German Community Site/Blog/whatever

[Pete]

@Nico - I blindly replied to your post thinking we were both posting in the topic about local PW sites - did you mean to post in that topic instead? If so I'll move our posts over there

[Joss]

Another post for you to move when you move your ones:

Both the Germans and the French have been pretty active over the years developing stuff - going back a bit, I remember coming across a few interesting items for which there was no English version at all.  Java has been particularly popular at verious stages. So yes, there is very definitely a market.

It requires more than simply a translation, however. We used to do huge amounts of multi-lingual corporate work at the studios, and I was constantly reminded by voiceovers when translating "in my country, we would not have made this video like this in the first place."

So, some thought should be put to both the presentation style and the "sell" so that it is truly aimed at a country and is not just another language version that, to be honest, can be seen as insulting. In English speaking countries we are amazingly insensitive to this sort of thing!

[Nico Knoll]

@Nico - I blindly replied to your post thinking we were both posting in the topic about local PW sites - did you mean to post in that topic instead? If so I'll move our posts over there

Would be really nice

[Pete]

Hi all, just a quick note that Nico posted a reply to this topic in the wrong topic, then I replied to his reply thinking we were both talking about this topic - basically go up five posts and read the posts that come after that to get up to date

[yellowled]

I think we should do it the WordPress way (sorry for mention the w-name). We don't need processwire.de - we just could use http://de.processwire.org/ (or .com) as a beginning (like: http://de.wordpress.org/).

Lovely idea, Nico.

Of course, the W-community still has other German sites since they're heavily organized (yes, Germans also love to join clubs and organizations!). But as kind of an official ”yes, PW also works in German and there are German people who know what they're doing and use it“ site, this would be perfect, especially since it scales. There could be fr.processwire.org, fi.processwire.org etc.

And if someone would want to create an “inofficial” PW community site, they could still use a different domain for that.

[Pete]

I think why I like the idea is it's "officially unofficial" with no worry about domain names.

But yes other local sites are welcome, my thinking was that Nico's idea would be a good way to show relatively quickly that we care about every country and supporting everyone.

[ryan]

Good idea Nico. I'm happy to setup subdomains as needed. 

[Pete]

I guess the next question is how to handle it ryan? Would you see each local site being a separate PW install using the new template or is this something for multisite with a few trusted authors?

I guess in the case of multisite we're not looking to reproduce the main ProcessWire.com site anyway (actual content can be discussed later on) so it could share some common core. If we're thinking about each country and going so far as to having a list of devs that know ProcessWire from each country to show there is broad usage of ProcessWire then it makes sense to also have us.processwire.com, uk.processwire in addition to de, fr, fi etc etc. That way we could just set everything to use templates and DB from us.processwire.com maybe?

Just a thought.

[Pete]

Bearing in mind what Joss wrote about different languages needing to explain to their web developers in different ways (better ways of structuring an introduction to a product, local knowledge of what re the key points for that country etc), I think a rough structure for these localised sites would be something as simple as:

• Introduction to ProcessWire and what makes it different
• Local language videos and tutorials
• List of local developers (local site admin would have to approve entries and needs something like FormBuilder managing new entries to this I think.
• Local jobs board - this could be clever as you could post a job and specify whether you want to advertise only to one country, several, or all - the beauty of Multisite

From another topic last year, in my head it's coming back to something like this: http://director-ee.com but whereas that's more about devs and jobs I think the localised introduction and written/video tutorials would make it stand out more.

[Nico Knoll]

All in all it shouldn't be that hard.

What I would do is:

1. Create a reduced Template of the current Processwire.com template which has something like 3 pages. So the front page would have to say hello, offer a "download v2.?.?" (newest version) link, a description of how to install it and maybe a little overview about the features.
   The second page should offer some translated code samples or stuff like this.
   The third page could ... do something else.
   
   This reduced version should be on english. Maybe us.processwire.org or so.
    
2. Set up a multisite version of processwire using this reduced template. This installation could include all of the language versions excluding the original one on processwire.com.
    
3. Chose some persons who speak different languages as authors for this. Their job would be only to translate the english reduced version. So they wouldn't have to be that deep in Processwires features. They just would have to understand english and translate it well.
    
