Here here! I agree, C5.5 is a great step forward. The overall look is much cleaner and modern. I think the new dashboard is great too (despite some quibbles people have with UI details, it sets a strong direction for the future).

And as a website developer, the new stacks and global areas features are *HUGE* -- it completes the full spectrum of content organization and means there's now a built-in non-hacky way to solve pretty much every "content maintenance" situation I've ever come across.

Franz, Andy, Ryan, Matt, Greg, Robert (and anyone else I'm missing) -- thank you for all of your effort!

-Jordan

Thanks Jordan. Yeah I like stacks/global areas too – I feel like we had to learn a lot of lessons with the scrapbook and other stuff before we could implement them correctly. And Global Areas started off with a message and code attachment from you in a forum post – so thank you as well!

This is an almost quantum leap in functionality and beauty. The new concrete5 is absolutely fantastic.

Thanks guys!

best wishes

Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz

> Thanks guys!

Thank you Franz, but pls. give us instruction how to i18n-ize C5.5. (hopefully not via MyGengo) ;)


Sincerely,
Gour

I do not normally enjoy Christmas so thank you very much for this early Christmas present!

Merry Christmas and a happy new year C5 Core team!


Kind regards,

foise

And for the translation, official answers from the core team would be greatly appreciated here:
http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/internationalization/tran...

(might be A LOT easier to find with the search if searching for this, or to notify people who are following the translation topic)

I'm a huge fan of the new New C5. But you REALLY start to see the redesign value when on an iPad. It's incredibly intuitive and useful as a CMS in that context now. No other CMS can touch that. simple as that!

Great job guys!

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

C

Thanks Chad! Thanks everyone!

As a business owner/non-coder, I became a fan of concrete5 immediately after discovering it after researching tons of CMSes, including the very frustrating and non-intuitive Wordpress. But I was hoping for more feature improvements for concrete5 5.5 to make it even more user-friendly, and to help it keep up with the ever-improving competition that's certainly taken notice of concrete5. For example, it would be great if concrete5 added drag and drop layouts like the Headway Wordpress theme, and like Squarespace is supposedly soon adding in version 6. And it's unfortunate and frustrating that there's virtually no dedicated support for people wanting to switch to concrete5 from another CMS. If you want to grow concrete5 at a much faster clip, then you have to make it much, much easier to switch from another CMS. Think of Apple's famous efforts to help people switch from PCs to Macs. I was told by concrete5 that they don't really help people switch to concrete5 because it's so complicated. That's of course the whole point of why concrete5 should help people switch. If concrete5 itself feels it's too complicated to help people switch, then think how complicated and frustrating it is for non-coders or coders new to concrete5 to switch from another CMS to concrete5.

Happy Holidays!

Scott

@bizstarz

I believe we actually told you it would be quite difficult, to impossible, to make an automated wordpress->concrete5 script. There's a good start in github now, but wordpress sites get so strung together with hacky add-ons that you're never going to get a script that spits out a concrete5 site that looks exactly like your old wordpress site without a lot of time involved.

I don't believe I ever said our guys wouldn't help someone because it sounded complicated. ;) You wanna pay us by the hour to convert your wordpress site into a concrete5 site, we can certainly do that, as can any number of other folk in the jobs forum.

While we do have draggable layouts in concrete5, we always intended concrete5 to be used as a building material for developers handing sites off to customers. It's amazing that site owners are building concrete5 sites on their own with some DIY energy, but to be frank that really was an accident.

I don't disagree with the essence of your advice - thinking about customer adoption is important - I just think we're focused on slightly different audiences. You're seeing us as more of a Weebly/homestead.com deal. While it's awesome we can even play at that level, it's not what we're thinking about first and foremost.

concrete5 is about the relationship between site developers and site owners. We're not trying to eliminate site developers.

Regardless, thanks for chiming in and staying up to date with what we're doing!

Happy holidays!

Thanks for the reply. But I think if c5 wants to be more than a niche player, it needs to become more focused on end-users and becoming even more user-friendly. It seems like c5 is almost wholly focused on developers, and that end-users aren't really at the table. For example, what percentage of beta users are end-users? Obviously developers are critical to c5's success, but with all due respect to developers, I would argue that end-users are equally if not more important than developers to c5's future. Sort of like how car buyers and drivers are equally if not more important to BMW's success than designers or mechanics, or how end users are equally if not more important to Apple's success than developers. In fact, one of the reasons I was attracted to c5 was your "A letter to Site Owners," which positioned c5 as being hugely focused on end-users and being user-friendly. But although c5 is much easier to use than other CMSes such as Joomla or Wordpress, it still feels like c5's energies and priorities are mostly on developers. I've watched several episodes of Totally Random, and pls excuse my candor, but Totally Random comes across as a big geek feast, with very little time spent on discussing how c5 could be easier for site owners to use and enjoy (plus I think a name like concrete5 Live or c5 Live would be a better name).

As far as my original post here, I wasn't comparing c5 to Weebly. I'm comparing it to CMSes like Wordpress and Squarespace. And I did take your advice and try to find help switching from Wordpress to c5. What a pain in the rear. Have you ever tried to find someone who has actual experience switching sites from Wordpress to c5? Just so you know, I searched for help using odesk.com, Elance.com, Guru.com, and the c5 community (and I never said I wasn't willing to pay for help). Of the relative few responses I received, the overwhelming majority had never before migrated a Wordpress site to c5. It's crazy that c5 does virtually nothing to help people switch to c5 from other CMSes, especially since c5 is such a small player in the CMS marketplace. How can c5 expect to keep from being further overrun by the Wordpresses of the CMS world w/out doing anything to help people switch to c5? Where is c5's significant growth going to come from, only sites that don't have to migrate over from another CMS?

