First off, let me say welcome! :) It's nice to hear about people's initial experiences, since many of us have been using concrete5 for a long time.

I can sympathize with some irritation toward TinyMCE (although in their defense, that project has to be very, very challenging.) We've just upgraded our TinyMCE installation for the first time in a few versions, so there are some growing pains, but on the whole I think the editor is more stable/less buggy than it's been in previous versions.

I am confused about your particular gripe with TinyMCE, since it sounds like you're upset that our editor doesn't handle file manipulation or linking. It does handle those things. You can add files and links to pages or files using the tiny toolbar above the tinymce instance, which hooks directly into concrete5's sitemap and file manager.

Finally, regarding must-have extensions: I, like you, will typically install a third party semantic editor like markdown or textile. That's just me, though. We don't come with a gallery installed, and frequently I find myself needing one, so I go to the marketplace for either our core team's paid gallery add-on or one of the free ones. Many have found utility in the area splitter block, to the point where in concrete 5.4 we've included functionality similar to it.

Beyond that, we haven't had as many addons submitted that are used to change the editing experience of concrete5. It seems to me that a lot of add-ons for drupal and joomla are about changing preferences or some part of the editing experience (or other lower level things, like permissions) and we just don't have as many add-ons that do that (nor, I would argue, the need to do that, at least as much.) So I'm not sure which other add-ons are "indispensable."

Anyone else have any thoughts? And again, welcome!

I would agree with Andrew on almost all points, including welcoming you to the community.

I for one started using Joomla because of client requests. I found the whole experiance of Joomla (and Drupal later) a big challenge since they are really more for developers or "TECH SAVVY" site owners. Way to many add-ons for those platforms are un-tested and buggy to say the least.

As for what I add to each site for my convenience, absolutely nothing. Especially with the new version 5.4. The only things I plan on adding right away (after the client has paid for them) is the Blog Package and some sort of gallery. Otherwise nothing.

The default themes are a great place to get started and in fact, I have a set of files I have standing by for theme that I will use to customize. Otherwise, nothing.

Please tell us more of your initial feelings of Concrete as some of us have dived in and have been using it for over a year now.

Welcome and don't forget the IRC channel(s) on freenode.net (chat.freenode.net is the server and channels are concrete5 and concrete5-social). So come on and join the fun. I for one am always learning and your comments I am sure will be insightful.

Bill

I agree, the majority of add-ons are related to your content, so its really going to depend on what your client needs, and what is more practical to purchase than develop on your own. I didn't used to be as comfortable with purchasing add-ons as I am now, but I realized that it works well both for myself and my clients. For much less than it would cost to pay me to build everything myself, we can add tried-and-true elements to our sites, and if there's a problem, we have someone else to work on that while we move forward with our original timeline.

Here are some of the add-ons I've ended up using:

- Flash Video
- eCommerce
- IFrame
- Media Library
- Gallery
- Expandable Content
- Area Splitter
- Flash Embed
- Testimonials
- Tweetcrete
- Mailing List
- Stickies

Of course, there are many other add-ons, and these are just some of the ones which made sense for the projects I've done so far.

I'd also like to mention that one of the things which drew me to Concrete initially was how easy it was to create themes. You can pretty much take an existing HTML site and turn it into a theme by putting it in the right directory and changing index.html to default.php. That's a far-cry from the experience I used to have getting themes to work in DotNetNuke. There's a snippet for the header items, a snippet for the footer, and a snippet whereever you want to drop blocks, and a separate PHP file for each page type you want to create. That's about it. The "Plain Yogurt" theme that comes with Concrete is a good place to start

I would for sure add the stats addon (by tony) it is something you can't go with out especially if your not into 3rd party stats.

Also the adserver addon is quite good. Its nice to have rotating specials on your site.

Cheers,

Thomas

Thank you everyone for your kind replies.
I am sorry I did not devote enough time to start with in exploring the features of TinyMCE. I did notuice the extra toolbar but since I haven't used MCE on Joomla or anywhere else for quite some time (and it was just one feature in a brand new (to me) CMS I jumped away as soon as I saw the insert image interface and noticed it did not let me navigate the file structure.
I'll make sure to take a better look as soon as possible.

In regard to C5 Vs. Joomla, Drupal, etc. I don't think a side by side comparison is what I should do at the moment. I'd rather learn C5 first and develop a couple of test sites along the lines that a regular, middle of the road client site would need.

