Learning and Editing C5.
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Hey all, I wanted to post comments regarding our experience with C5 V8.10.
First of all, this is one "Awesomely Brilliant CMS" - period.
Because of it's flexibility and feature rich environment, one "MUST" be patient, read as many posts and documents as possible.
You won't achieve any satisfactory level of success unless you do.
Now our short story:
Our Immediate Goal:
-->> Convert a 1.5 year old Umbroco Site to C5. Point of comparison: Umbroco build and rollout was "4.5 months".... And we know Umbroco very well.
-->> Criteria for doing this was: Handoff, Client Participation in on going content management, Ease of end user "Use" and more.
In order to the achieve the above, we started with C5 about 5 weeks ago, and here are the general steps we followed:
1) Installed a Full Site,
2) Played with Elemental and Clonemental (smart move here...),
3) Meticulously documented each Page Template, Type, Attributes - et al,
4) We reviewed all code that was relevant to us leaning C5 in order to achieve our immediate goal,
5) Added, Deleted and Edited Content, Pages, Types etc. Even created our own "Custom page template",
6) Cloned the "default.css" and created our own Preset - tested, revised, tested etc...
7) At this point we had a very solid comfort zone, so decided to create a "Dummy Block",
8) We cloned "external_form" and changed the namespace, seemed pretty straight forward,
-->> OH OH... had one error that kept hounding us when trying to activate the block. Didn't matter what we read or did, same error over and over,
-->> The problem turned out to be in the namespace "namespace Concrete\Blocks\OurBlock;" - ignore the quotes,
-->> See the ERROR??? we used the actual folder name "BLOCKS" instead of "block"... (ignore the case - it's for visual purposes),
-->> Why this is so is beyond us, it makes no sense. Folder - "BLOCKS", but namespace has no "S"...
8) Moving on; we fixed that and were happy to see that our block worked. Very basic block -->> Name, Phone and Email - simple,
9) At this point we began "morphing" the Umbraco site,
10) Now, we really tried to "break C5" and just couldn't. Found some quirky things along the way, but all worked well.
Now we are roughly 2 weeks after all our testing and crunching.
We're all but ready for a handoff and the client is "elated"...
***********
Two weeks of "Real Human Time" to migrate a completely different CMS - that is just freaking impressive.
***********
We believe it all starts with being methodical, trusting in the product and being diligent.
At the outset, it's painful but the end result will justify the time.
That being said, here are a few of our negatives:
1) The documentation is extremely poor with respect to "being current" - I mean "really poor",
-->> This is likely due to the update and enhancement rollouts. Persevere and things will move along,
2) There does not seem to be any "easy way" to use the "Design Editor" to change the Font Style and Attributes for the "Content Block",
--.. We wound up using Custom CSS under "Advanced", seems to work but not very elegant,
3) Almost all the docs we reviewed tout "Almost Everything can be customized through the Editors" - I paraphrase, but it's not necessarily accurate in all cases,
4) Using the interface is a little quirky at times;
-->> Clicking on the Edit Site Pencil, then click on the Composer Gear, displays a "Transparent/Ghosted" Edit canvas,
-->> Not a big deal given all the capabilities, but needs a little "TLC",
5) Some of the navigation is confusing and not consistent. Ex: when in the System Settings; how does one get back to Editing the Site Easily - not very. Clicking the "Return to site" logs you out and takes one to the Home page.
Overall, we are extremely happy with the "Learning Curve", the features and ease of use.
One final thought, the training cycle with the client to learn "Navigating, Editing etc." was a lot lower than what I would have thought.
We have some "tweaking" to do as the handoff is scheduled for Month's end and don't see anything that will prevent this from happening.
We are not strong PHP coders, but know enough to be dangerous and are definitely not C5 gurus, but this CMS makes it pretty easy to get into the "nuts and bolts", for a "noobie".
The point is; Be patient, work through the tribulations, it gets so much easier to gain the confidence to build a site, and "we believe" a lot sooner than many other CMS systems we have used.
I hope this helps other "noobies"...
First of all, this is one "Awesomely Brilliant CMS" - period.
Because of it's flexibility and feature rich environment, one "MUST" be patient, read as many posts and documents as possible.
You won't achieve any satisfactory level of success unless you do.
Now our short story:
Our Immediate Goal:
-->> Convert a 1.5 year old Umbroco Site to C5. Point of comparison: Umbroco build and rollout was "4.5 months".... And we know Umbroco very well.
-->> Criteria for doing this was: Handoff, Client Participation in on going content management, Ease of end user "Use" and more.