According to WordPress.com, there are now 69,890,523 Wordpress sites in the world. So if c5 could get only 1% of Wordpress sites to switch to c5, that would add about 700,000 sites to the c5 community. Wouldn't that make c5 about 700% more successful than it is now? And that's not counting Joomla or Drupal sites that could switch to c5. So as a business person, I can't understand why c5 does nothing to help people switch to c5 (and shows no interest in ever doing so). To me it's a no brainer, and if I was an investor or part owner of c5, I would have long ago made that a priority and dismissed anyone with c5 who got in the way.

Lastly, the fact that my comments seem to generate so much push back from c5, supports my belief that c5 isn't used to or wanting of feedback from site owners. I've noticed that when developers make comments or suggestions, there's much less push back.

Thanks again! (note: this reply may read more "negative" than I meant it to read)

Scott

Hi Scott

I am not sure you are comparing Apples with Apples, I too am a business owner and not a developer, but do run a team of developers. We work with our customers to provide solutions that meet the customers needs and C5 is a valuable part of our armoury. It sounds to me that you need to find a good development house and talk to them about your individual needs.

I decided that C5 would be our preferred CMS based on the strength of the community the ease of use, and very importantly the level of understanding Franz and his team have for delivering technical solutions to clients.

While C5 does the job of an out of the box website "buildery type thing" that is not its primary function. C5 provides developers with the tools they need to deliver exceptional websites that scale, traditionally software that does this is clunky and hard to use (Drupal) but C5 is changing the game here.

I personally would like to see C5 really attack Drupal in the enterprise space and build a sustainable business model that supports growth in that area (this may already be the case I have no idea).

I think the team are doing a great job and to have come this far in a feircely competitive market is quite exceptional. It would probably be fair to say that some better communtication to non-tech people like your self would help clear up the confusion, however all these things take time. It is actually a testament to the useably of C5 that business owners like your self are looking at C5 as a DIY solution.

Best regards

Bruno

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for your thoughts, but I'm not sure what you mean about not comparing Apples to Apples. If not other CMSes like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, or Squarespace, what CMSes should I be comparing c5 to? I've also never expected to use any CMS w/out some sort of professional help. So I wasn't looking at c5 as a DIY solution and I'm not sure why you thought I was. My posts even mention how much effort I put into finding professional help. Demanding a user-friendly CMS is not the same as expecting it to be totally DIY, anymore than demanding a user-friendly computer is the same as expecting to be able to build or fix your computer.

You didn't say what your company does, but if you employ a team of developers, then you're apparently running some sort of a tech company, or at least have lots of tech help on board and don't have to spend much time searching the 'net for tech help with c5. And you didn't say that you've ever had to go through the process of migrating from another CMS to c5, which is one of my main gripes with c5. They expect (demand) that you somehow figure it out on your own or spend a bunch of time and energy trying to find someone to do it for you (and trusting your site with someone who has probably never migrated another CMS to c5 before).

And c5 isn't that "new." So although I agree that they've done a lot of great things, hence my interest in it, I think they could be a lot more successful than they are given how long they've been around, and how much better c5 appears to be than Wordpress, etc. But the fact that c5's adoption rate is so far below Wordpress and other CMSes, indicates that c5 is in danger of being nothing more than a promising niche player, and possibly even less if they don't soon clarify what and who they want to be (I think you'd have to admit that the marketing of c5 is at best inconsistent, and makes one think it's more designed for end users than it really is).

So my question is, if c5 is so much better than other CMSes, then why after all these years is c5 barely a blip on the radar screen when you compare the number of sites built by c5 to Wordpress, etc? And if c5 is so preferred by developers and designers, then why do possibly 99% or more of web developers and designers stake their businesses on a different CMS then c5? To be clear, I'm not suggesting that c5 should want or expect to overtake Wordpress. But Wordpress may be adding in a day or so, as many sites as c5 has total. How could that be if c5 offers so many advantages to site owners, designers and developers? I've tried both so I know what a nightmare Wordpress can be to use, even with professional help. It comes across like it was designed solely by techies, with little input from non-techies or usability experts.

Don't forget, my impressions about c5 came from c5's marketing and website. So if you decide to reply, first go to concrete5.org and read what c5 says about c5.

Thanks again!

Are there anymore business owners out there with positive comments about c5 or with suggestions of how it could be improved?

Scott

Migration seems more like roadies moving a stage from town to town.
You disassemble and reassemble. That's how one becomes experienced at the task anyway. Push-button migration would always be frustrating for someone who really likes to know what's going on with their website, I think, and the add-ons are all proprietary, etc.
As for market share, of course it takes time when you have to move out something that already occupies so much of the space. But that makes it fun.
e

There are two types of people in the world.
- What can you do for me?
- What can I do for you?
When I see something lacking in Concrete5 I get excited because there is something that I can do to help.

Don't feed the troll guys.