4. Finished.

[Pete]

And maybe 5 is if there is a localissd community site, a link to that if desired.

[Joss]

The community issue is separate I think.

I am a great believer that, once a community gets big enough so that it is not like a cosy family any more, it should be very separate from the main, promotional site.

That means that it might have a common logo and possibly corporate colours, but other than that, its design is aimed at community.

In the case of national websites, they would, by definition, be promotional sites (plus direct translated documentation) - they can have their own unique identity, but must follow some basic rules and be approved centrally (as any company with multi offices does).

The community site, however, should be one central resource, albeit with language sections. That way, those that are multi lingual would be able to talk on native language forums and others that they can understand all in one place. Or use auto translators to understand posts if needed. But they remain part of the entire community rather than being off in another place entirely.

(Note: it is vital, in these sorts of forum, that moderators duplicate important announcement posts across all languages. Time and time again I see this not done, which leaves one community feeling like they are also-rans. Multi lingual communities can work very well, but they need lots of management).

[thomassausen]

I like all the ideas. A own custom german build of PW would be great. 

Luis and me chatted about our idea. And we took also WordPress as an example. But our example is more wpde.org So some benefits of PW,blog (maybe with some tips and tricks), FAQ and something like Director-ee build in. We want to introduce freelancers and agencies who are using PW and want to tell WHY they are using it. So we will interview those who will be listed in this director-ee/network-section. 

[Pete]

Love that idea

The more local activity there is the better I think.

And let's not forget that all of this will end up in search engines driving yet more relevant traffic our way.

[yellowled]

The more local activity there is the better I think.

Depends. Here's an example:

I'm involved in the development of the Serendipity blog engine. While it's not technically a German project at all, our lead developer (“our Ryan”) is German, as are most of the contributing devs. Since Serendipity also has a lot of German users, it seemed reasonable to set up a German-only subforum on the user forum for those of them who are not confident in their English skills. So now we have quite a few German-only forum threads which “hide” valuable info from people who don't read German, although we usually encourage anyone to use the English subforums if at all possible.

So while I think that a certain amount of local activity can be a good thing - basic localized information/documentation, a list of local users/developers etc. -, too much local activity can also lead to a fragmentation of the community. I would, e.g. not necessarily consider a “German PW forum” a good idea. Also, localized documentation is kind of cutting it both ways - while it's a good thing for people who don't read English properly, it is very hard to keep localized docs up to date.

Just my 2 cents, though.

[Joss]

So now we have quite a few German-only forum threads which “hide” valuable info from people who don't read German, although we usually encourage anyone to use the English subforums if at all possible.

This was my point above. For such a system to be successful  it is vital to have active mods that can do some cross posting, even if it is just a post that says "interesting conversation on German forum about indexing - get your dictionaries out"

This does take a lot of management though and there is no tech workaround or anything clever - it is boots on the ground.

There is another argument that says that you just keep the forums in one language - but that tends to do two things: It alienates users, and the better ones wander off and do their own thing.

Anyone who knows anything about Joomla may have come across the Brazillian (I think I am right about that) Joomla site that they set up independently.

A couple of their main users popped into one of the English forum and it soon transpired that they were having far more intelligent and forward looking conversations than the English speaking developers, and coming up with seriously good solutions to problems - and yet were being completely ignored/overlooked.

A big loss to the overall project that.

[Pete]

I did just think that someone could build a module for the forum software (no easy task!) whereby you can set a language code for a forum and a language code for your own user account and have those forums not in your language translated automatically by Google Translate.

It would probably never work though for some reason or other that I've not thought of.

[apeisa]

Polite no to Google translate. It's nowhere close to handle translations without causing more hassle.

[Pete]

I thought it might be fun if everything translates into "WillyC speak" though?

[apeisa]

That is the main drawback actually. I am soon mastering willyc - Klingon - Finnish translations and don't want to Google to mess with it.

[Joss]

Oh, please - don't introduce WillyC to the concept of Finnish compound words!

