ExpressionEngine new pricing structure and how ProcessWire could benefit

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings,

I have had several conversations with people about this. All the time, I hear, "But Joomla has all those templates." It can be difficult to explain that the reason there are no "templates" (themes) in ProcessWire is not because something is missing.

It's actually the opposite...

With ProcessWire, the entire world of design possibilities is your "theme."

You can go to any theme site (Themeforest, for example) or just create your own layout, and there -- you have a ProcessWire theme. If you see a WordPress theme you really like, it's simple to bring the design into ProcessWire (if you want).

It is just a matter of challenging the assumption that a "theme" must be specific to the CMS.

Thanks,

Matthew

[Pete]

@Joss - I still use Dreamweaver (I'm on Creative Cloud, so it's the latest edition) to edit code and there's no reason not to use something else, it's just that for localhost the file tree is useful to me

@Antti & Matthew - exactly. Perhaps what we need to push on the site is the fact that you can implement any theme you like - one you'vebuilt, one you've bought or one you got from a dodgy guy down the pub. That would certainly compliment and expand upon the message of ProcessWire not making any assumptions about markup, and to the less techy folks actually capping it off clearly with something like this would probably help: "ProcessWire doesn't make any assumptions about your markup. This means that you can start from scratch and build your own theme or implement any theme you like from a template site". Something like that but written with more thought by Joss

[u-nikos]

Maybe it would be possible to create a repository with ProcessWire profiles (with screenshots, color filtering etc.) for the non-technical people? This could be another selling point. Although I do think the profile installation process should be streamlined with a nice UI or something to make it successful.

[Philipp]

Maybe it would be possible to create a repository with ProcessWire profiles (with screenshots, color filtering etc.) for the non-technical people? This could be another selling point. Although I do think the profile installation process should be streamlined with a nice UI or something to make it successful.

I think this is a good point. Showing what has been done with Processwire. Pick great examples and show how many countless sites are possible with PW. The Skyscraper profile is just a good example for one type of a page.

To follow the topic - I would support what Natetronn had said. More than just the CMS and the code. A good community, active people creating modules(free or commercial). The profit would be - um yes: More modules and a better community. A vicious circle ...

[Joss]

@Pete - yeah, I will be joining creative cloud next month, probably - but actually, I was talking about a ten year old version I have kicking around!

@u-nikos - this will happen (and is, sort of), but profiles cant really be added to an existing installation in quite the same way as a theme can, so this will need to be made clear.

But I like profiles - they will make my life easier. Or, that is the plan.

[JanPaul999]

The HGTV Dream Home Giveaway sweepstakes has not officially ended yet, as construction is still ongoing at the property. According to the floor plan, the winners will enjoy nearly 4,000 sprawling square feet of living space. The architecture and design is inspired by a traditional cattleman’s ranch, placing one lucky family in the center of the surrounding rivers and mountains. The HGTV architect responsible is none other than Corey Sulum.

There are a total of 14 rooms just on the first floor, including four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms, five roofed decks, an open-air living room plus a laundry room featuring lockers, which are perfect for fishing rods, skis and waders. In addition, there will also be a game room, completely clad in crib framing, and a gourmet kitchen complete with top of the line appliances, ideal for entertaining and accommodating guests. The guest suite offers a perfect view of the surrounding river and mountains, including its own walk out door to the back deck so your guests can enjoy the same captivating sights.

[Joss]

P.S. with all that said, I still hope EE will survive and that the product development will benefit from their current restructuring. 

I am sure it will

Although I haven't used EE, the one impression I am getting here from users is that PW is not particularly a head-to-head competitor to EE so much as just an alternative -  a different way of doing a similar job.

On that basis, I can imagine that a lot of EE users could get a lot from ProcessWire without abandoning EE where it suits what they are doing. In very much the same way as there is a huge overlap between Joomla and Wordpress users.

For that reason (and a thousand others) I see no need for PW to worry about any EE politics.

Inevitably, for the vast majority of users, (the ones that never post in the forums) all these things are pretty transient. I have seen that in Joomla and Wurm Online - lots of heated debate that passed over the heads of 90% of users who never read the forums and so remained in blissful ignorance!

