Hoyt Arboretum Seeks PHP Volunteer
Karen Groves
I'm working with Hoyt Arboretum to redesign their website and would
like to have a PHP developer on board. I expect the project to
seriously get underway mid-July. As it's volunteer work, time frames
are very relaxed.
Hoyt is most likely going with Joomla! for the CMS and it would be
great to have a PHP expert on hand to help if we need it. We may want
to customize templates, modules, etc., and I don't know PHP well
enough yet to do this.
This is all volunteer work and I think the work load would be light to
minimal. Hard to say right now how much we would call on you for help,
but it would be great to have someone in our corner.
Let me know if you're interested.
Thanks, Karen
thai.bui
I will have a lot of free time this summer, I could volunteer to join
the PHP developer team. I am not an expert of Joomla but I could help.
Thai Bui.
John McBride
I'd like to help but I'm not sure I'm the best person for the job. I have
no experience with any 'canned' CMS packages, but I'm anxious lean. I do
have lots of experience with PHP, mostly from a database perspective.
I use it at work (http://www.Unitusccu.com), home
(http://www.JohnMcBride.com) and my personal crusade to get Portlander's to
use mass transit (http://www.myTrimet.com)
If you are unable to find someone with better qualifications, let me know.
I'd like to add this experience to my resume if you don't mind a little 'on
the job' self-training.
John
BTW, I'm curious. Why not Drupal? Seems to gathering momentum among
developers.
http://enewsz.com/2010/01/16/drupal-vs-joomla-which-cms-is-best/
Thanks, Karen
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franz maruna
Its in-context editing is more intuitive than Drupal or Joomla!, it's
just as powerful as both, and we're based here in Portland..
Just sayin'
;)
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
John McBride
Ben Parzybok
> Why not indeed! Awesome demo!
Whoo! Seconding the demo!
Nathan DiNiro
jordanlev
with Concrete5 after many years of Wordpress, Drupal, etc. I have to
agree with Franz (and I'm a bit less biased then him, not having
created it and all) -- I have found it to have the most intuitive
editing interface for clients, and it also has a fairly clean
architecture underneath so it's both straightforward to make the pages
look the way they were designed and easier to extend functionality as
a developer.
I probably don't have enough free time to build out the site myself,
but I'd be happy to help. Karen, are the Arboretum folks open to using
a CMS other than Joomla? And John, would you be interested in
collaborating on this? I can get you started, provide some guidance
and direction, and be available to help out and answer questions along
the way if you'd be willing to put in the time to learn and build this
out.
-Jordan Lev
jor...@jordanlev.com
(503) 577-7073
Karen Groves
To Thai and John..thanks! Can I keep both of you on the hook? I have a
meeting coming up with Hoyt in the next week or so to see where we are
with everything.
Why Joomla! over Drupal over Concrete5? I looked closely at the Drupal
Vs. Joomla argument, and spoke to afew colleagues, and I *think"
Joomla is a good choice for Hoyt for several reasons:
1/. I know Joomla better than Drupal (shrug), and while may not be the
best person to help Hoyt, I'm who they have right now. :D
2/. Hoyt is not going to need a super huge website with tons of users,
so Joomla can work.
3/. Hoyt will need non-technical people to update once we're done -
Joomla again.
4/. More Joomla templates.
OK, so for Concrete5...Franz, I think I saw your demo at PDXPHP?
Honestly, I haven't explored it enough to really be able argue one way
or the other. It's pretty new, yes?.
Karen
jordanlev
with Concrete5 after many years of Wordpress, Drupal, etc. I have to
agree with Franz (and I'm a bit less biased then him, not having
created it and all) -- I have found it to have the most intuitive
editing interface for clients, and it also has a fairly clean
architecture underneath so it's both straightforward to make the pages
look the way they were designed and easier to extend functionality as
a developer.
I probably don't have enough free time to build out the site myself,
but I'd be happy to help. Karen, are the Arboretum folks open to using
a CMS other than Joomla? And John, would you be interested in
collaborating on this? I can get you started, provide some guidance
and direction, and be available to help out and answer questions along
the way if you'd be willing to put in the time to learn and build this
out.