By the way, I just did a Google Trends search for wordpress, joomla, drupal, xoops, and concrete5. Unfortunately, I got the following result:

"concrete5 does not have enough search volume for ranking"

It's obviously not a good sign that even after several years and revisions, c5 doesn't have enough search volume on Google to have a ranking on a Google Trends search for CMSes. As far as Google Trends is concerned, c5 doesn't even exist.

Please excuse my candor, but I think c5 needs to make some immediate and significant changes, or they're risking becoming the Myspace or Friendster of CMSes. Hopefully that won't happen, because c5 got off to a great start and has so much upside.

Wow, you seem truly passionate about this. I did have a few comments based on your posts.

Wordpress does boast an awful high number of sites, however, I think you fail to take into account "inactive" sites as well as those that are free accounts on wordpress.com - This is a completely different model than concrete5 an cannot be compared as such.

If you truly want to compare CMS systems like Wordpress and Joomla, than you MUST concede that concrete5 is rather young in comparison. The other guys have MANY more years in development. You're too quick to judge, in my opinion. How many hours do you have under the belt as an end-user?

In my 10+ years of experience as an end-user and developer, I have yet to find another CMS that is as user friendly (AND developer friendly) as concrete5. All of my clients love working in the system and have no trouble with training. There will never be a "build my site for me" button that gives you a great outcome. Your experience may not be the easiest, but I can assure you that many others have no problems with the direction concrete5 is headed.

While you may not be getting the response for the core team you think you deserve, keep in mind that they are busy working on the thousands of request they get like yours. I like your passion, but your posts seem more on the "complaint" side than "here's what I think could help". Why not just post your thoughts on improvements, leave it and let it be? While you might not get the satisfaction of every one of your wishes granted immediately, you're unable to see what's going on behind the scenes. Give the team a break, they have given us a wonderful product that MANY end-users, clients, developers and designers are extremely happy with.

As an aside, it's coming off like you have hijacked a nice and complimentary thread to gripe about how there is no "Switch my site from Joomla to concrete5 instantly." button.

This button does not exist, for any CMS that I know of. You'll likely get the same response from any of their development communities.

Your thoughts are always appreciated by the community, but your very own original thread in Chit-Chat might be a better forum for you to proclaim them.

I'm not following your logic here. How can you know that the reason C5 isn't as popular as WP/Drupal/Joomla is because of the the problem you're having? I think there are tons of factors involved in what makes a system widely-used (which, by the way, is just one measure of success -- not the ultimate goal of everything piece of software in the world). To claim that C5 not providing a wordpress importer is the reason google says it "does not have enough search volume" seems like quite a leap.

I think your original post raises some good points, but the subsequent responses come across as if you're trying to threaten the core team into building this functionality for you, because if they don't then they'll never amount to anything. This does tend to put people on the defensive so I can understand why you're getting that impression.

-Jordan

Bizstarz:

You're right, Totally Random isn't really a show for you. It's for our developer/designer community so I'm not shocked it rubs you as geeky.

I'm disappointed you didn't find people who wanted to help you from the various job posts you made. I can't imagine why that would be.

I also think that wordpress importer script in github is a valuable idea. I remain concerned that it's going to be impossible to get it perfect, yet perfection would be expected for it to be valuable.

Here's some actual empirical numbers on our growth from a 3rd party you may find interesting:
http://www.waterandstone.com/book/2011-open-source-cms-market-share...

Is there a point to this conversation any more? It seems to be sliding downhill pretty quickly to me.

I agree with LucasAnderson on every point. It seems taking a breather before replying or simply having the foresight that real human beings are giving their time to give as an amazing experience wouldn't do harm. I do hear a slight negative tone (even though that may not be the case.) So please allow me as an end user to give you my sincere point of view. But firstly you may want to check out- http://www.waterandstone.com/book/2011-open-source-cms-market-share...

I have personally (as an end user) tried Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal and whilst they may all have their strong points, none compare (for me) to the ease of use and pleasurable interface that the Concrete5 team have gone to all the trouble to provide us with.

I find Concrete5 to be a breath of fresh air in a murky, polluted and contaminated world of less than perfect CMS's (I'm not saying that Concrete5 is 100% perfect for everyone but 99% on the way to perfection), allowing me to get on with my life because I don't have to spend hours getting something done.
Concrete5 leads itself with an air of grace in world of big but messy boys. I am so grateful to the Concrete5 team for their kindness, generosity and sheer exuberance which which they run their company. I truly cannot speak highly enough of them or their work and utmost professionalism, offering the world a higher level of customer service that today seems lost on others in the race to profitability. I am sure that in the future Concrete5 will become a big player and set some trends for the rest to follow. After all, Apple didn't become a success overnight.

The heart warming approach with which the community carries itself is enough to keep me and many others here. Unlike other CMS's communities (mentioning no names- 'the big three'); Concrete5's community is just about the nicest, kindest, most patient and thoughtful bunch of developers in the world.
The fact that this community takes the time to answer the simplest question to the most time consuming, complex coding disasters is a testament to the core teams approach to the community in the first place. Kindness begets kindness and we could all do with a bit more of that in this day and age.

Comparing a Mercedes S-Class or a Macbook Pro to a Kia or budget notebook is simply unfair. Yes, they do the same job, but it's all about how you feel when you're using them. It's about the effort and ingenuity that goes into producing them. It's about the fact that doing things right isn't the same as doing them big or fast. It's about quality!

