phpwcms Support Forum

Phpwcms is headding towards version 2, and it is great to hear about and see the changes that will make it even better. While the technical side (what phpwcms can do) is the main focus of the development, there needs to be an awareness that there are many other things that influence the entire user experience and contribute to the success of phpwcms, such as ease of installation and use, performance, visual appearance, support and more. Phpwcms has got quite a lot going for it in these different areas, and I would like to just pick up on some of them.


1. Installing and customizing
Although I am not that brilliant in technical terms, phpwcms for me has been – with the help of the docu and forum – easy to install and customize. Others have said the same. This needs to be build upon. Ambitions to make phpwcms more powerful must not result in a loss of the ease of setting up a site. The strength of the system at this that there is no steep learning curve and setting up a website can be done even by newbies. There are great initiatives for people to build mods, hacks and so on and it would be great if this would be coordinated in some way. I second the recent initiative that points in this direction.

2. Ease of use
There should be a strong focus not only on how easy it is to handle phpwcms for the webmaster, but also how easy it is to use it for a regular editor who might have no technical understanding whatsoever. As features are added there should be a focus on how to limit the functions available when setting up and editing the articles and content. As many options as possible should be given to the webmaster to set up rather than for the editor to choose. Maybe it would be good to let the webmaster limit the contentparts available or to enable him to switch off certain options. Maybe more could be moved to the ADMIN are?

3. Visual Appearance
Phpwcms has been praised for it’s good looking interface in the past and it seems that this will continue to be the case. As we can see, Oliver has made changes to the visual appearance of the website and the backend. The rounded corners, lower case logotype (phpwcms) and gradient make it look sophisticated, elegant, contemporary. As the main focus of most systems like this is how powerful they are in technical terms, many lack a sophisticated visual appearance. This is largely due to the fact that the developers programming them have a purely technical interest.
Building on what has been done so far, there seems to be even more that can be done to give phpwcms as a whole the appearance it should have.
First and foremost I think that all parts should visually stand together. With this I mean that the system itself, as well as its website, the phpwcms-docu site and any upcoming community development site/forum should be based on the same design guidelines. For example, while phpwcms-docu.de has got a good design going at the moment, it would be even better if it would relate to the visual identity of the main project. While I recognise that this is a entirely separate project, run by different people (and I think there is no reason not to say this clearly and to give them credit), I think that it would enhance the image of phpwcms enormously if this site (and for that matter any other [semi]official site) would visually stand closer together with the main project site and its appearance. As things are going at the present it seems that with version 2 of the project the documentation site and the main project will even move further apart from each other visually. I therefore propose to introduce some coordination on designing these different areas. Eg. there should be a standard logotype, grahic elements, colour scheme, typography and so on. Also small decisions should be made like: Is it „phpWCMS“ or „phpwcms“? and people involved in the different areas of the project should adhere to it.

4. Support
Getting the points made above right will draw in more users this forum will continue to be a great place to get fast help with specific questions. Apart from this, having the documentation site as up to date as possible as a vital part of this project. It’s sole existence might prompt a person to give phpwcms a try. Pappnase is doing an amazing job there and I think that he should be supported with this in any way possible. It would also be great to see this site being the place to document all add-ons and mods. It would be great to see all of this at one central location.


As we can see, there is quite a number things that already make phpwcms stand out from the many other CMS out there – in fact from many other Open Source Projects. However, as things move towards the release of a version 2 there is a danger that things get more confused (like what is phpwcms all about, is the docu site an official site or not...). There should be a strong focus on the facts that set phpwcms apart and any further development – no matter who it is (Oliver, people running the documetation site, mods developers) – should adhere to it. All this could ensure that phpwcms continues to give users a great overall experience.

Good points. Would be useful to read by Oliver G.

Yes you seem to be talking right outa my heart.

As far as we got now I can say the following:
I wanted to integrate the mod development (releases) into the
docu site. I think we could do some stuff like the guys at Typo3 did:

phpwcms.de (german)/com (english)
phpwcms.org (docu+dev community)

The forum must be kept together as one (german+english) but we really should try to make all ppl talk the most english possible, for better "centralization".

Unfortunately Pappnase doesn't seem like having had the time to write me a single email about his concerns on the dev-corner project during the past two weeks. I am still waiting for an email and I am reminding him next to daily. As soon as I got an answer I will continue this project.