I have to say again that I know Joomla very well. I am what you'd call a "Guru" in Joomla and therefore the difficulties that most developers and clients may have with it are not a concern. I have developer a system where I can have any client ready to go entering content with about an hour worth of training at worse.

It all depends on what tools you install for the client and how you organize the site. Joomla to me is more of a web Operating system that a CMS per se. What makes it strong is not so much the out-of-the-box features but the very deep extension directory and the very active community.

I have to say that I see in C5 a very similar type of community. Not as large, to be sure, but very friendly and attentive. I think that, and the third party extensions available, are what makes a good CMS. Not the built in features which in most cases you would want to be more powerful or different anyhow.

In fact, thank you for the list of extensions that you provided. I'll make sure to check them out.

When I develop in Joomla the extensions I choose for a client are key to the success of the project. But at the same time there are some that I install on every built.

For instance, in Jooomla the first thing I do is to install the JCE text editor and relative commercial plugins.
Another must have extension is called "re-replacer". A very advanced string replacement component that goes far beyond simply replacing text.

I am sure that the same is true for C5, where there are some extensions that simply enhance the experience and facilitate certain tasks.

On another note, I strongly believe that the project is what drives the use of a certain CMS Vs. another. But here are also some consideration that apply to them all.

For instance, one of the reasons I like to work with Joomla is because of its popularity. With Joomla (or Wordpress, Drupal, etc.) no matter what may happen to me or our relationship, the client would be able to find another developer at the drop of a hat and that developer would have a pretty good chance to understand what I did even without copious notes on my part (and I do use copious notes especially in my CSS).

C5 also gives me the impression of a good popular base and that's very important to me and to my clients.

I also don't mind paying for extensions, as long as there is value there and the license is not overly restrictive. I usually try not to purchase extensions requiring Ioncube or that are too tied in to the domain name (unless there is a "staging" type license as well). I do much of my development on a localhost so that's important.

One thing I wanted to point out is that whenever I hear criticism of my chosen platforms, I find that 8 times out of10 they are unjustified and/or they stem from the critic's unfamiliarity with the platform.
To be sure, Joomla, WP and Drupal all have some serious limitations.
With Joomla is the user groups (hopefully a thing of the past in the new release), in Drupal and WP is the badly managed template and extensions repositories (I ndever seem to have the right version of a given extension or template for what I need). But other than that, much of the criticism I read about is often unfounded or easily remedied.

Sure, some Joomla extensions are buggy or conflict with other extensions. But that's more the nature of Open Source development than anything else. So many browsers, OS, JS Libraries. Often a poor developer needs to create something for a client, tests it with what he or she is using at that time but doesn't have the resources to be able to test the extension in all possible environments.
Most of the problems I find in that area are usually related to Jquery or Mootools disliking each other or going crazy because of some other custom script on the site.

C5 apparently doesn't have this problem, which would be great, but I'll believe it when I see it :)

All in all, as I said in my original post, I am very impressed. But I need to take C5 through rigorous testing before I an pronounce it fit for professional work.
Actually, I should say that I need to be more proficient with it before I can propose it an an option to a client. It's not C5, it's mostly me.


Anyway, thank you again for your warm welcome and I am sure you'll see me again around here. take care

We've actually made the promise that anything which shows up in our marketplace (particularly the paid stuff) will work with EVERYTHING else in the marketplace. It's a tall order but so far we're doing pretty well creating processes that ensure it.

You'll find that we run things a little differently than many open source projects. One of the advantages I think we have is we were a commercial CMS for 5 years before going open source so a lot of the subjective decisions about architecture were already pretty firmed up through painful trial and error on someone else's dime before we gave the thing away. Given the amount of energy that goes into managing an open source project even this size, I frankly have no idea how things like Drupal or Joomla make any decisions at all. We're really eager to have all the help we can, and get everyone's idea on the table. That does not mean however we're going to include everyones idea just to make 'em feel better. Less is more and if you want to maintain an experience that IS friendly for clients, one has to protect that simplicity at all costs.

You'll also see more and more focus from us on this site. We see CMS as really the promise behind a relationship. Its the marriage of a site owner and a site developer in a way that both of their needs are met. That's our job, not just having some software. So if you "connect to the community" from your client install you'll see we make a project page for you, and you should expect to see the functionality there grow this year.. more and more odesk type stuff. etc.

any rate - great to have ya - be sure to tell your friends. ;)