Food for thought - a marketing perspective

MODx Team:

You have an admirable piece of work here.

I have been studying it for the past couple of weeks now, full time, and I assure you, I am not a stranger to the CMS world.

I believe that this has every potential to be much more than a CMS platform. Indeed, between the core minimalization, the event-driven framework, data abstraction, asynchronous data retrieval (XMLHttpRequest), and plug-in architecture (among other things), I see every potential of this work as a base for the development of dynamic, n-tiered, web-based applications (think RIA).

I plan on being an active contributor to your work as I begin leveling off on the learning curve. In the mean time, however, there is just one thing that bothers me, and I just thought I would voice it as a "For what it’s worth...".

I would revisit making FCKeditor the default. Yes, it’s just a name, and it’s a fine editor, but I fear my clientele would find it offensive, were they to become aware of it. They would not know that FCK stands for the author’s name.

It is indeed unfortunate that the author chose to use an idiom pattern that happens to coincide with a particular pattern on the vulgar side of the English language. A poor choice in judgment, if not down right vain.

As there are many fine editors to choose from these days, I am not willing to risk offending my future clientele with this editor.

I have been in this business a long time (remember Mosaic?), and I know that first impressions count heavily - unfortunate, but true, nonetheless.

Again, this is just from my own "For what it’s worth..." department, but you folks seem eager for constructive feedback. This is not a technical one, but one strictly from a marketing angle.


Jim

Thanks so much Jim!

We should be releasing both TinyMCE and Xinha as options in the very near future. We’re also gonig to enable developers to quite simply create "custom" distributions and installers with all the resources they prefer. It’s all going to be very, very cool indeed.

As far as the learning curve goes, we’re working on shortening that too. This will happen primarily in two phases. First, the default content is currently being competely overhauled. I think you’ll find the new defaults to be pretty helpful on many levels at putting up robust sites quickly.

Secondly, is a total rewrite from scratch of the entire Manager and most of the API. Along with this rewrite, you’ll find a lot will be consolidated, so you won’t have to come to grips with so many obtuse and non-intuitive terms for different things in MODx.

The default content release should be out within 5 days. The manager rewrite has been going on for months, and is starting to come together (although nothing that’s publicly viewable or able to be commented on just as of yet... we’re still working through some architectural issues as we consolidate things and make it more robust).

Your thougths about MODx becoming much more than "just a CMS" is also right-on 100% with my personal goals for the project. I want this project to be one of the most disruptive-technology pieces of web software ever!

Looking forward to more insighs and feedback... thanks so much!

Quote from: Jim at Sep 07, 2005, 01:13 PM

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I would revisit making FCKeditor the default. Yes, it’s just a name, and it’s a fine editor, but I fear my clientele would find it offensive, were they to become aware of it. They would not know that FCK stands for the author’s name.

It is indeed unfortunate that the author chose to use an idiom pattern that happens to coincide with a particular pattern on the vulgar side of the English language. A poor choice in judgment, if not down right vain.

I couldn’t agree more. This is one of many reasons I don’t like FCK.

hmmm, what would the creator say to changing the name of it?

In a sense, it sounds like that the editor wouldn’t work with a name like that.

also, it might be a good chance to pull in the creator of the editor in on the project and/or exhange links.

I tend to agree on the first impression to the edtior name.

I may be wrong, but aren’t there only a couple of places where someone could find the name FCKEditor? I think the actual Plugin name and the Rich Text Editor option in the System Configuration would be the only place where the name is shown. Most users wouldn’t have access to see either of thse areas, right? If someone really wanted to get rid of the name it wouldn’t take more than a couple quick edits to the Plugin.

Hmmm,

Ok, let vote!

Who’s for the name change? Please say indicate Yes or No

PS. We can change the plugin name to "Default RichText Editor" or "Buit-in RichText Editor". The only problem is that it would not upgrade or remove previously installed FCKEditors.

yes...please!

Yes, please

I agree. Yes, please.