-Jordan Lev
jor...@jordanlev.com
(503) 577-7073
Karen Groves
Let me write this entire reply again!
Thai and John..thanks! Can I keep you both on the hook for now? I have a meeting coming up with Hoyt so see where we're at with everything. They were also searching for a PHP developer so I need to what's up with that. Sound ok?
As for Concrete5...Franz, think I saw your demo at PDXPHP? I'll check out your website again.
As for Drupal vs. Joomla? Well, I looked at the arguments for both and here's why we (I) am leaning towards Joomla.
1/. I know Joomla better than Drupal (shrug), and, while I might not be the best person to help Hoyt, I'm who they have right now :)
2/. Hoyt doesn't need a huge website with lots of users...so, Joomla can work.
3/. More template choices with Joomla.
4/. Need to have a CMS that allows a wide range of non-technical people to be able to update site.
K
I'm trying to reply to this thread and not getting anywhere...?
Brenna Harris Switzer
btw...totally happy to get more input from you guys!
On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Karen Groves <grov...@gmail.com> wrote:
Ok, there is goes, finally.
Let me write this entire reply again!
Thai and John..thanks! Can I keep you both on the hook for now? I have a meeting coming up with Hoyt so see where we're at with everything. They were also searching for a PHP developer so I need to what's up with that. Sound ok?
As for Concrete5...Franz, think I saw your demo at PDXPHP? I'll check out your website again.
As for Drupal vs. Joomla? Well, I looked at the arguments for both and here's why we (I) am leaning towards Joomla.
1/. I know Joomla better than Drupal (shrug), and, while I might not be the best person to help Hoyt, I'm who they have right now :)
2/. Hoyt doesn't need a huge website with lots of users...so, Joomla can work.
3/. More template choices with Joomla.
4/. Need to have a CMS that allows a wide range of non-technical people to be able to update site.
K
On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Karen Groves <grov...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm trying to reply to this thread and not getting anywhere...?<362.gif>
John Mathis
feel morally obliged to advise anyone considering it to avoid it. You
should avoid it in the same way that you would avoid the bubonic
plague. That is, as is your life depended on it.
Drupal depends on independent add-ons for a lot of basic
functionality, and getting all the add-ons you need to work well
together is extremely tedious. I think coding a custom CMS from
scratch will generally take less work than even moderately customizing
Drupal.
Karen Groves
--
franz maruna
Now that you've given me a defendable opportunity to shill in-front of
these guys, I'd be a bad CEO to pass it up. ;)
Some thoughts:
1) Concrete CMS was actually started as commercial software in 2003.
We went open source in the summer of 2008. So we're young as an open
source, but pretty mature software as a whole. To be honest, I don't
think we could have made the application we have if we went open
source to begin with. It's much easier to try out ideas and throw away
bad ones when you're commercial software, from my experience.
http://www.concrete5.org/about/history/
2) Yes, our marketplace of add-ons is about half free, half paid. The
paid ones are still open source, in the sense that you can see all the
code you buy and are welcome to edit it for your own uses. The reason
we chose to monetize our marketplace is because we've had the same
experience as others when trying to extend Joomla! or Drupal. Sure,
there's over 3000 add-ons in Drupal's marketplace but many of them
straight up don't work, and the majority will have compatibility
issues if you have more than one installed. Their add-ons are intended
to be used by site developers, not site owners, so you're taking a
gamble any time you see something you'd like installed. Our
marketplace has a peer review process (go crowd sourcing!) that helps
ensure ALL the add-ons work well with each other. No software has ever
been bug free, but paying for an add-on means you WILL get support on
it, or get your money back. It also means the 3rd party developers who
put their time into building great add-ons see some financial benefit
from doing so..
http://www.concrete5.org/about/what_does_free_mean_/
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/refund-policy/
3) We're not going any where. As I mentioned above, we're actually
about 7 years old as software, 2 years as open source (this month in
fact! Happy birthday to us!). Today there are over 50,000 websites
powered with concrete5 that routinely ping our servers for updates.
