Are there any higher level developers on here, or just code hackers?

CMS & WordPress
41

This is an example of where my original question came from:

Within any true developer forum, this should be a super hot topic now, and should elicit dozens and dozens of responses, opinions, debates …etc. That thread had just 2 members involved, and it’s a month old. So that’s gotta say one of three things:

  1. There are no - or not many - mid to high end developers here (I say “mid” since responsive design should be any professional front end dev’s concern now)
  2. There are a few, but they are selfish and don’t want to share their “secrets”.
  3. There are a few, but they’re really, really busy and don’t have time to share their knowledge and secrets.

After a month I would expected most relevant members to find some time somewhere, so I’d rule #3 out.
#2 I would hope on good faith isn’t the case.
Which does leave the most likely situation #1.

And from looking into Linkedin groups from a suggestion earlier in this thread, that does seem one place that some higher end advice has move too perhaps. Early days yet, I’ve only just found a couple of groups.

42

Oh God yeah. I’ve lost count of the number of discussions I’ve had with people who basically only new Wordpress, and were convinced it was the best solution for everything.

IMHO, you should always be able to offer your client a handful of different CMS options, depending on the type of site required. And no, the client doesn’t choose from these options, you recommend the best one. I work with Wordpress, Website Baker, Vanilla Forums, Opencart, Prestashop, and a number of those minimal CMSs perch …etc). And if I have a client who comes to me with requirements that honestly aren’t covered by one of those, then I outsource or pass onto a colleague with the relevant knowledge to deliver the optimum solution.

It frightens me that some people go the “one size fits all route”, and maybe another group to place under the “code hackers” banner?

43

I think it is great that these newer web-based solutions like perch or page-lime are popping up because they fit a lot of the really super basic needs, for when even Wordpress might be overkill. I guess if I only have one hammer, I’m glad that hammer is drupal … but there are a lot of times when you’re buttering toast with a giant, super-sharp steak knife. It’s overkill for those that just need a butter knife, and that butterknife could be something like pagelime or perch.

For those needs where even drupal might be hard pressed … you can always go the MVC framework route (Zend, Cakephp, Symfony, etc.). That’s why I think the direction in enterpris-ish CMS’s will eventually gravitate toward the “CMS built on a framework” model. A niche where ExpressionEngine already has it’s hat in the ring (built on top of code igniter). Also Silverstripe and now even Drupal is starting it’s migration to the Symfony framework in Drupal 8, which is HuGE, huge news.

44

Now I think you’re being extremely unfair for no good reason and I find your three-point conclusion to be very ignorant of the valuable content this forum contains, provided you use the search function instead of scanning the results of a day or week.

If you do a search on “responsive design”, you get a bazillion threads discussing it, some at length and on an intellectual level, others less intense.

This is a community, and quite a tight one at that, and topics will not get discussed at length over and over and over.

Here’s one thread that discusses responsive design: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?852024-Responsive-design-important-or-not&highlight=responsive+design

And it isn’t the only one.

If you do expect every thread to contain a heated and thorough debate on whatever its topic, then yes, you will be sorely disappointed. However, even the more modern resources such as stackoverflow and its kin will have a handfull of high quality threads and a magnitude of threads with the same question that get very few responses.

45

Where I work, job after job has been involving creating a bridge between the clients’ CRM, and their Drupal CMS (in our case, we usually use a restful web service – custom or occasionally the services module). In some cases, like with Sugar CRM, this is a fairly easy task, since it’s written in PHP and because it’s so popular there are a lot of contributed resources and documentation out there.

But then there are certain cases where the CRM is more obscure, written in java and doesn’t have a very handy or well-documented interface for dealing with the outside world. Some of these are presenting us with challenges, and I’d LOVE to hear your take on this one. Namely … I’ve been seeing us run in to some situations where the CRM is almost driving the whole process. Almost like it is acting as the CMS and the CRM … and drupal is losing some of it’s significance. Almost acting as more of a framework or a glorified Apace server, in my opinion (and I tend to be opinionated about it).

I tend to be from the school of thought that the CMS should be the CMS. That it should import the data it needs – namely content-related data – from the CRM where it originates, but that it should otherwise be able to act completely autonomous from it. What is your thought in these situations? Do you think there is a right or wrong way of looking at it? Or do you just figure … whatever way works best for the client and fits their needs is the right way?