I think another good but small point would be to develop some better looking graphics for phpwcms like you can see here. I think smaller icons would make ppl integrate more of them and I think such an icon would look a lot better than the big copyright notice in the backend. (look at the most professional open source cmf:
typo3, you won't find any kind of that big notice anywhere but nevertheless because of the "CI" everyone will recognize the backend as typo3... I think this would lead to lower efforts on removing it.)

For me personally there is no problem with the copyright but some ppl seem to have it.

So the point is: create a unique "CI" and everyone will recognize wcms as it and you won't have to include such a big copyright notice in the backend anymore.

hey guys & girls,

i am kinda new to this comunity, but i am always reading
and i am involved in the docu-site as well. i am the one who trys to translate the docu into english.

So if there are special wishes, what has to be translated, just tell me. But i am sorry i have to say that i have a quite busy normal 7am-3.30pm job and besides i am a owner of a webagency and, cause that is not enough, i am involved in another project wich is right now developing a Open Source TicketSystem. So maybe you can understand, why not everything is done yet. Pappnase is as well very busy and trys to work as much and fast as posible, but we all have jobs,

But from the very first day on, i realized that this comunity is great and really helpfull. That, and the fact, that phpWCMS is so handy, are the reasons, why i thought about something. It´s right now just an IDEA but maybe, cause i never saw it before, i will try to make it. I don´t wanna say right now what it is, but be sure it will be usefull for the phpWCMS comunity.

so these were my 2 cents.
have a nice week

As features are added there should be a focus on how to limit the functions available when setting up and editing the articles and content. As many options as possible should be given to the webmaster to set up rather than for the editor to choose. Maybe it would be good to let the webmaster limit the contentparts available or to enable him to switch off certain options.

I strongly second this particular point. I think 3 people are central to a good CMS. The webmaster, the site administrator and the contributor(s). I would vote for controlled access to sections of the backend based on three user-access settings instead of the current two:

Webmaster (super admin) - can control CSS, page layout and page templates. I really think these controls should be accessible to a nominated webmaster only. An additional advantage of this is that designers could offer PHPWCMS as an application service for people who don't want to design the site themselves.

Administrators - can control user access rights, create categories, manage newsletter subscriptions etc. Can *NOT* however tinker with the CSS or layout.

Users - can contribute articles only.

As far as presenting a more unified identity for PHPWCMS, I would imagine the most practical solution would be to combine all the current promotional, documentation and forum sites into a portal (Nuke, Xoops etc.). I see PHPWCMS as a highly flexible CMS for free-form web design, rather than a portal solution, so I can't see that there would be a clash of interest in doing this. It would enable articles, forum, downloads, documentation, tutorials, FAQ, mods and news all in one place. Maybe...

Reason #1 from my personal experience when interacting with designers and clients alike.

Webstandards and the rather meager appreciation for modern webstandards in this OS project.

I must say I'm most impressed with the newest version of phpWcms.
I keep recommending it to many many people because I know how much I love to work with it and know that others would too, if they'd give it a chance.
However, 90% of the designers I talk with refuse to even evaluate, lest use this CMS as a choice. The strange thing I noticed recently even with my own new clients is that when I write down which CMS's I find great (phpWCMS is always included first or second in my list simply because I love this system and admire its powerful structure) and write down its features etc., all of them (no exaggeration) did not want to use phpWCMS for that sole reason.
Eventhough I told them there were ways to make phpWCMS *almost* according to the W3C recommendation when hacking up some stuff in the core and mainly content parts.

But no one said, okay, let us do that then. They'd rather go with a CMS that already provides that option. To many it seems inefficient and a pain to having to hack up and highly modify a tool in order to be able to use it.

Most big - to enterprise CMS have developed beautiful solutions to enable designers to easily create complex designs that comply with modern webstandards because they clearly recognized the need for it.

I cannot think of a single highly renowned Open Source CMS that has not done that step. Oh well, there is Mambo. Though even Mambo's new release will have its core designed according to W3C standards. Mambo would NEVER be an option for me because of a similar reason why phpWCMS is not an option to others. For me it's the mere fact that I do not like portals. Portals are evilness pure.

