what kind of pulse it has in the social media/forums realm. For example, I was surprised to see that you all don't have a Slack channel...or if you do, I can't find it, and it is not listed on the main PW page. That is a great way to find out what is going on within any given community, and addition to forums like this of course. You do have Twitter listed, which is great. I am also surprised that you don't have an introductions section in this forum for newbies. Maybe it's not that critical, but as a new member to a community it is nice to have. You of course can announce your arrival elsewhere in the forum like am I doing here. And yes, first impressions upon landing on the CMS front page makes a big difference. For example, I recently landed on the Razor CMS page and immediately cringed and couldn't get away from it fast enough. I forget now who it was after looking at so many CMSs, but another CMS front page immediately struck me as being corporate 1995 and also made me cringe and I had to leave stat. I know looks aren't everything, but considering what we do, well they kinda are lol. In any case, I thought I would at my 2.5 cents as a newbie who has very recently stumbled upon your community, and ran across this discussion. Cheers

[Peter Knight]

@matt.bryant Welcome to PW world. All great and topical points.

On the subject of Slack. I would love to see an official Processwire Slack channel. 

1 hour ago, matt.bryant said:

I am also surprised that you don't have an introductions section in this forum for newbies

Interesting - I thought there was one but can't find it now. I think that's a great idea though. Maybe it's something @Pete might consider?

 

 

[matt.bryant]

24 minutes ago, Peter Knight said:

@Peter Knight  Thanks!!

As a followup to my post...I suspect there could be some reservations for having a Slack channel. For comparison, this was recently tossed around over in the Kirby forum as well...and looks like so far no Slack for them. I can see the pros and cons, but it seems really useful and I am on quite a few Slack channels for various tools/platforms/etc. already - and should not be a replacement for forums like this, but instead a supplement in my opinion. And I think it helps with community building. Cheers

 

 

[Peter Knight]

Yep I agree. Initially I was reluctant to start using Slack and slow to adopt it. Last year I had to use it permanently as part of a contracting gig I was doing and it's a really nice messaging App.

I don't see it replacing the forums at all and actually it doesn't work as a forum replacement.

Slack is great for immediate conversational type comms.

The forums are great for searchable and persistent content that gets archived (and indexed by Google).

It's just another useful medium.

[szabesz]

Welcome to the forums @matt.bryant

7 hours ago, matt.bryant said:

an introductions section in this forum for newbies

You mean something like this, or maybe something else? 

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/8234-community-rules-guidelines/

[Peter Knight]

11 hours ago, szabesz said:

Welcome to the forums @matt.bryant

You mean something like this, or maybe something else? 

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/8234-community-rules-guidelines/

I think he means a place where new members can introduce themselves. 

[dragan]

I guess that a chat channel would simply mean too much distraction. imho, there's nothing wrong with using a forum as the main place of communication, even in 2018.

The general expectation with chat is that there's always someone around within 3 seconds with a useful reply / solution / answer. IRL it doesn't always work like that, if you have a day-job and have to focus on your daily work at hand.

This may sound like I'm all against having a PW Slack channel - I'm not. But I'm simply afraid that infos / tips would be even more fragmented that way.

(just my 2 cents)

[Soma]

I created a Discord Server for anyone to step by and say Hello ?

https://discord.gg/3jCQgt5

[Beluga]

Why push these proprietary and closed source slacks and discords, when we have an IRC channel? https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/#irc://irc.freenode.net/processwire

We will soon see some very cool announcements from the Kiwi IRC camp. IRC is stepping up its game. Also, if you use Vue.js, it is easy to get on board and contribute to Kiwi IRC.

[PCuser]

As someone who's been doing front-end web development for a while for me personally Processwire has been a breath of fresh air compared to Wordpress.

Wordpress was better than nothing, but with ProcessWire I feel in control of my site and I can feel good knowing my code isn't bogged down by Themes, plugins and Wordpress updates. It's helped taken a lot of the fear away of Back-end programming since I can easily leverage PHP, for which my understanding is really limited, and create fields in the backend.

