Thanks ProcessWire Community - Quo vadis -

[Soma]

I want to say thanks to all people in the forums for being here and make this place so special and a great place to be. There's some spirit and drive going, I think many other CMS forums can only dream of. It's still small and the quality of people and their support to help in the forums always amazes me. Even newcomers help other newcomers in a manner it's quite unique I think. Not saying there's might other places that are the same, but I don't know of any. Thanks for the nice experience to all of you!

Then the biggest thanks would go to Ryan our "Man on the Wire", always sharp and considered helpful, with brilliant ideas and execution. You build something very special here and while maybe some think it's not "sexy" enough, they don't know what's under the hood. I think people are really excited to get direct responses from you and this is what makes them feel at home, which ignited some friendly fire and spread all over the place.

Quo vadis?

This is for now and I really wonder how it will be when the forums grows to a place, where I hardly will be able to catch up with new posts. Every other day I wonder how long Ryan will still be able to do so for every question in the forum. Don't know how you do it but you do.

So then where will ProcessWire be in a couple years from now? How far will this forum grow? Will there be lot's of PW sites spreading across the web and sharing places as with other big CMS'? Hardly think about it but I think it could very well happen. What could the PW web be? How many modules will there be and quantity > quality...

While at it, Clouds! I can't hear stand it anymore, STILL we have moving clouds in the new ProcessWire website!!! Hope people don't think we go PW Cloud?

Also I would love a horde of crazy new core php developers that help making crazy new stuff with this CMS/CMF.

No I'm not drunk but after that post I'm wired. Keep it up, stay healthy and spread the word "ProcessWire". Peace.

( Ahhh, I reached 2000 posts and I didn't even notice yet! Well never used to post that much in a forum ever. Well mostly just BS nobody wants to hear heh )

[apeisa]

Nice writing Soma. I agree and I think this is what is happening here:

[ryan]

Thanks Soma this is really nice of you. Thank you also for all the great work that you are doing here! Now I have to logoff for a few days, so this is a great last post to read before I head out. Hope that you all have a great weekend and week! Also please no more Ektron licenses on my credit card.

[panictree]

I couldn't agree more with you, Soma. As a newcomer to this forum, I already feel part of the community, part of this family that is ProcessWire. I really can't think of another online forum I've been a part of that is as friendly, open and helpful as this one. I think this might be due to the fact that we are all so passionate about ProcessWire and that we just don't mind to devote some of our time to help others that are as passionate as we are about this system. I would also like to thank Ryan, our man on the wire, for being so kind, patient and helpful.

As for the future, well, only time will tell. We might as well just enjoy what we have here and what will be, will be.

@apeisa: pretty relevant example, haha.

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings,

Let me add my voice here!

What makes ProcessWire different is that, not only is it a great CMS/CMF technically speaking, but it also generates a more subtle kind of inspiration that motivates people of all skill levels to get involved. But even beyond that, it has generated a unique "culture" here on the forum -- where people share ideas, are patient with each other, and really try to contribute and help.

Then there is something else... Can't quite put my finger on it yet, but ProcessWire feels like a system born from something in Ryan that can be described as great technical knowledge mixed with an artist's conception of Web development.

The point is, I deeply appreciate what Ryan has done and look forward to building great sites and becoming more involved in this community.

Thanks,

Matthew

[Joss]

This is certainly a refreshing place.

A lot of this is to do with Ryan who communicates naturally and clearly - far too many developers are reclusive or very possessive of their baby and have real problems climbing out of their cave into the wide world.

For someone like me who does not have the background knowledge to use frameworks to the full much of the time, this is invaluable because I do not worry about looking idiotic by asking silly questions. So I learn and therefore am tempted to give back.

A lot of other open projects could learn from that ever so simple bit of good psychology and very good marketing!

Good on yer, guys!

Joss

[NooseLadder]

I agree with all that everyone has said so far and would also like to thank Ryan for this and also everyone else who continues to contribute. I consider my programming skills mediocre at best and when I first joined the forum and saw the level of expertise here, I was a bit hesitant to ask questions. But I have quickly come to realise that no matter what level you are at you will always get the help you need without ridicule and I feel comfortable asking for help now. I am working on my first full-blown site in PW now and hope to share the finished item with you soon. I have spent many hours on it mainly due to my own learning curve for PW, but I have learned a lot along the way. This is a site for my local community and I am doing it for free. Everyone I have spoken with here has been very positive about it, so I just hope that it gets the use that it's intended for.

