New post: New PW website ready

[adrian]

Hi Ryan,

Not exactly sure how this would look or work at the moment, but what do you think about having the Tracy Console panel available on the demo site so that users can play around with the API. I am thinking of having some snippets in the snippet sidebar already saved so that they can load those as starting points / examples. Some examples would show using d() calls to return objects, but we could also have some with echo outputting actual HTML with PW variables embedded. Think of this as ProcessWire codepen / fiddle type feature. Obviously save operations etc would have to be prevented so they can't damage the demo site.

On another note, maybe down the road users could have access to their own demo site like Wagtail does (https://control.divio.com/demo/get-new/wagtail/) where the user can actually edit page content and see the changes on the frontend - a little like the old lightning.pw

Anyway, let me know what you think about the Tracy Console idea.

[HMCB]

If you’d like my unadulterated perspective:

1. I think the way PW is communicated is too verbose and complicated.
2. The concept of Pages doesn’t make this any easier. It’s almost like that term has outlived what the product has become known for: power a website or something altogether different.

Just look at the Pages overview and you see how it could be totally perplexing to a newbie. Words have meaning and sometimes wisdom requires rethinking how we communicate.

Despite being new—having built three or four websites with it—I love this product and hope more people come to appreciate what Ryan has built.

[Robin S]

Well I couldn't get sitemod.io working (at least not the way I wanted) so I built my own version - using PW of course ?

https://sitemod.robin.nz/

This lets you render any site with a custom CSS file and/or a custom JS file added. Links on the site are rewritten so you can browse around the site and keep your custom CSS/JS. Not much testing done yet so expect some bugs.

 

Here is the new PW site with a max-width applied and the font switched for Work Sans. As I've said elsewhere, I'm really not a fan of the current font and I think this looks much more professional.

https://sitemod.robin.nz/render/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fprocesswire.com%2Fnewsite%2F&css=https%3A%2F%2Fsitemod.robin.nz%2Fnew-pw%2Fmod-1.css

[Pete]

Quick one on the blog comments - it is technically possible to have the forums automatically create a new topic in this forum when a blog post is published, show comments from that topic below the blog post, but also allow you to sign in on the website at the location of the comments form itself and comment there as normal. Would that be preferable to keep all comments in the forums from what people are saying?

If you're logged in on the forums already there would be no requirement to login from the blog post again - it would know you're logged in.

The form itself would likely be more basic there as I've found embedding the full-featured forum editor tricky in the past, but think this solution might be the best of both worlds to keep the conversation happening here in the community forums if that's what people would prefer?

[dotnetic]

@Pete In my eyes, this would be the perfect solution

[flydev]

Nice work !  What a refresh ! ?

As two-cents frontend dev, I think that the Download and Demo buttons on the start page could deserve a "better" ghost-button. Additionally, on the "Demo" button, I would see a 'bolt' icon more than a 'map-marker' (the 'rocket' icon should be perfect but not integrated in the UIKit framework I think).

 

6 hours ago, adrian said:

but what do you think about having the Tracy Console panel available on the demo site so that users can play around with the API.

This ! 

Those last years, despite every module being a gift for the community, Tracy has become THE tool to build those gifts. It is also THE tool for peoples who like to offer support for free to the community. And without speaking about support or modules dev. but globally, the experienced or newbies developers, once they get their hand on Tracy, they speed up their development workflow. Just to say that @adrian made a crazy job with Tracy and it give to ProcessWire more strength (than it already have), so yes, definitively yes ☝️

[benbyf]

love it and think most little bits have been picked up.

On the design side if possible restricting wide text sections like quotes on the homepage to a restricted width so that word count on each line is between 10-16 words will help people read it without getting lost on the jump to a new line. This both helps people read and looks nicer as it adds white space on wider screens breaking up the sections.

[dotnetic]

7 hours ago, adrian said:

what do you think about having the Tracy Console panel available on the demo site so that users can play around with the API

I think Tracy is great, but it is not part of the core. So when users decided and finally download PW, then Tracy is missing. However, it would be good as a playground like Codepen where you can directly test API snippets. But please also think about, what destructive commands could mean. They could destroy the whole demo site. Don't know, what is possible when demo mode is enabled in PW config.

I strongly believe, that Tracy should be part of the core, as it is simplifies development and debugging very much. How can we convince Ryan to integrate it into the core? Maybe this another thread because it is off-topic here.

[Pete]

10 minutes ago, jmartsch said:

How can we convince Ryan to integrate it into the core? Maybe this another thread because it is off-topic here.