46

Yeah, the CRM/CMS thing has been poking at us for years now and it’s still a bit of a murky subject.

It all started about 12 years ago we created a member only section on an ASP (classic) website for a professional society… Then we added an area for members to track their continuing education records. Then we created various levels of membership. Then we added a section for interns to track their exams while articling. Then we added a section for interns to log their work experience. Then we added the ability for members to be associated with Firms. Then we added the ability for members to associate their areas of expertise and finally we added reporting so that we could list out Firms and Members and Associate Members based on various filters.

Once we got to that point I recall thinking… Wow… There’s not much difference between what we’ve developed over many years of additions and reconfiguration and any Member Driven Social Network. It works really well but the downside with this particular project is that it is on an ancient technology stack and is a bit of a pain to maintain and extend. We’re currently in the process of moving it over to an open source solution.

We also built a couple of sites that consumed webservices from remote CRM’s… That made our lives quite easy. Give us a web service and tell us what you want us to do with it. We did that for another member driven organization and another place with a rewards card where they wanted customers to log-in and see how many points they had gathered, transaction records, etc…

Moving forward, I am trying to establish a standard for new builds that we use Drupal/civiCRM for our foundation however, I’m also keeping a close eye on Red Hen CRM which has been really busy with development recently and I think they might have even released an install profile or demo module recently. There’s also a really neat project called ERPAL (http://www.erpal.info/)… It’s German so I use Chrome browser and get it to do the translation. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

I agree about the CMS being a CMS and the CRM not messing with it… I’m not particularly fond of NationBuilder for that reason… It’s a CRM that wants to be a CMS too. I’d way rather have a the ability to do whatever I want with the CMS and still know that the CRM is hanging back just waiting for me to request some data.

civiCRM is not perfect but it’s the best I’ve found so far (still have to demo Red Hen). Making civiCRM expose its data to Views takes a little leg work but other than that it plays extremely well with Drupal. The biggest hurdle with civiCRM is documentation. I’m trying to be a good community member an add to the WIKI as much as possible but there are a lot of areas that I find difficult to find info for. The other issue in the CMS/CRM arena is that the line blurs between how much you need to be responsible for… Am I developer or have I now become an on-call HR resource :lol:

All that said, it’s pretty exciting stuff to work on. One of the initiatives I’m working on right now is creating a conduit between FileMaker Pro and civiCRM so that those of my clients who are managing their organizations using a Filemaker database can continue doing a lot of that from within Filemaker but they’ll get a member dataset from the civiCRM database. Anything they change in Filemaker will commit a change to the civiCRM database. That way they can take baby steps as they migrate from Filemaker to civiCRM. Of course in order to post events and that sort of thing they’ll have to login to the CRM online.

Cheers,
Andrew

47

[font=verdana]That happens a lot online. There are a lot of websites that used to be devoted to various aspects of web design or programming, that have shifted emphasis. A List Apart was one that I used to read avidly and learned a lot from, but gradually they exhausted the field of articles about useful, practical design tips and now it’s mostly about business, which hardly interests me at all. That isn’t to say that the quality of the website has changed, just the area it focuses on.

Similarly when I first came to SPF, I learned a lot of useful, practical things from the forums. These days I feel that my design repertoire – while in no way being comprehensive – is sufficient for what I need. I’m sure a lot of other people feel the same. There’s been a shift in the way people work. Far more people are now throwing together Joomla templates with a bit of Jquery splattered over them, and so that’s what people (and especially newbies) are more likely to ask about. Social media is another buzzphrase, but there’s only a limited amount you can say about it.

I guess as web design and maintenance has become more of a mainstream industry, it doesn’t have the same exclusivity that it used to, the same feeling of community among webbists that it once did. For most people it’s just a job, and they don’t see any need to engage with like-minded people to develop their skills – not when there is so much information available out there.

