New post: Rebuilding processwire.com (part 2)

[ryan]

Continuing work on the new ProcessWire.com, this week we discuss the documentation section of new site as more progress is made: 

https://processwire.com/blog/posts/rebuilding-pw-website-part2/

[adrian]

Thanks @ryan - excited to see it.

Regarding the new "numParents" method/property, you are missing the @property in the Page.php doc comment.

[thetuningspoon]

Great idea on linking the blog posts to the docs pages. I’ve been using the blog more than the docs pages lately for finding documentation of new features, which is fine if you keep up with the blog like I do, but most newcomers are sadly not aware of these features!

[Robin S]

Ryan, you're an absolute champ for grinding away on the documentation. We all know it's a developer's favourite task.

But seriously, thank you.

[Ivan Gretsky]

Thanks for your work on docs, @ryan! Actually your way of presenting and explaining things is as an important feature of ProcessWire as its beloved API. I remember being "hooked" after watching that gentle introductory video, way before I understood anything (could not find it to link here, is it gone?)

Nowadays forum newcomers do not get much direct response from you (except for pro boards - and that is another reason to buy Pro modules ?), so probably even do not know about your way of turning answers to simple questions to profound mini-tutorials, often with some philosophical background. And that makes this documentation updated by you even more meaningful (Luckily those forum gurus that handle most of the never-ending questions are still inspired and hold the spirit of wise goodwill that make this place so great to be at).

And those connections between established documentation and the constantly updating blog you wrote about are not only the new way to obtain more knowledge, but also a way to show the power of ProcessWire Page field in action on a site that should be an outstanding example of the system.

The only thing i wish would happen but not yet happening is a community collaboration on creating, updating, linking the contents of the site, as well as designing and building it. You did say that the latter is about to happen, we do not discuss the former too much. So I suggest we think about the means by which the community can help you better in maintaining the docs and updating them gradually, so they are always up to date. These times most collaborative documentation is written under some kind of source control systems like git and afterwards  presented with static site generators. I doubt this is a good way to go for a CMS project like PW (we should be eating our own dog food). But maybe we could use a mechanism of keeping contents in github and importing it to PW docs site when it is upgraded? Like the one use in ProcessWire Recipies website? That way we could help. And that is probably one of the best way to make happen the docs translation you talked about in the last post. Do you think we should explore this, or maybe you have something more profound already planned?

[Robin S]

10 minutes ago, Ivan Gretsky said:

I remember being "hooked" after watching that gentle introductory video, way before I understood anything (could not find it to link here, is it gone?)

This one? https://processwire.com/videos/overview/

Love that video. It was my first contact with PW and after seeing it I was sold.

[adrian]

2 hours ago, Robin S said:

This one? https://processwire.com/videos/overview/

Love that video. It was my first contact with PW and after seeing it I was sold.

Me too!

[teppo]

6 hours ago, Robin S said:

Love that video. It was my first contact with PW and after seeing it I was sold.

Another "me too" from here. In fact when @apeisa first introduced me to ProcessWire, I wasn't that enthusiastic about it (some things about templates and fields just didn't seem to make sense), but having Ryan walk you through all that was a real game changer. We could use an updated video, though ?

[markus_blue_tomato]

Quote

As I go through each page of the existing documentation, I find that many are missing certain aspects that perhaps were only present in the blog posts before.

oooooh yess

[kongondo]

11 hours ago, Robin S said:

This one? https://processwire.com/videos/overview/

Love that video. It was my first contact with PW and after seeing it I was sold.

I have never seen this video before. How did I miss it!? Anyway, watched it in full. Great stuff!

 

4 hours ago, teppo said:

We could use an updated video, though 

Yeah; had that thought when watching the video

Forgetting the GUI for a minute, one thing that hit me was that I'd still choose ProcessWire now in 2018 if it was still at version 2.0. You can't beat the underlying architecture, philosophy and approach. Even 8 years later, ProcessWire is still API-centric. It's amazing though how much further along ProcessWire has come since ?

[horst]

Yep, another me too here. On the first day getting contact to PW, I saw this video and it put me on fire to try it out and to understand it. 

And some time later, after finding this "PW-spirit" in the community, to contribute to the image handling. 

(Thanks @Ivan Gretsky, for reminding on it. ?)

[bernhard]

Agree on all the above ?

12 hours ago, Robin S said:

This one? https://processwire.com/videos/overview/

Love that video. It was my first contact with PW and after seeing it I was sold.

49 minutes ago, kongondo said:

Forgetting the GUI for a minute, one thing that hit me was that I'd still choose ProcessWire now in 2018 if it was still at version 2.0. You can't beat the underlying architecture, philosophy and approach. Even 8 years later, ProcessWire is still API-centric. It's amazing though how much further along ProcessWire has come since ?

This video is really great - and even if it was rebuilt I think it should be linked nearby. 8 years later and the foundation and principles are still the same and more trendy than ever before. Just awesome!! Headless as a totally new concept?! Bore me more ? 

[Gideon So]

me too here. I was totally sold by this video and this https://processwire.com/docs/tutorials/hello-worlds/   help me to get start with Porcesswire.

Gideon

[thetuningspoon]

On 10/27/2018 at 7:43 AM, bernhard said:

Agree on all the above ?