I agree that Concrete5 has a way to go but thats not for anything other than the fact that others had a huge head start. Had Concrete5 started at the same time as the others, I have no doubt that they would be light years ahead today.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Concrete5 team for all the wonderful work they do. I would like to thank the community for all their help and patience. Your kindness still astounds me in this cynical world we live in. May God bless you all and may Karma shine down upon you and I wish you all a wonderful and prosperous 2012.

I am and end user. I am Concrete5.

What Google Trensd are you using...? Check my photo attached.

And why are 60% using Explorer and 90% buy PC if Chrome and Mac are better?

Best regards
Micke

It was confusing to me, where my add-ons were. I bought a five-pack of Social Share from SkyBlueSofa while logged into C5.org.
The next day when I was in one of my sites (sineofthetime.com), it took me a while to figure out how to get to one of those add-ons.... Dashboard>AddFunctionality>ProjectPage (very bottom of page)>Add Item to this Project.
Don't know if other DIYs would find that obscure, too.
e

Hi ea1958, it seems that c5 may be blocking my postings, but in case not, I wanted to say that I too had a similar problem when I purchased a theme from the c5 community. Like you I eventually figured it out, but I also found it to be a rather confusing situation.

Scott

Yeah, it's a legitimate observation.
But I should also say that I am not using C5.5 yet. I'm still in C5.4.2.2
I am waiting for Softaculous to incorporate it, and then hopefully upgrade through my cPanel within Arvixe.com hosting account.
Saludos,
e

We did change that a bit in 5.5

A simple search under how-tos for 'license' gave me this. http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/how-tos/designers/assign-a-l...

It was the first hit:
http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/how-tos/?submit_search=1&... :)

Had to be logical didn't you?
I'm kidding. C5 is starting to fall into place for me, and I hope that 5.5 will bring some more aspects of it to me that I would otherwise have to 'study' in order for me to get to them.
T'was an easy look-up, but the days become so full of them.
e

I noticed that other CMSes like e107 have formalized systems for making and tracking feature requests. Does c5 have a formalized system for submitting and tracking feature requests, particularly from end users?

Scott

Is this what you mean?http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/block_requests/...

We had one of those.
We got rid of it because it filled up with nonsense from people who simply
hadn't fully explored what was already in front of them. It was a real
drain on our resources to manage it, and our bug tracker works much better.

best wishes

Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz

Hi Franz, I sure hope you didn't mean to, but your responses come off as pretty dismissive of user feedback. If user feedback was valued by the c5 team, then you would just figure out a better system. You wouldn't totally bail on getting feature requests from c5's most important audience. With all of c5's technological prowess, I'm sure you could figure out a good system for feature requests and/or support tickets.

With all due respect, are there any non-techies on the c5 team? Because it sure seems like c5 is run by a bunch of techies who are letting some success go to their heads and who feel superior to c5's "dimwitted" end users. It unfortunately seems that the c5 team considers end users as mere pests who's ideas are "nonsense" and who are a "drain on your resources."

(I, and surely many others, can't believe those words actually came from the CEO of c5.)

Let's not overlook that one of the main reasons c5 looks so promising is largely because most CMSes are so horribly designed and nonuser friendly. If you've ever surveyed your users to see why they chose c5, I bet the lion's share said it was because they were so unhappy with the other CMSes. For a lot of people, c5 probably wins by default because it's such a lesser of evils.

By the way, today a pretty well-respected CMS blogger sent me the below note about c5. He sent it after I asked why he and others weren't covering a release as significant as v5.5. His response was:

"The big problem is they don't do anything to market it. Heck I didn't even know it was out or coming out until late. No marketing or promotion means no progress."

Why is the c5 team so horrible at marketing a CMS that so many people would prefer over the Big 3? I appreciate the fact that c5 probably doesn't have millions in VC money to throw around, but can't c5 at least create some excitement about c5 outside the c5 community by sending out periodic email updates about c5 to CMS bloggers and reporters?

Thanks for "listening."

Happy new year!

Scott

How do you unsubscribe from a thread?

Agreed. I'm starting to feel like this is just one big troll now. Nothing constructive to add at all. If you hate it that much, just leave.

Looks like some of you haven't read Franz's "A letter to Site Owners." See link below.

That letter assures business owners that c5 totally understands and values them (that c5 gets them at a "deeper level," whatever that is). But in practice, c5 sees business owners as a nuisance and doesn't even want to hear their concerns or suggestions (nor do apparently some c5 developers and designers). Franz even said he considers user feature requests as "nonsense" and a "drain" on c5's resources. If the CEO of c5 would post something so anti-user online, one can only wonder what the c5 team says about c5's end users offline (I've heard it's worse).

When someone who isn't drinking the c5 kool-aid speaks out, the c5 fanboys are all aghast. But for c5's end users, this isn't personal, it's business. In fact, it's their business. Is it really too much to expect what Franz promised us in "A letter to Site Owners"? Are you really okay with the fact that most c5 add-ons aren't compatible with v5.5 - and won't be for who knows how long? That's not open source software, it's more like open sores software.

If more c5 developers treated c5 as a business tool instead of a religion or political party, then this forum would be more productive, and maybe c5 could finally begin to chip away at the Big 3's massive lead and dominance. If you know anything about CMSes, you know that their developers and designers tend to be myopic and fanatical about whatever CMS they fell in love with. And they won't tolerate any criticisms, no matter how constructive or on point they are. I think that's a big mistake.