Joss

[Natetronn]

Although I haven't used EE, the one impression I am getting here from users is that PW is not particularly a head-to-head competitor to EE so much as just an alternative -  a different way of doing a similar job.

I think I can agree with this. And most hardcore or long time EE users seem to be taking this approach (or see quote below.)  They aren't throwing in the towel though, are considering alternatives for various projects. PW isn't alone in this as I've mentioned I think. Shoot, some might be moving towards building apps via Laravel; I don't know!

I will say that PHP in templates will scare off quite a few right from the start; which is fine either way (we don't need to have this discussion again of course.)

blissful ignorance

Now wouldn't that be oh so nice! I think that will be the name of my second boat

[ryan]

From my understanding PW has a Ecomm system in the works and or recommends Shopify. 

Antti has been developing a Shop module for ProcessWire and it is in successful use already. I'm not sure how many other users might be using it, but I think he's done a very nice job with this. However we don't have plans for e-commerce to be part of ProcessWire's core product, at least not in the current roadmap. So any e-commerce solutions for ProcessWire will be 3rd party solutions, whether running on ProcessWire or on an external service. 

I've developed and run an online store for many years and have quite a bit of experience with several self-hosted e-commerce software products, and more recently, hosted e-commerce products. When a client asks me what to do for e-commerce, I like to point them towards services like Shopify (my favorite), Volusion, BigCommerce, etc. These services are targeted specifically towards the needs of e-commerce in a way that no self hosted product can touch (at least for what matters to me and my clients). Plus they are hookable (at least Shopify is) making it easy to perform actions in your PW site based on an order, in real time. Paid membership sites suddenly become a piece of cake. This makes nearly anything possible, and IMO more powerful even than dedicated products like Magento. Now with PCI compliance (at least in the US) I really dislike the hassle and time expense of self hosted solutions for my own needs. I don't think ProcessWire needs to be all things to all people, and I'd rather focus our energy on the things where we are and can be better than everyone else. For the same reason, I don't want us to invest time in creating forum software when something like IP.Board exists. We want to empower web developers with the best solutions out there. 

Where is support, what if I need help and I'm not Ryan or the original dev who knows how to fix it if something goes wrong?  Just the forums here? 

This is a much bigger question for proprietary and non-open source products. It's a good question, but doesn't have the same gravity when applied towards an open source product with hundreds (or thousands) of people around the world familiar with the system and code. At least in our case, when a bug turns up, many times the user submits a fix with the bug. 

Beyond these forums, I also do some support email. But very little comes to me anymore. The forums and community here have been better than I could have ever imagined.

I should also note that a goal for 2013 is to provide commercial support options for those that want it. I'm not yet certain if the market is there for it, but it's something I would like to have available. 

Anyway, I guess I'm wondering where PW stands on things now and how PW foresees handeling growth in the future. But, before growth I guess I'm wondering more about direction or where PW plans to be in a year for example. These are all things as an EE dev myself I wonder about.

We are on a path for growth and I see us continuing our current strategy of building and improving the software and resources around it. My 5-year goal has been for us to power 3% of the PHP open source CMS-driven sites in the world and/or be top 10 (open source) in terms of usage. I think that our growth comes from WordPress users looking for more, and front-end developers getting into content management without a previous allegiance. We'll also get our users from other CMSs. But WordPress is the one building the audience, and the developer and non-blog-portion of that audience is using the wrong software. With that audience, ProcessWire answers everything that WordPress can't, while being simpler to use and develop for. There are other CMSs that are also good stepping stones, but all are significantly more complex. 

[WillyC]

http://trends.builtwith.com/cms

i.modify little.bit

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings Everyone,

I like checking those stats on BuiltWith...

It's interesting to attempt an interpretation of what these numbers might mean.  In general, I assume that, as we move from "top million" to "top 10,000" sites, we move up the ladder to more professional projects requiring greater scaling, security, and management capabilities.

Building on that interpretation...