I do what I can to put in a good word for ProcessWire when I tell people what I use to develop sites. It is pretty unknown to many here (Toronto, Canada) but it's been an invaluable service to me! I know there might be newer/trendier ways to build websites but I really like the Processwire Core, feels like I'm building my own Facebook with all the modules ?

[teppo]

On 6/15/2018 at 9:51 AM, Beluga said:

Why push these proprietary and closed source slacks and discords, when we have an IRC channel? https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/#irc://irc.freenode.net/processwire

This is an old thread, but just wanted to point out at least one major benefit of Slack: it is extremely popular among web devs. IRC is obviously popular as well, but – and this is just my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt – mostly among folks who've been using it for a long time, and of course those who've got a problem with using proprietary platforms in general.

In my experience new users tend to very much prefer the slick interface and easy setup of Slack, and since a lot of us are already using Slack for in-company stuff, client communication, and even for other (open source) projects, it'd be easier if ProcessWire had an official Slack workplace as well.

In some ways it's the same question as for why use GitHub even when there are decent (and even more powerful) free/open alternatives: because it makes ProcessWire easier to approach for new users. Because that's where the users are, and that's how they find us.

At least that's how I see it ?

(Note: I've been an IRC user since the 90's, although not so much during recent years, so in my case it's not that I can't use IRC. It's just that all my other dev-related discussions currently happen in Slack, and I'm not too keen on getting back to IRC. I guess I've grown accustomed to what Slack is and how it works, and I see a host of benefits in it.)

[horst]

Is there a slack channel already?

[Beluga]

15 hours ago, teppo said:

In my experience new users tend to very much prefer the slick interface and easy setup of Slack, and since a lot of us are already using Slack for in-company stuff, client communication, and even for other (open source) projects, it'd be easier if ProcessWire had an official Slack workplace as well.

In some ways it's the same question as for why use GitHub even when there are decent (and even more powerful) free/open alternatives: because it makes ProcessWire easier to approach for new users. Because that's where the users are, and that's how they find us.

 

In some ways yes, but I think the key thing is: GitHub is a commercial company built around an open protocol. The problem with GitHub is monoculture, just like the problem with Gmail having too much of an influence on how we use and consume email these days. Slack is completely proprietary all the way down to the protocol level.

Let's not forget that Slack used to be able to talk to IRC and XMPP, but suddenly removed support in March 2018. When a company like Slack changes something, users just have to deal with it. When it goes bankrupt, a whole galaxy of stuff built around it goes down the drain. This sort of scenario is playing over and over again while IRC and email are still with us after decades of service.

[Soma]

To me it's not so much about what chat or community software you're using. Open source or not, It's about focusing on stuff and the community itself. Having people that care and spend a lot of free time to contribute.

There's seemed to be a real interest in the discord server I opened (which takes 2 clicks). There's easy way to add channels and voice chat. Lot's of people joined for a couple days and we had some discussion going on. But it seems pretty dead now. ?

Something related: I was thinking the other day, how about making a stream on twitch.tv for web devs? I don't know how that would work out, but I've seen there's some doing it already.

[szabesz]

19 hours ago, Soma said:

Lot's of people joined for a couple days and we had some discussion going on. But it seems pretty dead now. ?

I no longer login because I find that chat apps running in the background are very distracting and it is very difficult to work at the same time. This forum is more forgiving, I just have to check the "unread stream" (https://processwire.com/talk/discover/unread/?&view=condensed) a few times a day to see what is going on.

[Beluga]

1 hour ago, szabesz said:

I no longer login because I find that chat apps running in the background are very distracting and it is very difficult to work at the same time. This forum is more forgiving, I just have to check the "unread stream" (https://processwire.com/talk/discover/unread/?&view=condensed) a few times a day to see what is going on.

Good point. Chat apps for peer support can be a very distracting thing. I use IRC to collaboratively work on FOSS. If there was a big group of people working on PW core every day, real-time chat would be more crucial.

[neildaemond]

I recently joined #processwire on freenode and plan to hangout there. I hope others who want to try IRC or are already use it will join as well :)

I found that everyone has their preferred communication channels and there isn't really a need to make everyone conform to one official one. Of course, using the less popular option means that you're not entitled to receive all the newest updates unless someone relays it. Processwire's newsletter already works quite well for me in that regard.