Scott

www.www.concrete5.org/about/our_philosophy/a-letter-to-site-owners/...

I have no idea what you are trying to achieve with your criticism and negativity. This thread was for thanking people. You turned it into something negative.

Some of your comments are so off the mark it's not funny. The reason I use C5 is not just because it is pretty decent to develop with, but because it's the only system I've found that I'm comfortable handing over to clients. My clients ACTUALLY edit their sites themselves and feed back how they actually like using it.

This forum is for support, guidance and positive discussion about making a really great system even better and helping people out with their learning and problems. I've personally enjoyed interacting on these forums and some of the greatest strengths of concrete5 are its community and its leadership. It's not kool-aid, it's just good.

You are attacking a group of people that owe you nothing. You're also attaching Franz, who from my impression acts professionally, is open and honest about his business intentions and is generally a top bloke. Not cool.

After the exciting release of 5.5 and some really good interactions on the forum lately for me, it's such a bummer to read your comments. Sometimes it's not solely about marketing and 'business'. It really helps to be positive and passionate about something to allow you to be creative and work through challenges. I know it helps me. I remember being genuinely excited as a programmer when I discovered how awesome jQuery was, same with CakePHP. I have the same enthusiasm about concrete5.

So if you have nothing positive to add to this community, please stop posting.

Everyone else, continue being awesome.

/end rant

Upgrade to C5.5 and only use add-ons from coders who are still in the C5 game (i.e. their stuff is 5.5 compatible). This refresh works for me (or it will, I believe, once I get it installed).
I was on the Dwolla site recently and the owner's letter said thanks for telling us (exactly) WHERE WE SUCK!, because it really amounts to millions of dollars worth of free consultation.
Don't tell them that they suck (we are them and so can only tell on ourselves). Tell them where, now in 5.5, that they suck.
The CAPTCHA sucks! as I recently had to try three times to send skyluesofa.com a message through his website webform module, because the CAPTCHA truly sucked!
e
PS-but then again, I am still in C5.4:-)

Be careful, if you dare criticize c5, you'll be branded a troll and won't get anymore badges. :)

Scott

Scott,

I have responded to your posts politely and thoughtfully time after time. I have been transparent and direct about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we've reached the decisions we have. You seem to ignore reality, and instead come back with ideas that amount to nothing more than opinions.

This whole exciting adventure started when you approached us about the lack of a wordpress import script that would save you time. I explained that such a script did exist, but it didn't work perfectly. When someone had used add-ons for wordpress, it wasn't going to behave, and comments/images/links were still punky, so I wasn't really able to promote it yet. I was also dubious that a script could ever be written that would work perfectly, and so I have concerns of it as a real marketing tactic as you suggest. That view is a "user" focused opinion, not a developer one. You ask half the developers in this forum if that script works and they'll tell you yes. It's only because I do actually care about end business owners experience that I say "yeah not so much". Regardless, you don't engage in any of the details around this discussion, rather you simply keep pointing out that without it we're screwed. Well you can't import a wordpress site into drupal or joomla perfectly either, so nuts to your argument.

You post here that we're in danger of dying a death like myspace because you did a google trends search and didn't like what you found. I posted a link to a considerably more thorough market report that came out a month ago and says we're the fastest growing developer community out there. It points out that for common search terms around open source CMS we have 10 pages in the top 20 on google. It points out that our weekly downloads are up 517%. (no that's not a typo, five hundred and seventeen percent) The closest competitor we have on that metric is modx at 34.4% and wordpress is actually down 34.4%. Did you come back with a "wow I never read that report! My apologies, clearly you must be doing SOMETHING right. Now what about X or Y?".. No it's "you guys drink your koolaid and hate your customers." That hardly makes me want to put a lot of energy into the discussion, ya know?

You ask why I don't have a feature request section. I told you it was because it filled up with poorly constructed ideas and what amounted to training. That's me saying "Hey, we did that - it didn't work for us." That's not me saying "I hate customers and am a geek." Of course I'm interested in what people think that use our software. Of course I'm interested in how we could improve things. Of course I care that concrete5 is easy for people to use. To take me saying "a feature requests section doesn't work well for us" and turn it into "Franz hates his customers" is very very frustrating to me. Not because I particularly think I'm going to win you over, but simply because this thread exists in a place where others will see it - and what you're implying is wildly untrue.

I'm trying very hard not to be offensive here (in return, because you're treating me like sh!t) but seriously?
"Are you really okay with the fact that most c5 add-ons aren't compatible with 5.5"
... duh.. uh, no? WTF would you have me do about that? Stop time and update them all myself? That's "open sores" to you" Huh? Really? We released 5.5 in the nature we have so add-on developers could get their stuff updated. Once a decent percentage have, we'll release 5.5.1 and actually promote it as an upgrade people should perform. An awful lot of time and energy has gone into making the infrastructure to enable automatic downloads and upgrades be version specific so we can pull this off. Do you recognize that there's a plan there which is very much geared towards the site owner's needs? Nope. To you its "Haha! Open Sores - why didn't they update 500 add-ons in their free time?"