But take some other popular or sophisticated CMS that have successfully made the switch, whether it's typo3, plone, drupal, mt, xoops, ev107 or eZ Publish, they've all either fully thrown out the obsolete and useless html garbage out of their core or given good alternatives to working with xml/xhtml/css, making their products attractive for old school html geeks as well as modern coders who put strong emphasis on usability and accessability.

It's also why so many people dislike the whole Nuke stuff. Too bloated, too chaotic, useless code where it needn't be etc. New intelligent and a lot more sophisticated CMS that provide modern and slick code have been created that give users the option to NOT use Nuke and their kin anymore if they so chose not to.

Now, the same happens (less in the code area) but more in the markup languages (exensible and css) field due to the mere fact that almost (no pun intended ) all aesthets will put great emphasis in integrating modern webstandards into their works and, thus will choose a CMS according to the priority they've set for themselves. Someone who gives a dime for good code and only wants something to look cool will most likely go with nuke systems. Someone who is absolutely aesthetic about good and intelligent scripting will go for phpWCMS and other great CMS. Someone who cares about intelligent scripting AND webstandards will go for other great CMS that provide it.

I still do not understand why it seems that a CMS that complies with modern webstandards is not safe at this point. I've read it here over and over and the arguments made were all, well, just as obsolete as using tables for a single paragraph. We're past that now, so that is hardly an excuse in my opinion. I doubt giants such as http://www.apple.com, microsoft.de, macromedia.com, espn.com, wirednews.com, amazon.com and numerous of the LARGEST corporations have switched over to modern webstandards if it were not a pretty safe ship, hence a logical approach to take.

Anyway, enough ramblings of a small worm such as myself.

I thought the current web standard *was* HTML 4.01. Unless you serve up XHTML as an application mime type, (not as text/html) most browsers, including Firefox, treat it like code soup. Closing tags with a < /> doesn't make it any faster. It still gets parsed with the same engine as HTML 4.01.

Lots of interesting stuff on the effect of doctypes here:
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/doctype.html

Is it really worth using XHTML at all? Some good points raised here:
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/xhtml-the-point
and here:
http://www.ookingdom.com/design/quitting

See how various browsers deal with XHTML served up as text/html here:
http://www.goer.org/Journal/2003/Apr/index.html#results

And some PHP and htaccess trickery for XHTML here:
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/03/19/dive-into-xml.html

XHTML is undoubtably the way forward so it's probably a good idea to get into the habit of using the syntax now. But AFAIK, if you serve XHTML as an application today, it won't work in IE (which like it or not accounts for 70% of the world's web browsers). Under those circumstances, I don't know what these other 'web standard' CMS's have got to to feel so smug about.

It must also be remembered that blue chip companies like Macromedia and Apple only have one aim - make serious money by pushing 'advances' (normally accompanied by expensive upgrades) down the throat of designers, oiled by large spoonfuls of hype and fear. My company maintains a dozen old websites full of <FONT> tags that are still earning clients kudos and money. They work in *everything*, including Nescape 4 on the Mac. They are successful not because they validate with the W3C, but because we test them thoroughly.

I do sympathise with your situation, but if you find yourself dealing with some IT manager whose only talent is to quote web standards at you, you really need to leave them to it and target people who see greater worth in your ability to create an effectve website. If you don't, they'll soon be bleating about SEO and how it's critical that everyone in the world finds their website.

I had a client like that, until I reminded them that they can't actually supply a fitted bathroom to someone in North Korea.

I am no one who likes to *convert* people really. It's why I will not start a debate. However, most of the reasons you've brought up don't hold true for modern webstandards.

First wrong assumption: Webstandards are about using valid HMTL.

You do realise that the idea behind webstandards is not to validate a site via a validator, right? If that was your assumption, then yes, I can see how that makes little sense to you. Webstandards are about accessability and usability. It is about enabling the biggest range of people to be able to
view your site, regardless of any impairments or other defecits they might have. It is about effectiveness. Closing a tag with /> does not make a site faster. By the way, closing a tag with /> IS HTML and not XHTML. That is another misconception that is very popular that I'm actually surprised about. People who don't close their tags in HTML are technically producing
incomplete and sloppy code because in every markup language or scripting language you need to close a tag. In HTML you don't need to, though it would be correct to do so. XHTML is simply stricter than HTML.