I am in the process of putting together a questionnaire which will ask questions like "what features do you think are missing form the core" (not the actual wording, but you get the idea) so hopefully that will be ready soon and I'll be collating answers. I think with so many great ideas discussed daily over the forums, Ryan almost certainly doesn't see every last one, so hopefully with a questionnaire to kick off 2019 if there are common requests from PW users that can help focus attention in certain areas.

[AndZyk]

First of all @ryan thank you for your work on the new website. It is already looking promising. ?

You have already much feedback, but I wanted to give also some first suggestions:

 

Container

As @Robin S already mentioned, for very large screens (for example 27 inch iMacs) it would be better in my opinion to limit the container width to uk-container-large.

 

Section

Right now every sections is either default or primary. You are are aware of this, but the section component also offers secondary or muted sections. I think it would be nicer to spice things up with more different sections. For example the footer could be first be muted (twitter, forum and news) and then secondary (copyright),

 

Blog

I also don't like the current blog overview. In my opinion it would be nicer with cards.

 

Navigation

The search should be in my opinion be the last item in the navigation. Although the new search is now really powerful, searching should be the last thing a visitor has to do after all contents are discovered.

 

That was it for now and keep up the great work. ?

Regards, Andreas

[bernhard]

First of all: Congrats to the new site, it's a huge improvement!

I also second almost all comments, but want to comment a few:

1 hour ago, Pete said:

I am in the process of putting together a questionnaire which will ask questions like "what features do you think are missing form the core" (not the actual wording, but you get the idea) so hopefully that will be ready soon and I'll be collating answers. I think with so many great ideas discussed daily over the forums, Ryan almost certainly doesn't see every last one, so hopefully with a questionnaire to kick off 2019 if there are common requests from PW users that can help focus attention in certain areas.

Hey Pete, good to hear that :) Maybe NOLT could be a helpful tool for this purpose: It's dead simple and free: https://53261ae5.nolt.io/

7 hours ago, Robin S said:

As I've said elsewhere, I'm really not a fan of the current font and I think this looks much more professional.

+1

12 hours ago, adrian said:

Afraid I don't really like the blog page - I feel like the blocks are too confusing - I'd rather a more normal vertical approach and an image (when available) to go with each summary.

+1

10 hours ago, Jonathan Lahijani said:

It will be 2 minutes and 11 seconds long, which is the length of the audio (full audio here).

I will try to make it show off the power of ProcessWire as much as possible (tree, fields, matrix, front-end editing, api, docs, formbuilder, procache, github activity).  I may need to extend the music a bit for it all to fit.  Anyway, this is happening!

@Jonathan Lahijani did you see my comment here? ?

 

[MrSnoozles]

Great website update. Even if it's not 100% finished, it's miles better than the current website. Plus you got a lot of helpful criticism from many talented people already, which will definitely help improve it further. I feel like 2019 is going to be a really interesting year for ProcessWire. Keep up the amazing work.

Edit: It's been said in different topics already, but not really highlighted that much here. Like Bernhard,  I think "headless" is a powerful marketing buzzword these days that could be used on the homepage. ?

[3fingers]

I've played a bit with the homepage, trying to adjust what is off IMHO.

I've changed the font with Open Sans, improved padding and spacing, changed the main background color with the one we have right now in the header of the backend.

Replaced the logo with the "old" one (I really love the color combination and fonts pairing).

Moreover I've quickly swapped the iMac with a flat browser with a (really rough) image of the backend.

Of course the double icons you see scattered here and there are not intended to exist (they appeared when I've saved the html, dunno why).

 

[bernhard]

31 minutes ago, MrSnoozles said:

Like Bernhard,  I think "headless" is a powerful marketing buzzword these days that could be used on the homepage.

Thx. One more:

I was happy to see the https://processwire.com/newsite/about/wordpress-vs-processwire/ section, but I still think this could be greatly improved. What about Joomla? What about Typo3? What about Drupal? I think there are a lot of people looking for alternatives and nowadays it's popular to just google "drupal alternative". It's a great user experience to get a tailored answer to that question.

10 hours ago, HMCB said:

I think the way PW is communicated is too verbose and complicated.

That's also true for the WortPress comparison page. I see https://runcloud.io/alternative/serverpilot-alternative.html as a very good example how those kind of pages could be done. Maybe with a "get more details" link on the end of that page for useres that are even more interested...

[kongondo]

15 hours ago, Jonathan Lahijani said:

Working on this, which I hope to finish off at some point in a couple weeks after the main site launch:

Hi @Jonathan Lahijani,

Thanks for work on this! I know your previous work and you make some great videos. I'd like to venture a few opinions if I may?