As best I can tell this conversation boils down to several things you'd like.
1) You'd like a wordpress importer, clearly.
2) You'd like a drag and drop interface so your could arrange elements on a page however you'd like - ala weebly or homestead.

Those are interesting ideas, but they're not really what we do. Our vision has always been that concrete5 is a building material to ease the relationship BETWEEN developers and site owners. Think of building a home. Sure, we can all swing a hammer a bit. Does that mean we're qualified to build our own home from the ground up? Most likely not. You need a professional contractor to get that house built. If they follow standards and use sane building materials you should then be able to hire any other contractor to make changes later. If you're willing to get a little dirty, you should be able to swap out a light plate or a sink on your own. That's our vision for concrete5. A future where business owners won't be married to the shop that built them that site out of drupal or wordpress forever because it's so hacked together no one else can touch it. A future where site developers won't have to tell new customers their old site is simply trash because it's going to take them longer to figure out what is going on in there than to simply build something new. A future where its easy for BOTH sides of the Developer/Owner equation.

What I'm not interested in is a future without the developer side of the equation. That seems to be your vision. Folks like weebly and homestead seem to be into that idea as well. Squarespace to a degree, but I think they view the designer as the key role and are trying to get away with CSS being enough.. Regardless. It's just a different goal.

It's not because I'm a developer geek that I have this vision. It's because from my experience I believe it's what is most likely to actually work in the ecosystem of reality. See I'm not actually a geek, I'm a business owner. Sure I learned my first computer language at 6, but I haven't written a line of code in at least 5 years. I went to college for photography and philosophy. I play music. I deeply resent the implication that I wear a pocket protector and tape on my glasses and the only reason concrete5 is as easy to use as it is and so much more elegant of an experience than most other CMSs is some accident. It's not. I did that. It was my own experiences of spending 5 hour sessions training clients on how to use Mambo that got me thinking of a better way. It was my own projects with clients who had no technical expertise, would be handing the site off to some new front desk intern in 6 months who would get no training at all, that led me to architect the basics of in-context editing and get it working back in 2003 with Andrew. Do I think I'm awesomely perfect and better than my customer? No. Do I have to sit here with a smile on my face and accept your personal opinions as fact - nope.

Everything I say on our letter to site owners is absolutely true. No where on that page do I say "you should be able to build any type of site you want without speaking to a developer." I also don't say "whatever BizStarzz wants is what he'll get!" I say it should be easy to change content, it should be easy to change contractors, you have a right to support. You get all of these and more with concrete5.

Like others have said in this thread, I do appreciate your energy and I recognize it's not always easy to speak your mind in the face of people who don't want to "listen" (as you say). I'm afraid after putting considerable time into reading and responding, my take is you're not really having a conversation with me. You're just shouting about failings you perceive to exist as they enter your mind. Some of them may be true, most of them aren't, but to be honest it's not hard to find people with complaints and ideas. A VC friend of mine once told me "Ideas are cheap, it's execution that's hard." Since you seem to have zero interest in the actual details involved with anything we're discussing, I'm afraid the discussion is now over. I'm putting a lot into it and not getting anything out.

Good luck to you sir, the internet is full of fun and exciting things to think about.

Yeah - what a huge D-bag. I'll remember to not read another post from this troll again.

Open note from c5's unofficial "troll":

I'm actually a huge small biz advocate (i.e. I organized a successful small business conference on Capitol Hill a few years ago that was co-sponsored by a high-ranking member of Congress). In fact - and this is not an ad for my services - my day job is providing public relations services for innovative small businesses. But I, like a lot of small biz owners and advocates, am tired of businesses that deceptively market themselves as being very small biz friendly and/or their technology as being a cinch to implement and maintain.

Though a small biz advocate, it's very flawed how CMS providers and users of all sizes so rely upon tiny enterprises for their add-ons and themes. While such a system encourages a lot of creativity, it's problematic and unreliable at best. For example, C5 pushed out v5.5 even though they knew that MOST c5 add-ons weren't even close to being ready and won't be for awhile. As a result, most c5 sites shouldn't risk upgrading to 5.5, c5 add-on developers are frustrated with the timing of v5.5, and c5 end-users are left wondering about how c5 is being run.

Did you read today's announcement about the release of 5.5 (5.5 is out!)? It trumpets the release of 5.5 while at the same time having to warn that, "There's a lot of add-ons that haven't been updated to support it yet, so you should be thoughtful about upgrading a live site today…" So why the heck did c5 release it? As one c5 developer said, "Ummm... at a loss of words, who says something like that in a 'press release'"?

Unlike a lot of people on c5 forums, I'm not a developer trying to win a c5 popularity contest or badges or stickers. I also don't think small biz owners care how many c5 badges or stickers their web developer has. They just want a CMS and site that's user-friendly and reliable. Unfortunately, it's obvious that c5 users can expect a future of updates that are released so out of sync with their add-ons that their add-ons will be rendered temporarily or even permanently incompatible (c5 forums are littered with people having to drop everything to try and get their c5 add-ons and sites working again after upgrading to 5.5).

It's a farce to call the c5 community friendly when it gangs up on someone who dare points out c5's flaws and pushes for solutions. The c5 community comes off as a bunch of developers lacking the confidence, temperament or interest in dealing c5's problems or customer issues. C5 developers seem to be afraid to speak the truth and more concerned with being on c5's good side and getting more badges, than they to improving c5's success and user experience (i.e. nobody who criticized my posts seems interested in hearing what improvements biz owners want from c5; they're only concerned with silencing someone who's pushing for improvements biz owners need and want).