Is it worth it? Eh. Depends on your individual ethics and ideology as a designer. Is it worth to produce better code? Is it worth to have lighter pages? Is worth for screenreaders to interpret your sitecontent better?

IE does interpret xhtml properly. What do you mean by XHTML won't work today with IE? I never heard of that. Do you have any further info?

The assumption that Macromedia, Apple push foward standards in order to make money is a flawed argument. None of those big companies would have made the switch if it were not for really small independent designers to have made the switch before them. The actual argument should be reversed to this, because Apple, Macromedia, Microsoft and other big companies main aim is to make money, they've taken so long before actually taking advantage of modern webstandards.

The only real downside I personally see is the fact that a designer faces a ton of work and studying if he so chose to switch to webstandards compliant coding. It takes a lot of work, much effort and sweat, and many don't really want to bother "as long as their old code works". I personally could not disagree more. Just as I would not pick up a book about php3 and pay big bucks for it when we're already at version 5. I'd not see what sense that'd make.

Enough rants by me. There are some really good sites by high profile designers that can express much more sophisticated what the pros are to using modern code than I can.

Peekay wrote:I thought the current web standard *was* HTML 4.01. Unless you serve up XHTML as an application mime type, (not as text/html) most browsers, including Firefox, treat it like code soup. Closing tags with a < /> doesn't make it any faster. It still gets parsed with the same engine as HTML 4.01.

Lots of interesting stuff on the effect of doctypes here:
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/doctype.html

Is it really worth using XHTML at all? Some good points raised here:
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/xhtml-the-point
and here:
http://www.ookingdom.com/design/quitting

See how various browsers deal with XHTML served up as text/html here:
http://www.goer.org/Journal/2003/Apr/index.html#results

And some PHP and htaccess trickery for XHTML here:
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/03/19/dive-into-xml.html

XHTML is undoubtably the way forward so it's probably a good idea to get into the habit of using the syntax now. But AFAIK, if you serve XHTML as an application today, it won't work in IE (which like it or not accounts for 70% of the world's web browsers). Under those circumstances, I don't know what these other 'web standard' CMS's have got to to feel so smug about.

It must also be remembered that blue chip companies like Macromedia and Apple only have one aim - make serious money by pushing 'advances' (normally accompanied by expensive upgrades) down the throat of designers, oiled by large spoonfuls of hype and fear. My company maintains a dozen old websites full of <FONT> tags that are still earning clients kudos and money. They work in *everything*, including Nescape 4 on the Mac. They are successful not because they validate with the W3C, but because we test them thoroughly.

I do sympathise with your situation, but if you find yourself dealing with some IT manager whose only talent is to quote web standards at you, you really need to leave them to it and target people who see greater worth in your ability to create an effectve website. If you don't, they'll soon be bleating about SEO and how it's critical that everyone in the world finds their website.

I had a client like that, until I reminded them that they can't actually supply a fitted bathroom to someone in North Korea.

brans wrote:...
phpwcms.de (german)/com (english)
phpwcms.org (docu+dev community)
...

nice ... :/

[joking]i want a forum in sanskrit, in hebrew, in bantu, one in catalan etc. ...[/joking]

why germans always think they need more privilegues then others?

think allways about that to get good opensource is no right ! that is a privilegue !

and to get good support for opensource is no right, too. because at most people spent their free time to do it.

whith what basement is to request a national support only for one native language? is a shame how act germans at most on the web.

only my 0,02€

I absolutely agree that meeting industry standards should be every designers objective. But as long as you build your page templates and CSS carefully, I didn't think PHPWCMS did that badly?.

It has a basic level of accessibility now (for site viewers) and steps are being taken to improve that. My dev site works fine in Lynx. Even the nav_table_column menu degrades properly and you can replace this with a CSS menu if you want. I believe the new version adds the sorely needed ALT attribute for file centre images (something I have whinged about several times). It would be nice to be able to add a LONGDESC link for images and an ability to add TITLE, TABINDEX and ACCESSKEY attributes for links.