There are about 25,000 members in our community at concrete5.org and
about 10,000 sites have connected to that community to allow add-ons
to be automatically installed. We're profitable, we've never raised
any money and have no plans to do so.
4) You can build anything out of concrete5. We designed it to be a
toolbox for our services work here in Portland, and it served us quite
well in that capacity. Many open source CMS's (Joomla! comes to mind)
were actually designed to be a specific type of website, frequently a
news portal like SlashDot.org. It seems like every open source
developer dreams of running a big news portal, so many architecture
decisions get made leaning in that direction. That gives you a product
you have to start hacking at to use as a CMS. concrete5 was designed
to be a framework for building /whatever/ you want from the bottom up.
concrete5 is like legos, you're limited by your time and imagination.
http://www.concrete5.org/about/showcase/
5) We're local and we're trying very hard to engage more with Portland
than we have in the past. Much of our services work when we were
commercial was for out of town clients, but with 2010 we're
consciously trying to win over PDX's web development community as we
believe much of the rest of the world looks to Portland for
leadership. If there's an opportunity to do some collaborative PR it's
quite likely you can get us helping for free.
If you're around tomorrow (Friday) at 2pm we're actually doing a live
webcast thanks to our friends in Japan, so tune in an ask questions
then:
http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/background/news-and-updates/news/live-event-with-concrete5/
If you'd like to setup a meeting feel free to email me directly.
fr...@concrete5.org
-best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
Tony Freixas
On 06/24/10 10:09 AM, franz maruna wrote:Sure, there's over 3000 add-ons in Drupal's marketplace but many of them straight up don't work, and the majority will have compatibility issues if you have more than one installed.
On 06/24/10 10:09 AM, franz maruna wrote:
concrete5 was designed to be a framework for building /whatever/ you want from the bottom up. concrete5 is like legos, you're limited by your time and imagination.
Apologies to everyone on the list—it would be nice to have an announcement email list and a general discussion email list to avoid filling up mailboxes with my-CMS-is-better-than-yours messages.
franz maruna
quickly, so I'm not trying to troll the list or get in a big debate.
Everything I said is truthful and resonates with thousands of site
owners and developers.
Can you build a great site with Drupal? Sure. Works for Obama, right?
Is concrete5 perfect? Nope. For example, we don't follow strict web
standards and our ecommerce add-on starts to be difficult to use if
you sell 1000's of products.
Does concrete5 offer a unique approach that's compelling for both site
owners and site developers? Does it warrant a closer look,
particularly from PHP developers in Portland where it's based? Yup.
'nuff said.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
Grant Kruger
> Its in-context editing is more intuitive than Drupal or Joomla!, it's
> just as powerful as both, and we're based here in Portland..
I did a lot of research on a range of frameworks and none of it back
up these bold claims. I read blog entries, comparisons, surveys and
more, which showed that there are a large number of CMS and that
Drupal, Joomla and Plone are most often seen as the best of them.
Packt awards back that up, as do other factors.
On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Karen Groves <grov...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1/. I know Joomla better than Drupal (shrug), and while may not be the
> best person to help Hoyt, I'm who they have right now. :D
There were several reasons why my org picked Drupal over Joomla when
we recently redid our web page. However, I would say that your
existing experience with Joomla is a very big factor. Institutional
knowledge, particularly if it is significant, is huge and I believe
you should pick another CMS only if it is substantially better.
To be thorough, it's worth checking out a few alternatives for
yourself and to not be swayed by our personal prejudices/preferences.