[panictree]

Hi guys,

I'm kind of late to the conversation, but all of this sounds very exciting to me. As far as local sites go, I think the best way to go is to set up language-specific subdomains, as this will ensure a consistent identity across the board. One of the problems with setting up individual domains, in my view, is that it's virtually impossible to get hold of the same domains across languages, like 'processwire.de', 'processwire.fi', 'processwire.ch', etc. This would lead to a mess of independent domains that might confuse people.

To be honest, I think we should put the emphasis on the languages themselves, not so much in the individual countries. For example, Spanish is the official language of 20 different countries, and we don't necessarily want to have a separate site for each of these countries. Simply having an 'es.processwire.com' subdomain will cater for them all. Just my opinion, though.

As for setting up local forums, the danger here is fragmentation, as others have mentioned, and we certainly don't want that. Having said that, the idea of giving non-English speaking people the ability to express their ProcessWire-related ideas, suggestions, concerns, problems,… in their own language in an 'official' ProcessWire forum could be very effective, and shouldn't be underestimated. To lessen the risk of fragmentation, we could perhaps write a script that automatically pulls the most interesting discussions happening in the local sites to the main ProcessWire forum. We could do this by for example looking at threads with the label 'Hot'. We could then add a 'From around the world' section and within this language-specific subsections to the main PW forum, where all these interesting conversations would be included. It would then be just a matter of setting up automatic Google translations (not ideal but gets the job done) for this. I don't know, just a couple of ideas to throw on the table!

By the way, I'd be more than happy to contribute to the Spanish local site/subdomain/forum/etc. I can provide translations, keep an eye on a future forum, manage contributors, etc.

Claudio

[Nico Knoll]

The template could just be something like: 

 

Some different headlines and texts of course.

[pideluxe]

I think panictree is absolutely right here. So for internationalization of processwire and community this could be the way to go:

• Having the main site processwire.com holding all informations in english
• Subdomains for languages containing the main site translated and adopted to local requirements
• therefore a language coordinator should be announced (or a group of users) which maintain translations and handles language-specific things
• forum in english, but it should be possible for non-english-speaking users to post messages, which then might be translated by the language coordinator

pideluxe

[netcarver]

In reply to panictree...

I'm kind of late to the conversation, but all of this sounds very exciting to me. As far as local sites go, I think the best way to go is to set up language-specific subdomains, as this will ensure a consistent identity across the board. One of the problems with setting up individual domains, in my view, is that it's virtually impossible to get hold of the same domains across languages, like 'processwire.de', 'processwire.fi', 'processwire.ch', etc. This would lead to a mess of independent domains that might confuse people.

To be honest, I think we should put the emphasis on the languages themselves, not so much in the individual countries. For example, Spanish is the official language of 20 different countries, and we don't necessarily want to have a separate site for each of these countries. Simply having an 'es.processwire.com' subdomain will cater for them all. Just my opinion, though.

Totally agree here. There is very seldom a 1:1 language:country mapping so trying to reflect language via country-specific top level domains doesn't reflect that reality anyway. Language specific subdomains would be more easily established under the processwire banner and certainly easier to administer. However, for *local* user-groups locality obviously becomes an issue and is, perhaps, better solved by such groups as they organize themselves anyway. In such cases, I would have thought that a "national" PW user group (should it ever get established) might seek to secure and use domains like processwire.de/.es etc.

As for setting up local forums, the danger here is fragmentation, as others have mentioned, and we certainly don't want that. Having said that, the idea of giving non-English speaking people the ability to express their ProcessWire-related ideas, suggestions, concerns, problems,… in their own language in an 'official' ProcessWire forum could be very effective, and shouldn't be underestimated. To lessen the risk of fragmentation, we could perhaps write a script that automatically pulls the most interesting discussions happening in the local sites to the main ProcessWire forum. We could do this by for example looking at threads with the label 'Hot'. We could then add a 'From around the world' section and within this language-specific subsections to the main PW forum, where all these interesting conversations would be included. It would then be just a matter of setting up automatic Google translations (not ideal but gets the job done) for this. I don't know, just a couple of ideas to throw on the table!

Perhaps we could do something similar to Textpattern's forum? They have an International section with subforums for each language. The vast majority of discussion is in the English forums but having the language specific forums there does allow for conversations in other languages when needed.