In order to the achieve the above, we started with C5 about 5 weeks ago, and here are the general steps we followed:
1) Installed a Full Site,
2) Played with Elemental and Clonemental (smart move here...),
3) Meticulously documented each Page Template, Type, Attributes - et al,
4) We reviewed all code that was relevant to us leaning C5 in order to achieve our immediate goal,
5) Added, Deleted and Edited Content, Pages, Types etc. Even created our own "Custom page template",
6) Cloned the "default.css" and created our own Preset - tested, revised, tested etc...
7) At this point we had a very solid comfort zone, so decided to create a "Dummy Block",
8) We cloned "external_form" and changed the namespace, seemed pretty straight forward,
-->> OH OH... had one error that kept hounding us when trying to activate the block. Didn't matter what we read or did, same error over and over,
-->> The problem turned out to be in the namespace "namespace Concrete\Blocks\OurBlock;" - ignore the quotes,
-->> See the ERROR??? we used the actual folder name "BLOCKS" instead of "block"... (ignore the case - it's for visual purposes),
-->> Why this is so is beyond us, it makes no sense. Folder - "BLOCKS", but namespace has no "S"...
8) Moving on; we fixed that and were happy to see that our block worked. Very basic block -->> Name, Phone and Email - simple,
9) At this point we began "morphing" the Umbraco site,
10) Now, we really tried to "break C5" and just couldn't. Found some quirky things along the way, but all worked well.
Now we are roughly 2 weeks after all our testing and crunching.
We're all but ready for a handoff and the client is "elated"...
***********
Two weeks of "Real Human Time" to migrate a completely different CMS - that is just freaking impressive.
***********
We believe it all starts with being methodical, trusting in the product and being diligent.
At the outset, it's painful but the end result will justify the time.
That being said, here are a few of our negatives:
1) The documentation is extremely poor with respect to "being current" - I mean "really poor",
-->> This is likely due to the update and enhancement rollouts. Persevere and things will move along,
2) There does not seem to be any "easy way" to use the "Design Editor" to change the Font Style and Attributes for the "Content Block",
--.. We wound up using Custom CSS under "Advanced", seems to work but not very elegant,
3) Almost all the docs we reviewed tout "Almost Everything can be customized through the Editors" - I paraphrase, but it's not necessarily accurate in all cases,
4) Using the interface is a little quirky at times;
-->> Clicking on the Edit Site Pencil, then click on the Composer Gear, displays a "Transparent/Ghosted" Edit canvas,
-->> Not a big deal given all the capabilities, but needs a little "TLC",
5) Some of the navigation is confusing and not consistent. Ex: when in the System Settings; how does one get back to Editing the Site Easily - not very. Clicking the "Return to site" logs you out and takes one to the Home page.
Overall, we are extremely happy with the "Learning Curve", the features and ease of use.
One final thought, the training cycle with the client to learn "Navigating, Editing etc." was a lot lower than what I would have thought.
We have some "tweaking" to do as the handoff is scheduled for Month's end and don't see anything that will prevent this from happening.
We are not strong PHP coders, but know enough to be dangerous and are definitely not C5 gurus, but this CMS makes it pretty easy to get into the "nuts and bolts", for a "noobie".
The point is; Be patient, work through the tribulations, it gets so much easier to gain the confidence to build a site, and "we believe" a lot sooner than many other CMS systems we have used.
I hope this helps other "noobies"...
This might not be what you are talking about but on point 5 of the negatives:
to get back to the page you had been editing (if you jumped away from it before publishing) click pages (2 files icon) and the daft version of the page you had been editing should be waiting for you to get back too.
Until that aspect of Draft pages dawned on me I was a bit "meh" when going back to a unpublished page I was working on.
to get back to the page you had been editing (if you jumped away from it before publishing) click pages (2 files icon) and the daft version of the page you had been editing should be waiting for you to get back too.
Until that aspect of Draft pages dawned on me I was a bit "meh" when going back to a unpublished page I was working on.
This might not be what you are talking about but on point 5 of the negatives:
to get back to the page you had been editing (if you jumped away from it before publishing) click pages (2 files icon) and the daft version of the page you had been editing should be waiting for you to get back too.
Until that aspect of Draft pages dawned on me I was a bit "meh" when going back to a unpublished page I was working on.
to get back to the page you had been editing (if you jumped away from it before publishing) click pages (2 files icon) and the daft version of the page you had been editing should be waiting for you to get back too.
Until that aspect of Draft pages dawned on me I was a bit "meh" when going back to a unpublished page I was working on.
You've nearly written a case study (https://www.concrete5.org/about/case_studies). I'm sure a lot of people would be grateful if you'd adapt your post and submit it there—plus get yourself some good publicity.