Regarding my comment about IE, I confess my knowledge of XHTML is limited, but I thought it only offered an advantage when it was used with XML content and served with the mime type 'application/xhtml+xml'. Currently AFAIK, this only works with Mozilla based browsers. There's some info here:

http://www.w3.org/People/mimasa/test/xh ... es/results

IE renders web pages coded using XHTML syntax if it is served as mime type text/html, but if you don't have any XML content, at present I can't see any advantage of using strict XHTML over using strict HTML 4.01...

... but I'm always ready for enlightenment

feelx, I think this is because the Germans are very strong in the open source community.

If you had any idea of the typo3 sites, you wouldn't have any of your arguments left. Simply go and have a look there I really like the way they publish their product. I am absolutely not talking about a german support site, because I think that everyone who really wants to develop a website has to understand english (nearly every software is written in english) but I also think that our clients really don't have to speak english.

So we could simply create a german and english and many more language presentation sites of phpwcms, as the guys at typo3 do but we have to keep the one and only support forum and this must be in english for better sharing of knowledge around the world.

feelX wrote: why germans always think they need more privilegues then others?

???? I am truely alienated by your comment. The reason that there are many Germans here is based in the fact that from the start of OG developing phpwcms Germans were involved. A German forum/community is what many English speaking people here have asked for. It is also the most obvious language to think of when thinking of setting up a different language community from English, just purely for the fact that there are more Germans around here than anything else (apart from English speakers). Isn't it only natural that a German version sprang to bran's mind?
I'm sure no-one will mid if the frist 'foreign' language forum was hebrew or italien ir whatever else. Go right ahead with it!
Even better, why don't you start by translating the docu site into any of the languages you mentioned.

feelX wrote:think allways about that to get good opensource is no right ! that is a privilegue !

Oh, I'm sure most people are aware of that. Most people also know that this forum and everything connected with phpwcms is volunteer based. What the heck is you problem with theese people wanting to improve things? Are we not allowed to trake initiative just because it's a privilige?!

feelX wrote:whith what basement is to request a national support only for one native language?

To answer you that one: That is pure intuition that one would think of seperating the forum/area between the two major languages spoken here. IT'S JUST OBVIOUS.

feelX wrote:only my 0,02€

Please keep your money.

feelX wrote:is a shame how act germans at most on the web.

This is revolting! It is a shame how you criminalize a certain group of people here on this forum for following common sense.
Also, because I don't believe you, I challenge you now, Felix, to bring us some proove to consolidate your claim that Germans behave on the web mostly in a way that they should be ashamed of. Please post!

@ spirelli

with what right you say in what direction phpwcms has to go in future?

you are the owner / founder of phpwcms ?

i criminalize germans as a group ? rofl ... in opposite to some others i don't come anonymous here and act like a bigshot ...

i has to show examples ... your postings good enough samples, why germans be loved so much in the most web projects ... :/

people like you and others always maybe minors, not all germans, but from where you get the right to take over any kind of projects actuall stand on your list ...

with people like you is no need for a discuss ... and thx for the personal attacks ...its only show more of you real face ...

fact is phpwcms is the project of the author, so o.georgi decide where he want go in future, in what languages and other details ...

if you have a wish you can please him to give your wish a chance ... not more ...

if you have learned to akt more mature. i see no problem to discuss other things with you.. in this discuss actuall i'm not more interessed.

it only followed a style i see to much in over 10 years on the web.

feelX wrote:with what right you say in what direction phpwcms has to go in future?

see the first sentences from spirelli.

Phpwcms is headding towards version 2, and it is great to hear about and see the changes that will make it even better. While the technical side (what phpwcms can do) is the main focus of the development, there needs to be an awareness that there are many other things that influence the entire user experience and contribute to the success of phpwcms, such as ease of installation and use, performance, visual appearance, support and more. Phpwcms has got quite a lot going for it in these different areas, and I would like to just pick up on some of them.

it's an suggestion not an instruction. who can read is clear in the advantage! (frei aus dem deutschen)

cheers
rushclub

Thanks for your reply Felix.
I was just shocked enourmously by the last remark of your post:

is a shame how act germans at most on the web.

I did not even think that you were talking about me. I'm sorry if I
reacted too strongly. No further discussion.

------

Everyone else: I apologise if I have in any way offended people
with my post that started this thread. I just wanted to share how
I feel phpwcms could be improved. Of cause I am not the owner,
and I will think twice in future before doing anything other than
responding to peoples' problems.