These reactions from C5's team and developers are scarily similar to the ones I've heard ad nauseam from Wordpress fanatics the last year or so. The main difference being that Wordpress fanatics at least have the numbers to back up their arrogance (disclaimer: I am no fan of Wordpress).

Let's try this, before criticizing my criticisms, how about making this thread useful and instead post what features and problems you think c5 has and should make a priority? I know that isn't as fun or easy as taking shots at someone from the safety of a keyboard, but it's the stuff c5 developers should be spending their limited time and energy on.

Happy new year

Scott, c5's unofficial troll

Thanks for not addressing anything I took an hour to write this morning. That helps validate my concerns. I don't know who ever said you weren't a small business advocate, I certainly didn't.

In reality, there was no press release for 5.5 - for exactly the reasons you've so brilliantly pointed out. It takes time for developers to update their add-ons, and if we don't release a version, they never will. So we released 5.5.0, we called it the latest release instead of the stable one, and we didn't add it to any of our update scripts, nor did we tell the 1-click installers to use it yet. We quietly stuck it on our download page, announced it in our developer focused show, and posted to it in our blog. Nothing went out on the wire at all, because - wait for it.... we're not utter morons who hate anyone who isn't a geek.. Shockingly, there actually is a plan in place that is consumer focused.

I believe what you're referring to is the bulk email I sent this am, where I actually said:
"
...We completely updated the inteface and it looks awesome. There's a lot of add-ons that haven't been updated to support it yet, so you should be thoughtful about upgrading a live site today, but we're catching up on that and expect 5.5.1 to be out early in the new year with us urging you to upgrade.
"

That seems pretty thoughtful to me. I have no idea who you're quoting. Since there actually is no perfect answer to the "how do you launch an interface redesign of an existing community project" - I'm gonna stick with the theory that I'm actually doing this, you haven't ever done anything similar, and while you may have a friend in congress - I don't see how that applies. If there's a thing I could do that I didn't, that's interesting. If this amounts to "I see things I don't like" - cool story bro.

Scott, clearly what we're doing isn't for you. The people who are "ganging up" on you actually make a living from serving small businesses. My sense is they find your brazen attitude annoying and your complete disregard of the facts tedious. I'm just spitballing here, but I would imagine when someone takes the time to explain the details on something and the response is to completely ignore that effort at communication and find a new gripe to be snarky about, it might be hard to muster an earnest interest in what you might say next.

I can tell you thousands of people find what were doing to be fantastically helpful and easy to use. I'm disappointed to hear you're not one of em, but I'm done worrying about it. To anyone else who is reading this (bless your heart) I'm unsubscribing. I'm throwing a lot of energy into this and getting nothing but BS out of it. If you actually do have a feature that's missing, do the sane thing and bring it up in another thread where it makes sense in the forums. People will talk about it, and if its a good idea, it'll happen - just as it always has.

<mumbles something to himself>

Happy new year. Good bye and good luck to you. If concrete5 serves your needs at some point, I'm happy to have given you the benefits of my thinking and work for free.

yeah, you are being carried along in an adrenalin stream, now, it seems.... but seems is the most that any of us can know
rock it if that is what the Universe whispers to you
hell yeah!

Because Franz unsubscribed here, I just have to answer you although you don't seem to be reading what people tell you. Maybe I put it a little clearer and in shorter form in response to your arguments? Would you care reading even that?

>> most c5 sites shouldn't risk upgrading to 5.5
Yeah, that's totally right like Franz said already 5 times + said it in the blog announcement of 5.5 release.

>> So why the heck did c5 release it?
As Franz already said few times, so that more developers get their add-ons updated out there so that they can release 5.5.1 and start pushing it to the end-users.

>> I'm not a developer trying to win a c5 popularity contest or badges or stickers
I'm a developers and small biz-owner at the same time. I'm not trying to win c5 popularity contest (and I doubt anyone here tries). I just believe it's the best solution to MY customers. I don't care if there are webshops out there that use Drupal or Joomla, that's their choice. I (myself) have developed with Joomla and WordPress before finding c5 and still do some smaller things with WordPress. I've also used Drupal and done some minor tweaks for Drupal sites.

>> future of updates that are released so out of sync with their add-ons
Again, FRANZ ALREADY SAID (if you would've read it) that c5 marketplace has a VERSION CONTROLLING system, unlike any of the "big 3" has in their download place. This means that e.g. our old add-ons work perfectly with 5.5 and ALSO with 5.4 or older (depending on the add-on). We can even decide that the add-on is not served to new versions if we want to. So, we can map versions of add-ons to versions of c5, therefore not being out-of-sync.

>> It's a farce to call the c5 community friendly when it gangs up on someone who dare points out c5's flaws and pushes for solutions
Well usually when you treat someone (or group of people) like you seem to be doing, you wouldn't expect anything much more out of it, would you? What solutions have you pointed out? WordPress importer? Yeah, that's already out there, go and get it, although Franz wouldn't _RECOMMEND_ that to you. Saying "importer to other CMSs will make c5 a huge success" is quite a strong OPINION, nothing else. To me it just sounds like you saying back in the end of the '90s "purchasing dog food over the internet will be a HUGE success". Also, as a developer I know anyone cannot make a perfect importer without spending months or even years of time to do that, there's so many things to consider.