- Drupal shows the greatest growth (from ~ 10% to 19% of the market)

- WordPress drops in popularity at first, but then settles at a huge chunk (> 50% of the market)

- ExpressionEngine does not change much along the way (goes from ~ 2% to 3% of the market)

- Most surprisingly, Joomla drops out entirely as you move up (from ~ 9% to 0% of the market)

There is about 2.4% unaccounted for -- maybe Joomla's share?  Some of the numbers on that site seem a bit flaky.  For example, the "Top CMS Technology" sidebar lists vBulletin and Yii as CMSs.  It also lists Microsoft Word as a CMS!  And yet it does not show CodeIgniter and Symfony at all in the list?

I also doubt the accuracy of the "Content Management System Migration" chart.

Thanks,

Matthew

[ryan]

Like Alexa scores, I'm guessing their methodology is mainly good for looking at trends and is just ballpark. But I haven't found anything more accurate. I would be curious how they can track some of this. Certainly WordPress and Drupal are easy to track because they are markup generators and call attention to themselves all over the code. But not all CMS products reveal themselves, and I'd actually consider it an asset for the CMS identity to be unknown (at least from an administrator and security standpoint).  

[panictree]

I'm happy to see this thread has fostered some interesting discussions. I'd like to clarify what my intention was when I started this thread. All I wanted to do was share my enthusiasm for ProcessWire and to discuss with you how the PW community, as a whole, could benefit from having EE people coming over to explore the system we've all come to love so much. I think this thread is an example of the interesting discussions that could come out of that interaction. Hopefully, this and other discussions will blossom into something tangible, concrete we can all benefit from. I also want to point out that I have nothing against EllisLab or EE, in fact, I've briefly used EE in the past and, in general, liked the system a lot. 

You guys have made some fabulous points throughout this discussion and there's no need for me to repeat what has already been eloquently expressed, but there's something Joss said that I really liked: 

But there is one other aspect that sometimes gets overlooked - the application must have a clearly defined market.

Being all things to all people can seem very glamorous and noble when chatting round the water cooler, but if that becomes the driving force behind the product, the result can be confused, messy and fragmented.

I think ProcessWire has a clear goal, that is what makes it attractive to me, and I think it is why (with a bit of a push) it can have mass market appeal. 

That goal: Create a website.

Because for 99% of the time, that is exactly what people will want to do with it - create a website with 'n' number of pages, all pretty similar with some bits of dancing and fun attached. Not wonderfully headline making, but the practical day to day job of business website design.

That's it, isn't it? ProcessWire is here to help us create websites, better, and it does a fantastic job at doing so. It's like the great football (soccer) players like Messi, they make it look so easy you think you could do it. Don't know what I'm talking about? Try to build what you're building without ProcessWire and you'll see! ProcessWire does that, make us look like the world-class designers and developers we all are, right?

[panictree]

Anyway, I found ProcessWire while I was searching for discussions going on about the current state of EE. I'm happy I found it as it seems like a good alternative.

I'm glad you found ProcessWire! It definitely is a good alternative and, as you dig deeper, you'll find yourself liking the system more and more.

But not all CMS products reveal themselves, and I'd actually consider it an asset for the CMS identity to be unknown (at least from an administrator and security standpoint).  

This is a plus without a doubt, at least in my mind.

[MatthewSchenker]

...WordPress and Drupal are easy to track because they are markup generators and call attention to themselves all over the code. But not all CMS products reveal themselves, and I'd actually consider it an asset for the CMS identity to be unknown (at least from an administrator and security standpoint).  

This is a great point, and it reveals some core differences between ProcessWire and other systems.  I like to put it this way: the closer a CMS comes to not being a CMS, while still being a CMS, the better it is.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks,

Matthew

[Crssp]

http://trends.builtwith.com/cms

pwgr.gif i.modify little.bit

Some products don't have a way that BuiltWith can identify them.

I nudged the guys over at MODX about that, but they weren't too interested, thinking people would rather run MODX for example in incognito.

Probably mostly for security purposes.

I love builtwith, and knowing what's being used though too.