The truth is there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all CMS. Each
has it's strengths and weaknesses and something could be considered
the best CMS out there, but still not be the right CMS for your
organization. My advice to anyone choosing a CMS is look at a bunch of
them, but start with Drupal, Joomla and Plone. I think those are the
best, and so does the marketplace, but again, check out a few more. Of
course, having C5 locally presents a unique opportunity, and
resources. Similarly, the local Drupal User Group has 476 members and
has large monthly meetings and social gatherings, also presenting a
great opportunity and resources (see
http://groups.drupal.org/portland-oregon for more). I think you're
doing the right thing by keeping an open mind.
But again, your increased learning curve means another CMS has to be
worth it, and I don't know that any CMS is that much better than
Joomla to be worth it, unless the cost factors are an issue (and they
might be).
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:52 AM, John Mathis <jrma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have no firm opinion on Joomla, but having worked with Drupal, I
> feel morally obliged to advise anyone considering it to avoid it. You
> should avoid it in the same way that you would avoid the bubonic
> plague. That is, as is your life depended on it.
Having created about 10 Drupal sites now, I have to say that I could
not disagree with you more. Drupal is far from perfect, but that is
true of every CMS. I'd say it was almost in the nature of a CMS. Even
then, in my experience CMS fail more because they get used for non-CMS
things or get used incorrectly, than through any fault of their own.
Most of my earlier Drupal efforts were fairly small sites, but after
doing our massive site, I liked Drupal more when I was done than when
I started. A massive number of websites use it, and it it were as bad
as you say, then they would not.
> Drupal depends on independent add-ons for a lot of basic
> functionality, and getting all the add-ons you need to work well
> together is extremely tedious. I think coding a custom CMS from
> scratch will generally take less work than even moderately customizing
> Drupal.
Extremely tedious? Not remotely true. Most of the time it is no work
whatsoever. The occasional add-on (module) will interfere with
another, but that is very uncommon, especially if you are using any
common sense at all in the selection and if you are using some kind of
organized development methodology. On my last website, the only ones I
remember having issues with were some using a lot of JavaScript, and
even then, I had little trouble using around 90 of them together.
On custom CMS, I think their day is done. All the research I've done,
as well as a customer-satisfaction survey, suggests that not only do
custom CMS not compete at all with big open source CMS, they get the
worst reviews from their users. To my knowledge, you will not only
never custom code a CMS faster than getting any of the top 20 or 30
CMS to work, you will take much longer and most likely have a much
inferior product at the end.
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Tony Freixas <tfre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In my experience, the statement below is false (and I've used many Drupal
> modules).
>
> On 06/24/10 10:09 AM, franz maruna wrote:
> Sure, there's over 3000 add-ons in Drupal's marketplace but many of them
> straight up don't work, and the majority will have compatibility
> issues if you have more than one installed.
I agree with Tony. There are some modules that are not up to snuff,
but they are rare and mostly older. It's much harder to get a bad
module through the system now, and has been for some time. And if you
follow any best practices at all then you're very unlikely to use any
mediocre modules, let alone a bad one.
> Apologies to everyone on the list—it would be nice to have an announcement
> email list and a general discussion email list to avoid filling up mailboxes
> with my-CMS-is-better-than-yours messages.
I agree, though I also believe that incorrect assertions should be
countered. More broadly, I think this would make a great discussion at
a monthly meeting. PHP-based CMS dominate the CMS world and many
believe that any open source project wanting to gain a substantial
following should probably use PHP, even when they hate PHP. It is a
discussion that has a lot of bearing on why we as a group should or
should not use PHP.
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 9:09 AM, Karen Groves <grov...@gmail.com> wrote:
> .... one concern about Concrete 5 is all of the commercial
> add-ons. What's everyone's take on that?
As far as I know, the same is true of Joomla. As was pointed out,
there is an up-side to this, but there was not for my org, given that
we knew Drupal could do all we needed, without any cost, and that we
had a desire (since we serve other nonprofits) to prove that you could
create a complex site without paying anything for software. Of course,
no CMS is ever really free. The setup and ongoing overhead cost and
will continue to do so... but that's another discussion.
Karen, if you would like someone to show you a little of what Drupal
can do, or just chat about some of what I learned in my own
investigations, I'd be happy to do so.
Best,
Grant