While there are interesting topics being discussed, experts usually hang around (as long as the topics are new, and they aren’t just the same old things being re-hashed time after time), because even experts can learn something new in that kind of environment. It’s when the questions turn to more of the “please help me with my homework” type, with no real serious engagement, that the experts are likely to feel undervalued and bored.[/font]

48

That’s all really interesting stuff. If you were in Chicago, you could get a very lucrative job in about 5 minutes.

Now take this situation right now you have with filemaker. And I’ll give you a hyptothetical: Suppose your client was really comfortable and familiar dealing with filemaker. And they want to take this a step further, and just say … I mark this as “published” in filemaker, it then automatically fires a requst to drupal, creating a record and publishing it.

To take things even a step further … they have a lot of relationships existing between various entities in their filemaker db. Relationships that need to be honored in drupal … so each drupal record has a corresponding “filemaker ID” that relates all of the drupal entities together. Filmaker has a few join tables as well, that of course we have to use in drupal. Client already has a URL structure set up, so filemaker also sends drupa the path alias for a page. There are also a number of categories that various pieces of content would fall under, and heirarchical relationships within those categories – all managed in filemaker, so drupal doesn’t even have to concern itself with it.

Now I’m fairly new with my company, so far be it from me to rock the boat so quickly. But I have a really hard time not expressing my dismay over the fact that we haven’t consulted them on an alternate way of approaching this, where Drupal and the clietnt’s CMS might be able to be more “de-coupled,” and to act more autonimously. I have no problem with them sharing necessary info between the two. That’s the whole point, but I still believe at heart that we’re inviting future disasters if we allow their CRM to act as a CMS … and drupal (a CMS frameworkd) to act as an apache server.

And what really drives me crazy is that none of the other developers seem to think this is unusual. Is it just me? [/rant]

49

Yeah, I’ve thought about leaving my comfortable little post on the west coast to do some traveling/working… I get short term contract offers quite a bit and one of the guys I work with is down in San Francisco working on a project right now. I’m just too comfortable where I am.

That’s the goal of our current project. It will plug into Filemaker and provide a conduit to the CRM dataset. They’ll open up Filemaker as usual but instead of dealing with a filemaker database on the machine or local network, it will talk to a dataset that is part of the civiCRM system. We have some checks and balances to work out so that we don’t have any collisions and so that we can roll back transactions, etc… but we’re going to keep it as simple as possible and no try to make Filemaker do anything that it doesn’t already do.If they want to do advanced real CRM work, they’ll have to log into civiCRM.

The first thing we’re doing is auditing their current Filemaker Pro database and refining the existing Filemaker DB to make sure it is as streamlined as possible… There’s no point in taking a garbage database and importing it into the CRM. We’ll take the clean database, import it and add whatever custom fields we need but only the necessary fields. I often see situations where they don’t have a “notes” field so instead of making a notes field, someone will start using a receipt number field or something to cram notes into. Happens all the time. We’ll make sure they have all the fields they need and cull the ones they don’t.

Yeah, that’s starting to sound complicated… I would suggest auditing the system as a whole and making sure that the best tool for the job is being used where it needs to be used… When I import contact records into civiCRM, it will create a unique ID for every record it makes (obviously) but I can retain internal ID’s as well and create as many custom fields as I need. I imagine the same can be done with the new Red Hen system as well as Sugar, etc…

As far as maintaining joins and relationships, it sounds like Drupal is going to be the CRM rather than having Filemaker, Drupal and a dedicated CRM… I’m sure it can be done and there are a lot of people in the Drupal CRM, Drupal Group who are working to that end but I wouldn’t attempt it without a really good plan which is why I’m putting my efforts into civiCRM. I can import the CSV data from Filemaker or wherever and let civiCRM create it’s own relationships between contacts, memberships, groups, etc… Drupal is the CMS, civiCRM is the CRM and Filemaker (once we complete the Filemaker plugin) is just an interface o the contacts database.