[Pete]

Ditto from me to all of the above.

I've visited a fair few forums over the years and I've not seen another software-related forum as friendly as this. It definitely has to do with ryan always reading and helping out on the forums from day one.

I agree with Soma that there will come a day when ryan can't read or offer code examples in every post and that's when people start getting more selective and eventually you need Moderators for different forums that are fairly specialist in those areas (I'll moderate the Pub forum ) but we're a way off that yet and it's good to see that the friendliness and helpfulness rubs off on new members and everyone helps each other out where they can.

The trick is that no matter how fast or big the forums grow, we need to maintain this sense of community - so far it's working just fine!

[diogo]

Ryan definitely set the positive tone on the forums, whether by answering to every kind of question or by cutting any discussion with a more negative tone (toward other open source projects for instance). This kind of attitude is somehow very contagious

I'm very pleased to see new people coming and becoming quickly part of the project, and the last two weeks were great in this matter. A big welcome to every one!

[onjegolders]

Thanks to you too Soma, and Diogo and Apeisa and all the other people who make this such a welcoming place for newcomers and help out when we inevitably get stuck.

I agree that Ryan sets the tone, he's unfailingly helpful and polite and a bonafide genius at just about any web issue I've ever come across!

I do wonder, like a few others, how this place will evolve when it grows, will we still be able to maintain the same "intimate" feeling? (Joss I need your help here with the wording!)

I agree with Pete that there will probably need to be moderators for different forums.

I love this community!

PS: I also think the timing of Soma's post is spot on. It does feel like PW is growing by the day.

[Joss]

I agree with Soma that there will come a day when ryan can't read or offer code examples in every post and that's when people start getting more selective and eventually you need Moderators for different forums that are fairly specialist in those areas

One of the reasons that a Forum can get overwhelmed (which can lead to posts getting unanswered and the forum feeling cold), is because users, especially new ones, are having trouble getting to grips with the system.

And that is normally a failing of Documentation.

Documentation is the Hell waiting for every open source project that does not have gratuitous funding sitting behind it - so most of them. Some projects (Joomla is a great example) produce huge amounts of Documentation, but the mix of very technical articles with some more useful bits shoved in the cracks can make it daunting.

In consequence, the Joomla forums are stuffed with dead simple questions (often with rather confusing answers) that are the first thing that pop up on Google when you go searching for your particular problem.

Open Source is not alone in this - I would argue that both Microsoft and Apple suffer from similar problems.

The ideal solution is to make sure that the primary documentation is weighted to the "how do I do this?" Sort of writing.

• How to I change my site title?
  
• How do I change the background colour of my home page?
  
• How do I create another user?
  
• How do I give my image a caption?
  
• How do I get the cat fur out of my disc drive?
  

Even when the question does not make complete sense to the system (like the second question) it will get asked. So, "The back ground color of your home page is set by you by creating your own look and feel. Read 'how to make a template' for more....."

The real test is Stackoverflow. The site is completely crammed with questions that are not answered in the docs of the software sites, or are buried so deeply or written so obliquely that they are impossible to work out.

"The refractive nature of the landing page of your dynamic web application has implications to the coding criteria implicit in the opening statements of your primary head of page include. Thus, a proprietary approach must be undertaken as part of the design policy and fabrication so that the appropriate tonal qualities can be defined and stated with a style classification ...."

People write stuff like this! (And get paid for it, Yee Gads!)

While the ProcessWire community is small, happy and generous, this is the perfect time to sort the problem out before it happens - simply by creating great documentation that not only gives expansive answers to deep questions and technical information for those that need it, but also spends lots of energy answering the little questions that come up time and time again.

Then, when it all gets busy, new users can be faithfully pointed to the right page in the manual and not only get their question answered properly, but get to enjoy the whole experience that much more (and not have to suffer from the poor, over worked moderator who is answering the question for the 50th time that day)

Here endeth the advert for the Wiki!