>> The c5 community comes off as a bunch of developers lacking the confidence, temperament or interest in dealing c5's problems or customer issues.
Again, quite strong argument. I have dealt with c5 problems, in previous releases by fixing some of the core bugs for our customers. The great thing about c5 is that you can just customize it for any purpose and even fix problems in it VERY EASILY if you experience some. Yes, fixing them is for developers but get a developer and start the job, that's how to do it!

>> C5 developers seem to be afraid to speak the truth and more concerned with being on c5's good side and getting more badges
Yeah, or just ignoring your arrogant opinions. E.g. when c5.5 was in beta, the discussion on these forums led to c5.5 changing the toolbar buttons to work on mouse hover instead of clicking. IMO it's about speaking the truth and making a WELL FORMED ARGUMENT so that there would be further discussion on the topic. And what did that well-formed discussion lead to? Well, just a MAJOR functionality change in the c5.5 core, not much.

And care about more badges? Why o' why? I just checked the badges page and it seems like our account is missing 5 of the badges that could be there. Do I care about it? NO!



Hopefully you will even read this one, although ignoring 99% of the text written previously to you!

In my opinion it is also showing your feeling of being superior that you don't even seem to be reading what people keep telling you and just pointing out "the flaws" that in reality are not flaws but already thought out somehow (as I pointed out in this message to most of your points).

Hi Mainio, my apologies. You're totally right. I'm just an ignorant and naive non-coder with unreasonable expectations.

•C5 is the world's first perfect software
•You should launch a major CMS revision before any add-ons and themes can be updated while it's still in beta
•C5 grew a lot percentage wise because it's perfect, not because it had a smallish user base
•C5 does have staff dedicated to end user issues
•It is good business for c5 not to do anything to help people switch to c5 (wasn't Steve Jobs a fool for helping millions of people switch to Macs?!)
•It is a major waste of c5's resources to provide a formal way for users to submit feature requests and support tickets
•Developers are generally awesome at customer service and don't see problems from a developer's point of view
•It's good that even after being on the market several years, the media and general public aren't paying much attention to c5
•It's not concerning that none of the numerous web designers I told about c5 over the last year or so would switch to c5 from Wordpress, etc.
•It makes sense that c5 tells prospective new users to figure out on their own how to switch to c5, and the majority of c5 designers/developers have never migrated a single CMS to c5, and it's not something they really want to do because it's a pain and c5 does nothing to help
•You're totally happy with c5 and nothing I've said has any merit

However, it's obvious that my comments generated so much blow-back because c5ers agree with much of what I said, and their livelihoods are so dependent on c5 that they're afraid of what might happen if they dare speak out or more people hear about c5's problems and missteps. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

I'm bummed and disappointed by my experience with c5. I came in thinking that I had discovered the holy grail of CMSes. I was like "screw you Wordpress!" Unfortunately, I ended up wasting countless hours trying to use c5, getting treated dismissively by c5's CEO, and getting blasted by c5ers who are so fanatical about c5 that it's like insulting their mothers when you point out any of c5's faults.

Hopefully for c5 and its users, the c5 team will realize before it's too late that you can't build a successful tech company with only tech people, no matter how good their technology is. Just like a talented chef can't build a successful restaurant chain with an all chef team.

c5 troll

Thanks for the answer, just noticing where you got that "troll" name.

- Where did I say C5 is perfect?
- Didn't I just point out that I've needed to solve even core-related bugs?
- My livelihood does not count on C5, don't worry about that! I think I even stated that I'm familiar and comfortable developing under the other "big 3s". I just prefer using c5. And find no problems developing even under a perfectly new solution, I run basically a consultation business.
- Yeah, easy switching to c5 would be nice, but as pointed out several times, not that easy to EXECUTE as it is as an idea.
- Yes, no company can simply become success with only tech people. I don't see anyone pointing out anything different?


And then finally I find these points of yours are contradictory:
•It's good that even after being on the market several years, the media and general public aren't paying much attention to c5
•C5 grew a lot percentage wise because it's perfect, not because it had a smallish user base


Well for the second one, can't be sure but we'll see what the next year's report will tell us.

I keep on using c5, I don't know why you try to convince me that I should do something to help c5 grow? I'm already doing it by providing it to my clients!

ha ha, frz said *the ecosystem of reality*
rotflmao, ha ha
i closed the deadbolt on my drawbridge, ha ha
gulp
ha ha
mommy
(wimper)

I think Concrete5 core developer better not doing the bizstarz ideas about the word press importer.

But let other developer do this

@bizstarz, how about trying to hire developer to do this and maybe sell the add on later ?

@utomo

Totally agree,let the "core" team focus on the "core". That is what is great about C5. To me C5 is a developers dream compared to the others.

Thanks team for the 5.5.1 follow up! It is looking great.

Oh lord please not this thread again (and on this of all days)...

@utomo, I believe @bizstarz did look for a developer but could not find one. This led to some frustration that the amount of available C5 developers is low compared to other systems, and he then hypothesized that the reason there are so few developers compared to wordpress is because it is "not supportive of end-users" (no wordpress importer, new dashboard, etc.). Some agree, some disagree. The circle of life continues...