Happy Birthday WordPress

[gocreative]

All I am trying to do is raise the question about how to improve CMSMS and what can be done to get it appeal to a wider and growing audience from which we can all benefit.

I agree. Let's not bicker over the reasons things are they way they are, or who helps most. Let's focus on solutions. I am officially putting my hand up to do whatever tasks are available, so if anyone on the development team needs my help then they can contact me any time.

[calguy1000]

Okay I'm gonna chime in here.

#1. And most importantly:

We are not a competitor to wordpress, joomla, or any other CMS. We don't aim to compete. We are a CMSMS targeted at experienced professional web developers who build websites for others. We are not an 'Everybody can have a blog or website' package. All we want is market our product to the correct target audience and get reasonable growth of the right kind. We have known for a long time that marketing to the wrong audience is probably a mistake for us.

I personally (though others may disagree with me) consider CMSMS to be an advanced tool in the professionals toolbox. Not every website is an ideal fit for CMSMS, and not every website is an ideal fit for the other CMS's

We aim our package (including features) and support at those professionals who build (usually for a fee or some other exchange of products/services) websites for your average club, organization, store, restaurant, or business so that the average website owner (or his designated person) can add and edit content on that website without having to worry about styling.

If CMSMS were intended to be built for my grandmother it would be a lot different.

Now, that is not saying that the average noob can't use CMSMS. But they certainly aren't going to get their hands held. They are expected to behave like everybody else and ask well informed, well researched questions etc, etc... been over that a million times.

#2: The dev team largely consists of those professionals. In various forms

(though some know more about marketing than design/development, and others know more about php coding than design and marketing).

#3. The dev team volunteers their time for CMSMS. But also uses CMSMS in their business(es).

Some of us build websites. Others build modules, or both. But CMSMS work is always third to stuff that puts food in our bellies, and to our lives. Yes, we also have lives (families, hobbies, projects we are involved with, and we like to enjoy the sun or the snow, and also get ill from time to time).

We apologize in advance if our lives conflict with anybody's opinion of what they think the dev team should be doing.

There has yet to be anybody paid to work on, and support CMSMS directly. If anybody wants to offer that, we are open to discussions. Email us, but we don't come cheap.

We confer regularly and where there is available time we decide upon features for CMSMS, develop, test, debug, answer questions in the forums, write documentation, manage the servers, manage spam and trolls, upgrade our websites, and market CMSMS.

Once those facts are known, it is easier to understand why things move at a pace that is 'slower or in a different direction than you think it should be'.

#4. The website.

We have known for a long time that the website needed a re-do. It's been a number of years and the average lifespan of these things is only a few years. We're working on it. We have a theme, it's been approved, we're working on content. But quite honestly, it's slow going largely due to the number of people involved and the fact that we all have lives of some sort. We like to take vacations, and have jobs and families (see above).

#5. The Forge

For lack of a better term, it 'blows'. We all know it. it has taken us months to get a RoR (Ruby on Rails) environment setup that we may be able to work on the forge just to realize a problem that may involve us having to rewrite the whole thing in PHP. Again... the person designated to do this has a life, and in the spare time he had available he worked on other things, including representing and supporting the french community and CMSMS at CMSDays in France). So things wrt (with respect to) the forge are slow.

#6. Donations for features on the forge.

it's not going to happen. Forget about it. Not including the politics regarding such stuff (I would vote against it just for principle). It would take considerable resources to implement all of the requirements of such a project... resources that are limited to begin with, and best spent actually improving the forge in general.

This subject is closed.

#7. Style guides for the CMSMS admin.

I have a deep set religion against them and their 'one size fits all / one person (or group of people) knows all' mentality... just like coding guidelines.

The way I implement modules (both style and coding) has changed at various times over the years based on my knowledge, needs, editor of choice at that time, and the limitations or features of the software. I've had successes, and I've made mistakes. I have been challenged (debated, suggested other techniques) by various people over the years. Sometimes I have adopted their recommendations, and sometimes I have not. I am not going to recommend or impose my style of coding or writing modules on anybody else just for those reasons. it's a learning process.

Also, having rules about look and feel styles, and coding styles requires there to be a 'code nazi', that is a job I don't want. Also, it would limit even further the amount of contributions we have.

Can we have a document that describes the admin theme and classes that you can use, and some examples. yes, given some resources we can do that. But as far as admin style guides or coding style guides for CMSMS modules that's probably not going to happen.

We have some simple rules about modules that are hosted in the forge. Basically they boil down to 'don't use methods that are marked as private, protected, or undocumented' and 'don't mess with module's (or the core's) data, files, config options or settings. (reading is okay)'. There is a simple reason for this. Module A shouldn't cause problems for the developers of module B or the core.

We have seen some examples of some poorly written modules, and modules with poor interfaces, including probably some of mine at one time or another. Those modules either get improved, or die on the vine. Sometimes modules have good ideas that others adapt... That's the way it should be.

This subject is also closed.

Summary:

We are a different product than all the others. We are here for a purpose. We know there are problems with our modules, software, the forge, We're working on them but there are real world constraints, limited resources, and some places we wont go.

nuff said.