Joss

PS: Another idea that can help is what I call "half an FAQ" (or perhaps a Q)- Basically, it is a huge list of searchable questions which are then linked to the right bit of the documentation The reason for this is to encourage users to use the docs rather than fragment the information all over the place. It also keeps the doc writers on their toes making sure the questions actually get answered!

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings,

Joss, you and I obviously not only share a similar CMS history, but also a similar outlook on documentation as well. *

I've been putting together my own personal documentation on ProcessWire, mostly to remind myself of steps, but -- as predicted -- it's turning into something that might be useful to others...

I don't want to be responsible to veering this thread beyond the original poster's intentions, so I'm going to start a separate discussion on this documentation concept.

Thanks,

Matthew

* I think we also have a similar sense of humor, but I'm afraid to uncovee that Pandora's box too much at the moment!

[Soma]

I somehow wanted to write about the documentation part but left it out in hope it will come up naturally. Thanks for bringing this up again Joss! Exactly sums up what I think about the subject.

A software raises and falls with its documentation and support (and some other factors as well). There's a good bit documentation Ryan put together. For people like me it's enough to get started quickly and hardly have to ask questions. This seems not true to most of the audience that ProcessWire seems to attract now which are more design orientated never had to code PHP until now. I'm almost surprised that it really is a good main audience. Though one could arque there's a lot of advanced technical user that haven't even joined the forum yet, but use to search for answers or figure them out them self.

Reflecting back the year and a half on this forum, it showed clearly where people are having problems understand the basic principals, and although there's already some documentation there, they don't seem to find it as they don't know how to look for. I always feel a little bad to see so many good threads and QA are hidden in this forum that are hard to find (though with google it is possible) and most of them should be just collected, prepared and put into a place where it can be sorted and searched and listed in a easy way. There's TONS of snippets and code examples! Some are really great information you can't find elsewhere in documentation. I would have started any day building something and only the fact it would take a lot of time is why I haven't started yet. And I'm surprised nobody has yet started something more serious apart from the wiki (which obviously involves some problems).

So and you guys tell me you have something on your own! Damnit, then why wait and not make it a movement people who are willing to help and dedicate some free time to the project. I don't think making it wiki style for writing for everyone is a good idea, but make it with a small group of people who have access. ProcessWire can be used to build something easily!

But I see it just takes time and the right people to join to get this rolling. I'm happy to see that there's people like Joss understanding this fact and take initiative without even asking them! Thanks to all who decide to help and join the lonely nut to make him the leader.

[maba]

My english isn't so good, so I can't express my thoughts (and requests ).

I love ProcessWire, the forum and the contribution that Ryan and the PW gurus give to the community.

I hope I will be able to return this in future.

Thank you all, guys.

[Joss]

So and you guys tell me you have something on your own! Damnit, then why wait and not make it a movement people who are willing to help and dedicate some free time to the project. I don't think making it wiki style for writing for everyone is a good idea, but make it with a small group of people who have access. ProcessWire can be used to build something easily!

Hi Soma

The wiki is, or can be, very useful for the moment. It is a good way of getting information all in one place.

Once a good amount is in there, then those who are brave enough can start putting together something a bit more logical and solid - and yes, with ProcessWire!

However the more refined version is written, it should also be available in several formats - some sort of searchable help system, PDf/Book style, Kindle, etc (not sure what the etc is...)

Joss

[DaveP]

What makes ProcessWire different is that, not only is it a great CMS/CMF technically speaking, but it also generates a more subtle kind of inspiration that motivates people of all skill levels to get involved. But even beyond that, it has generated a unique "culture" here on the forum -- where people share ideas, are patient with each other, and really try to contribute and help.

I think you nailed it there, Matthew.

[renobird]

Soma, thanks for posting this, and on a personal level, thanks for all your patient and kind help.

I'm just smiling, because I can't express my thoughts/feelings any better than many of you have already done.

[apeisa]

Now it actually happened. There are too many unread topics to read them all! This must be biggest leap in forum activity since 1997 when Soma joined.

And it's a pretty amazing and great news!

[Joss]

Now it actually happened. There are too many unread topics to read them all! This must be biggest leap in forum activity since 1997 when Soma joined.

And it's a pretty amazing and great news!

Strangely, they are still mostly Soma .....

[Soma]

... and Joss!