Yeah, that’s always the challenge when you’re conscientious, trying to future-proof your work and look after the client’s best interests. I inherit an awful lot of stuff from shops that just get the job done but aren’t around to take care of the client after the fact. I think it will serve you well in the long run but I guess until you’re more established in your role, you’ll have to just go with it…

I would be suggesting to your management that they do more planning and auditing of these types of jobs before they start production. It’s hard to do because everyone is all excited about getting down to work but it’s the only way to make sure that all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. That said, even when you do lots of planning scope creep kicks in and you’re fighting to keep everything on track.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m blown away that some things are done without anyone taking notice and saying hey… This doesn’t make sense! Either they’re too lazy to speak up or they’ve spoken up in the past and have been beaten to submission… I worked for a place like that once… Just shut up and work was their motto :rolleyes:

Regardless, I think you’ve got a bright future ahead of you because you don’t rest on your laurels and keep learning as much as you can… It’s how we survive!

50

Thanks for your opinion. There are other experienced users that have given differing opinions, but I’ll take yours on board.

And that was a single example, there were other thread examples I could have posted too.

Anyway, I’m now just appreciating this conversation, which has become fairly constructive, wouldn’t you say? :wink:

51

The problem being that in the technical area, things are constantly changing, so if those initial members aren’t around anymore, or new members of a similar level, then discussions in areas such as responsiveness, custom theme development, changes in dev languages uses and methods, aren’t covered with the depth they could be.

I mean, all joking aside, but a forum full of so many Joomla questions and posts can’t really be regarded as a “serious” developers forums. Sorry, I know there may be those wh will argue this point, but to me it was an alarm bell.

52

But maybe this trend isn’t just a sitepoint issue. I’ve been searching LinkedIn groups, and so far have only come across Wordpress groups where the majority of discussions are about what theme to use, rather than how to develop themes from cratch …etc. So is it that the more advanced users are just too busy, or are they selfish and want to keep all their knowledge to themselves in this competitive development world?

53

As has been said by others, the method of distribution of knowledge has changed. A few years ago, you’d find a blog here and there (quirksmode.org), or a magazine (e.g. Alistapart), forums and mailing lists, whereas now it’s much more common for many developers who are heavily involved in a topic to use their own blog (or write a book) to distribute their knoweldge (e.g. Ryan Irelan of Happy Cog for ExpressionEngine who created EE Insider, Jeff Star who publishes good info on perishablepress.com for WordPress stuff), and so on.

While the distribution of information has gone more mainstream (e.g. Stackoverflow, Facebook, Twitter groups, LinkedIn, etc.) it’s also become a lot more granular (micro) at the same time.

Added to that comes the fact that many of the SP regulars who have been here for years and have accumulated a lot of knowledge will not all post in the same excessive vain they used to. Not everyone likes giving an answer they’ve given a thousand times before (fatigue, redundancy, repetition). Not everyone will want to debate a topic they’ve debated a thousand times before and move on or become more quiet.

As for Joomla, actually, I do see some people asking Joomla specific questions, but Joomla isn’t one of the popular CMSes discussed here at all and usually don’t get much in the way of responses. I’ve never seen a thoroughly debated Joomla topic here ever and I’ve been here for almost a decade now…

54

Well just at the moment there seems to be a fair few on the first page of one of the forums. But thank god to hear they usually get short shrift!

(waits for Joomla user to vent his wrath on my comments) :wink:

55

I think it’s the subject matter and Wordpress audience. Not to say there aren’t deep developers working in Wordpress, I know there are but the vast, incredibly vast majority are just making McWebsites using Wordpress and either don’t have the skills or interest in creating themes from scratch or modules, extensions etc… It’s not a bad thing I guess; disappointing when it’s your area of interest but that’s the way it goes. That’s why I jump on Drupal threads as quickly as I can. It gives me a challenge :smiley:

56

But there are people working at a much higher level on Wordpress, look at the theme frameworks (the good ones) that are out, and new ones that keep coming out. And I’m at the stage of wanting to create my own framework, not of the level of complexity of Thesis (for example), but a good core that I can then use for building a range of different themes on for sale.

And selecting Wordpress is less to do with better or worse than Drupal or Expression Engine, but shear potential client demand. Very much a business decision.

But I do agree with you there are many who are calling themselves Wordpress “developers”, and yet their “development” is limited to building via a drag and drop interface such as Headway or similar, and then wonder why I act a little shocked that they’re building paying clients’ sites via this method. Did anyone say “bloat”??

