A New Community for eZ Publish

Friday 02 July 2004 4:10:28 am

I'm currently setting up an online community for eZ Publish that will include video tutorials, FAQs and a forum. The site is called the 'eZ Pub' and can be found at www.ezpub.co.uk

If you've got any ideas about features, format, design, content etc for the site, then all comments at this early stage will be gratefully received.

Essentially, the site aims to get people talking on a social level, to combine knowledge and solve problems together.

The site is now live and I'll start to add more content during the weekend. Let me know what you think.

Cheers

Stuart

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk

Friday 02 July 2004 7:53:37 am

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your comments.

Re: The direction of eZ Pub - I think the main differences will be in the way that the community will hopefully socialise and how information is presented differently.

ez.no is a great site with lots of info, but it doesn't have a community feel about it and it can seem a bit daunting for newbies. Questions and answers in the forums are quite formal, often unanswered and first names are seldom used. There are rarely any 'Thanks for the info', 'Cheers mate' or similar easy-going posts.

eZ Publish needs to present a professional front and for the most part this site satisifies that requirement. However, I think that a more relaxed approach is also needed, developers would really benefit from getting to know each other a bit better, a problem shared etc...and that's why I've set up the eZ Pub.

Despite being a virtual newb to CMS with virtually no skills in PHP, I really don't think that eZ Publish is the scary app that many developers make it out to be. Problems with installation and errors in the documentation and tutorials really let the side down and lead to fustrated newbs that scrap eZ Publish before they've even got going with it. One million downloads and yet very few users in the community.

Fustrated users are leaving their opinions in the comments of the documentation and with requests for help left unanswered for months it gives a pretty bad impression of an otherwise superb app.

eZ Pub will hopefully be a place for these people to left off some steam and if the presentation of the info on the site is right, then they shouldn't get anywhere near boiling point.

I've produced video tutorials for other apps, including Softimage XSI (which some people regard as probably the biggest and most complicated app ever built) and the vids work wonders for getting newbies off the ground. I'm all for ez.no providing support for a fee, but I wonder how many potential customers they've lost because they turned and ran on the first day or two.

While I don't have the skill to put together complicated tutorials, I'll happily work with others in the community to record their ideas. I realise that info will probably overlap and to that end, I'd be more than happy to consider ways of sharing eZ Pub info with this site and SVN to keep duplication to a minimum, but even so, I think that the it's the presentation of the info that will be the main difference.

One size doesn't fit all and whilst eZ Pub will hopefully be right for many people, others will no-doubt still find ez.no and SVN the better option.

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk

Friday 02 July 2004 3:12:49 pm

Thanks for the details Stuart. :) The new site sounds promising, and I really like the idea of focusing on the new user.

Alex

Alex
[ bald_technologist on the IRC channel (irc.freenode.net): #eZpublish ]

<i>When in doubt, clear the cache.</i>

Wednesday 07 July 2004 2:50:42 am

Thanks for your comments Kai. I'll certainly look to add those sort of features fairly soon.

The site will probably be kept anonymous but registration is required to post in the forum.

That said, the site has been up for a week now and it has only had 21 unique visitors. I've not advertised and I'm still currently submitting to the search engines, but it looks as though I may be flogging a dead horse.

One million downloads and only 21 visitors. There are about 1500 users registered to the ez.no forum, which is also very small in comparison to most apps and imho the biggest disadvantage to ez Publish.

Looking through the forums of other OS apps shows postings every minute of the day.

Where did those one million eZ Publish downloaders go?

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk

Wednesday 07 July 2004 5:00:04 am

Hi Paul,

You're right, my typo.

I'm in Cheshire setting up a national wildlife education charity. CMS is only one part of the massive project, but it's unfortunately taking up a disproportionately huge amount of time.

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk

Wednesday 07 July 2004 6:39:26 am

Thanks for the info Paul.

I still find it incredible that with one million downloads, 15000 registrations and 2-3000 UVs to SVN, there are so very few posts on this forum.

I agree with you about fragmentation as I would also love to have all the info in one place. However, I think that the above stats prove that the current system isn't working. I hope that by employing a dedicated member of staff things will change, but I have my reservations. Communities are obviously community-driven.

If users to this community don't like the way it works, where else can they go? Personally, I find this site difficult to navigate, full of long-standing open threads and still no FAQs.

To be honest, I really don't want to start a new community as I'm already very busy doing other things; but I think it is very much needed, if only for newbies. In an ideal world, I'd like to see an eZ Publish community that is so strong that it doesn't require input from the ez system crew, be it the occasional comment or a fully dedicted member of staff. This would ultimately result in the eZ publish crew being able to spend more time working on development of the app, which has got to be better for everyone.

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk

Wednesday 07 July 2004 8:20:07 am

Hi Stuart

The small number of posts/ registered users is not entirely abnormal. I follow ez publish and another CMS and I also see what happens for example on our internal discussions forums (600+ "members"). Participation is typically less than 1%, so the low ratio is not atypical for ez publish.

The audience for eZ publish is also a bit different than phpnukes, typo3 and similar: more "corporate" users for instance (or is that wishful thinking?). A lot of them can't be active because of busy lives and schedules (and sometimes ez babies --tony). For example, I find myself very much in time constraints lately and this won't change much until deep in 2005. Another part of the story is that quite a few hanging around here try to make money with ez publish and will be less motivated to participate actively (you know the exceptions).

One observation concerns me more though: the low number of experienced community developers. While I don't expect all developments outside the ez crew to publish their work, I think the contributions indicate a quite low activity compared to the potential. I hope the ez book lowers the barrier for that too.

Mea culpa: have still some things lying around here: a calendar widget (improved version of contributed template code and usable in pagelayout templates), gannt charts (now with constraints added) and a topology for project management, a few more template operators, bibliographic reference system and datatypes, ... but currently no time to properly document and clean them up for posting. I should do so, because this may attract some "peers": organisations that use ez publish for corporate applications and can allocate one or more developers in extending/customising it. For instance the project management stuff and other small groupware features we are developing can make ez publish a catch all solution for those who use different apps now.

Maybe the name "eZ publish" does not reflect the capabilities truly also, I know of at least one large consulting firm that evaluates ez publish as "just a publishing tool, not for serious collaboration or intranets" --- wrong of course.

Don't underestimate the time you would spend on a new community site, I have such a thing in mind for a long time (a portal for community development with demo space) to add to pubsvn.ez.no, but hesitate to do so (time time time).

Don't get me wrong, I symphatise your efforts and agree with your complaints, but i think anyone should think twice in allocating precious time on this... Once the ez publish community gets more critical mass (mainly in devoted documentation writing and die-hard developers) such an alternative community site may have its merits and a good chance for success.

I would love to see the ez.no site being slashdotted because of its sheer community size (which would force the ez crew in even more optimisations :-) ).

With kind regards

-paul

PS: I really like your tutorials!!
PS2: the invision board interface should be duplicated on ez.no, it is better and more "familiar"

eZ Publish, eZ Find, Solr expert consulting and training
http://twitter.com/paulborgermans