[applejack]

Robert

I posted the original question as a debate as I think it is one worth having. I have always appreciated the work that has gone into CMSMS and have consistently said that food on the table comes first.

However in response

#1. And most importantly:
"We are not a competitor to wordpress, joomla, or any other CMS. We don't aim to compete."

As a professional site developer to which you purport to aim CMSMS at, well actually yes you are a competitor, as in order to put food on the table for my family I have to choose which system I use is likely to give the most financial benefit. If a client comes to me and I offer the option of CMSMS and try to explain the benefits etc and they say ok but what about Wordpress, Drupal etc as I have heard of them and their website looks much better etc etc what am I supposed to do.

So I am saying to you now that I see increasingly agencies using WP, Drupal and a decline in use of CMSMS. It is not about which is better as I know CMSMS is better, it is about the perception of which is better and much of that comes from first impressions. Shallow as that may be but that's the way of the world.

I live in London one of the most competitive centres in the world. I have been a website designer / developer / producer running my own company for 17 years. I have produced websites for numerous multi-national companies such as Oracle, Vodafone, Sony, Sky Sports, Nortel Networks, Morgan Stanley etc etc as well as producing / developing I would think what is by market cap at upwards of $300 million the most valuable site that CMSMS has been used on so I hope I have a certain caché to talk about this.

Guys I am saying this because I am concerned about the future existence of CMSMS as I hope all the Dev's are and everyone else who does and has used it.

P.S. Thanks for the updates on what is being done.

In Peace
Peter

[Jos]

I don't know if it is just me but recently I have noticed a decline in activity on the forum which maybe because people don't need as much help or there are just less people using CMSMS. It would be interesting to check the statistics reports to see whether or not this is true..

I don't think there are less people using CMSms.
Average number of CMSms downloads per day:
in 2010: ~860
in 2011: ~760
in 2012: ~570
in 2013: ~560

Averages over the last two months: may: ~600 downloads ; june: ~500 downloads
Though of course the number of downloads does not tell how often it is used

The improved documentation site could well be the reason for the lower activity on this forum

[applejack]

It would be interesting to see the Google Analytics stats.

[Jo Morg]

If a client comes to me and I offer the option of CMSMS and try to explain the benefits etc and they say ok but what about Wordpress, Drupal etc as I have heard of them and their website looks much better etc etc what am I supposed to do.

I work in different areas, from video, cinema, audio, motion-graphics, all the way to graphic design, web design, and ultimately development. Before I settled with CMSMS (I would have to check when I registered my account here and probably add about a year) I tried just about every other CMS I could get my hands on (some evolved, some disappeared). My choice had to do with the ease and versatility in doing just about everything I wanted to offer to my clients.
On the long run, the client trusts me: It's my work that counts, not the tools I use.
Just my two cents

[moka]

Hi Guys

The question is not about whether or not CMSMS is better than WP, I know it is, but why it is not as popular.

Uniqu3 I take your point about the budget but as a professional web producer I see increasingly other web agencies using WP as their system of choice and so in that sense it is the competition and therefore a valid question to pose for debate.

So to turn the question around what do people think can be done to increase the popularity of CMSMS ?

Hello world! I'm a new user
I think it's not correct to compare CMSMS with WP... First is for developers, second is for users
I also think it's not simple to increase the download number without a large and massive advertising campaign in this jungle of cms...
Another problem is number of developers that write tag or plugin for this cms... It's not very high!

[kishman155]

First of all, thank you for that nice CMS.

i am with cmsms since 0.08 or 0.10 or something.
at the time i begann to work with cmsms the modules was a big think.
easy to use easy to handle easy to support.

after a few years some nice poeple had the idear to change code in a way
all modules needed to be updated.

ok 1. time change the code and put it into the forge.
after 2 more releases the moduleinterface has changed once more.

so i begann, once more to update all my modules and i begann to be tired of upgrading modules in the forge.

so the only module i support now is guestbook modul, when i have time.

for my point of few the moduleinterface has nothing to do with an interface,
it's more like a construction area.

i have currently over 40 modules written for cmsms and all run on 1.11.7 without any problems. And CMSMS is the only CMS i use.
I thought about to change CMS, but CMSMS is so easy for me to use because
i wrote my modules in a way that changes in the api does not effect the functionality of my modules.

For all costumer who want's to know which cms or what every is the best to use
i have only one answer:

did it realy matter which system is the best? the only think i need to know
is when do you need your home page, i take care of it.

the only thing i wish for the future is a more interface based modules API.
it would be more easier to develop if method's would be staying the same and only the backend method changes.

If the backend (moduleinterface ) will be more stable, and consistend then we don't need to discuss.

good work cmsms team.

[jog]

WordPress has some GUI niceties that make CMSMS look shabby: pro website & backend theme, autoupdate, excellent content editor etc. which are the foundation of its success imo. I still hack the good old Galant admin theme into all my new CMSMS installs just because it looks good - a big argument for any graphics guy.