57

If you have WP questions the reason no responses are coming in is because “hard core” developers despise that platform. It is a gigantic mess from a technical stand point and no one that takes programming quality seriously really uses it. I should say very few considering it is geared toward what you mentioned and “hard core” programmers enjoy and take pride in doing things themselves avoiding other peoples poor decisions when possible/budget allows. Most of use just don’t want to be bothered with that crap unless forced because it is crap despite what any designer, business owner, etc says from a programming stand point. I just find it hard to believe that is hasen’t been gutted yet considering the code quality and popularity. I guess it all comes down to if it isn’t “visually” broke don’t fix it. Not something I want to be apart of. WP has potential to be a great platform considering its admin is well done from a user standpoint but the whole code base just needs to be gutted, technically.

To add you are in the CMS section. Most of the questions here are from people who have no clue what they doing when it comes to web development. I very rarely decide to post simply because everyone here seems to have on jobs that they are not qualified for. Which is fine but I’m not going to support it. They can problem solve themselves like everyone else if they want to take on things above their level of understanding. Same case with all the stupid jQuery questions over in the javaScript forum.

58

Funny enough, when you look at some of the frameworks, it’s pretty obvious there are some very technically advanced developers working with Wordpress. And as I commented above, it may have everything to do with the business side of things.

59

No-one disagreed with this, your post was entirely ignorant of the forums history, members and content.

It’s clear to anyone reading your posts that you would actually have plenty to learn from the members here.
There is a lot of knowledge on responsive design, theme development and different development technologies.

I’m not sure why you think CMS development is the pinnacle of complexity and sophistication either. It’s been done a million times, I would far sooner build something new and innovative.

What people are saying in this thread is that there is a change in the way people post these days.
People used to follow each thread and write lengthy replies, that’s changed. There is so many great resources available online that people will sooner link to those or give people good books / screencasts to read than discussing at length.

60

Well, it seems they may have. But not important.

But I never brought up the forum history, others did, so not really sure what your point is. I was asking about the current situation, which quite a few experienced members have provided informed viewpoints on.

It’s clear to anyone reading your posts that you would have plenty to learn from the members here.
There is a lot of knowledge on responsive design, theme development and a wide range of technologies.

There may be, but I got no response to a thread I posted about a more advanced subject, and looking through recent threads the technical level of their subject matter was in the low to mid level. Again, my query is with regards to the current situation with the forum, as with the speed of technology changes most old threads have a use by date.

I’m not sure why you think CMS development is the pinnacle of complexity and sophistication either.

Where have I stated that?

And as someone who for the most part of my 15 years in the industry has been project manager on larger projects with bank and higher end corporate clients, working with custom developer propriety CMSs, and also with mobile app development, I’m pretty sure I have a reasonable grasp of where off the shelf CMSs stand in the technological scheme of things.

What people are saying in this thread is that there is a change in the way people post these days.

Umm, yeah, I’m getting that, as I’ve indicated and discussed above.

People used to follow each thread and write lengthy replies, that’s changed. There is so many great resources available online that people will sooner link to those or give people good books / screencasts to read than discussing at length.

I’d love to get a response like that. Unfortunately here and one or two other places I’ve asked some similar questions, I’ve had no response at all, or responses that indicated the responder had no idea what I was talking about.

But the issue/situation/trend that I brought up seems to be one recognised by many, if not you. I have also been contacting colleagues with regards to suitably advanced resources for Wordpress development, and there does seem to be a lack of them around. Now whatever the reason for that, and whatever channel/form suitable resources take nowadays, I am trying to seek out those. Sitepoint may indeed have information of value to me in some areas, but in one or two areas that I am looking for technical help on right at this moment (ie. theme development for sale, advanced theme framework information), from my browsing & searching of the forum it doesn’t have the information I need, nor it appears those actively contributing with the information I’m after. Hence this thread, and other similar questions I have asked via other channels.

Now I guess with the aim of contributing constructively, you could continue to be defensive about a forum which you have obviously received a great deal of benefit from (I’m confident you wouldn’t have wasted your time posting 3,710 times otherwise), or appreciate that an “outsider” may actually have a valid viewpoint coming from “fresh eyes” on the subject. My observation doesn’t make sitepoint any “lesser” or otherwise as a resource, just different from what I’m currently looking for it would seem.