This video is really great - and even if it was rebuilt I think it should be linked nearby. 8 years later and the foundation and principles are still the same and more trendy than ever before. Just awesome!! Headless as a totally new concept?! Bore me more ? 

Maybe we should be marketing ProcessWire as "The original headless CMS"

[bernhard]

Yeah, actually I just wrote to my notes about why PW is great: Headless got innovative and trendy in 2018, PW works like this for several years now and is extremely mature.

[Pete]

On 10/27/2018 at 7:04 AM, teppo said:

Another "me too" from here. In fact when @apeisa first introduced me to ProcessWire, I wasn't that enthusiastic about it (some things about templates and fields just didn't seem to make sense), but having Ryan walk you through all that was a real game changer. We could use an updated video, though ?

You want an updated video? But I remember it when it was nearly new! *checks video date, feels old* ?

I had a similar experience to others - I was looking for a CMS that could meet my non-standard requirements - I remember seeing the site and some of the docs back then and being confused. Fortunately I came back to it a few weeks later and finally watched the video and that sold it to me instantly.

[psy]

I arrived at ProcessWire via a different path. A few years back, two other developers and I were dissatisfied with the CMS we were using. Other two researched, tested, investigated all on the market except WordPress. We all agreed we'd rather give up than go down that road. Fortunately for me, they both agreed PW was the best and I should give it a go. Haven't looked back. Thanks @ryan, the forum team, Goran and @Stikki ?  

[tpr]

@psy Same path here but I was the other two devs too ?

[Jonathan Lahijani]

On 10/26/2018 at 4:18 PM, Robin S said:

This one? https://processwire.com/videos/overview/

Love that video. It was my first contact with PW and after seeing it I was sold.

That video got me hooked as well.

I'd love to help out with making a new marketing video.  I can do the screen recording, video editing and voice-over.  If someone can concept out a script/storyboard, I can take care of the rest.  Maybe it can be featured on the new PW homepage hero section to hook more people.

[cb2004]

22 hours ago, psy said:

I arrived at ProcessWire via a different path. A few years back, two other developers and I were dissatisfied with the CMS we were using. Other two researched, tested, investigated all on the market except WordPress. We all agreed we'd rather give up than go down that road. Fortunately for me, they both agreed PW was the best and I should give it a go. Haven't looked back. Thanks @ryan, the forum team, Goran and @Stikki ?  

Same, thanks Goran and @Stikki.

[psy]

4 hours ago, cb2004 said:

Same, thanks Goran and @Stikki.

@cb2004 ? ?

[cb2004]

7 minutes ago, psy said:

@cb2004 ? ?

I remember you from the other CMS which was not simple compared to ProcessWire :). Send me a PM, would be great to reconnect.

[arjen]

On 10/29/2018 at 8:03 PM, Pete said:

 I had a similar experience to others - I was looking for a CMS that could meet my non-standard requirements - I remember seeing the site and some of the docs back then and being confused. Fortunately I came back to it a few weeks later and finally watched the video and that sold it to me instantly.

Exactly my experience. I read a comment from Ryan on another website (Textpattern blog I think) and initially was enthousiastic, but it felt way to developer heavy. Then a few weeks later I gave it another shot and the video instantly hooked me.

21 hours ago, Jonathan Lahijani said:

I'd love to help out with making a new marketing video.  I can do the screen recording, video editing and voice-over.  If someone can concept out a script/storyboard, I can take care of the rest.  Maybe it can be featured on the new PW homepage hero section to hook more people.

Based on the other answers here I guess this might be very interesting. It might even be the best marketing idea I heard in a while. Just show the video. No marketing lingo, but the real back-end with a proper front-end. Focussed on the content and the delivery of that particular content on the front-end. Maybe with ProDrafts.

[szabesz]

@ryan Could you please dedicate a page or two in the new documentation to Adrian's Tracy Debugger module? His module has become so powerful that it would be a big oversight not to highlight it in the docs. Just look at this brand new feature: 

ProcessWire + Adrian's Tracy Debugger combo is second to none!

 

Edited November 1, 2018 by szabesz
typo

[LostKobrakai]

14 hours ago, szabesz said:

Could you please dedicate a page or two in the new documentation to Adrian's Tracy Debugger module? His module has become so powerful that it would be a big oversight not to highlight it in the docs.

I'd vote strongly against that. Like who's to decide which 3rd party modules are worthy to be featured in the (1st party) docs? Who's job is it to maintain those docs if things change? Will modules be removed if they loose popularity? When exactly would that be the case? — I doubt we should put even more work on ryan's shoulders especially for stuff he might not even know very well. As afaik the module directory does not track downloads we cannot have a most downloaded modules listing, but imho that would be a more useful way to highlight modules, which are popular and not to be missed. We could also have a modules of the month poll or something like that for gathering information on module usage. As for documenting what a module does and how it's used; that should be up to the module maintainer and/or the community. Maybe the api docs could pull them out of the source code automatically like it does for the core (how it could work [1]). The point is the core docs are certainly not the place for providing information on 3rd party modules.

1: hexdocs.pm (try searching for e.g. phoenix or ecto for the best maintained examples)
Each package of the hex package manager does automatically generate it's docs on publish and they will be published to hexdocs.pm. The docs are generated from the package's source code by a similar system to how it works for processwire. From my experience with it I've to say that having one platform for hosted docs, which are autogenerated (in 99% of the cases even by the same generator) is a real incentive to write (good) docs.