For this sort of video, I think what would work best is an explainer video. Basically, a 'selling points' or 'attention grabber' sort of video. The segment should be between 40 seconds to 1 minute, tops! This is the sort of video you would make using Powtoon, Biteable or Spark. In other words, why should I use ProcessWire or what's unique about ProcessWire? This, IMHO, should be about the top-level /overarching  selling points and not about the details. I think we should stick to 3, maximum 4 top selling points about ProcessWire. These can include:

1.     Easy-to-use and powerful API OR maybe consistent and powerful API?
2.     Security/Secure
3.     Custom fields
4.     Modularity
5.     Free and open source(?) > this maybe can be added as a one liner, even at the end of the video (and it's not really a unique selling point per se)

An explainer video does not need to show off the full range of the power of ProcessWire. It just needs to grab the attention of the curious developer, to get a foot in the door, so to speak. Hence, the specific details, e.g. Matrix Fieldtype, procache, formbuilder, Github, etc, are for other (more) videos and are not ideal for 'an intro to ProcessWire' sort of video.

In addition, ‘the going through the backend’, IMHO, should not be the focus of this video. These are for a ‘tour of the backend’ sort of video, which an explainer video, due to its length, cannot adequately cover since it will feel rushed and crammed. 

Ideally, the explainer video should be geared towards our target audience (which seems to be web developers), but this may be difficult to pull off.

It’s best to try to fit text into one liners, rather than wrap-around texts, if possible.

If the final website is going to change, and this video will show the website, you might want to hold off until then? 

Finally, I am not saying that it should be an animated video. I think the most important thing is that it should be simple, concise and clear but most of all, really 'sell me' to the idea of ProcessWire.

Thanks.

 

Edited January 5, 2019 by kongondo

[kongondo]

10 hours ago, Robin S said:

Here is the new PW site with a max-width applied and the font switched for Work Sans. As I've said elsewhere, I'm really not a fan of the current font and I think this looks much more professional.

Robin, the CSS is not loading for me (you preview). Dev console throws an error as well about $ not defined.

[bernhard]

Great points @kongondo ! And thx for those links on video tools.

IMHO:

1. Secure & Stable (should be #1 as it is stated as #1 priority)
2. Custom fields, easy and flexible API ("headless")
3. Scalable and fast

[adrian]

There have been a few recent comments about the text in various sections being too verbose - I'd just like to mention that I agree with this ?

I am not totally sure I like @3fingers re-colored version, but one thought I had yesterday before I saw it was that I find it quite a harsh change going from the simple single blue color of the new site to the multi-colored admin panel in the demo. I am not saying that the website and the PW admin need to look identical, but I do think it looks so different that I feel like I am somewhere else with a different product. @3fingers version ties the two together, although I am wondering if maybe the admin should look more like the site by default? I am not suggesting any change to the admin immediately, but something to think about?

 

[adrian]

1 hour ago, kongondo said:

Robin, the CSS is not loading for me (you preview). Dev console throws an error as well about $ not defined.

Try this link: https://sitemod.robin.nz/render/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fprocesswire.com%2Fnewsite%2F&css=https%3A%2F%2Fsitemod.robin.nz%2Fnew-pw%2Fmod-1.css

[cstevensjr]

i don't know if it has been mentioned, but we need to stress the ability of ProcessWire installations to use/incorporate third-party PHP tools without much effort.

[adrian]

2 minutes ago, cstevensjr said:

i don't know if it has been mentioned, but we need to stress the ability of ProcessWire installations to use/incorporate third-party PHP tools without much effort.

I would also say that it should also mention JS libraries, scripts, etc. No need for a plugin for a simple JS carousel etc.

[cstevensjr]

29 minutes ago, adrian said:

I would also say that it should also mention JS libraries, scripts, etc. No need for a plugin for a simple JS carousel etc.

You stated exactly what I meant.  Thanks.  The fact that you can make use of these tools makes life easier building websites or applications.

[adrian]

Ryan - can we get a new favicon for the site?

[matjazp]

I'm browsing on my phone with javascript turned off and there are no menus and no hamburger icon.

[adrian]

Speaking of mobile:

1. There are several padding issues - see screenshots below with various buttons.
2. There is also always a horizontal scrollbar.
3. Not sure about the color scheme of the hamburger menu - it looks like it doesn't belong.
4. The search box in the hamburger version is not ajax - is that intentional?
5. I feel like the breakpoint for the footer prev / next links is off - they end up on top of each other, rather than side-by-side on quite wide screens.

Not mobile specific, but just noticed that: https://processwire.com/newsite/docs/modules/types/ doesn't list WireMail as a module type. Also, should the naming conventions section list "Process" modules?