Getting the word out

Just noticed that the number of new member is at 31. The join rate has slowed down in the past few days.

Not sure if this a good thing or a bad thing at the moment considering that many new ideas and directions are occurring.

Out of curisity, is a wider appeal propagation is being sat on until a name is decided or are there other reasons I haven't sat down to think about yet?


phew, so many things going on that I feel bad that I'm adding to the already huge mountain.

ops:

I would guess we'd want to at least wait until there is a first official release, even if we are still waiting for branding. It would be better once there is branding in place because it can be listed on opensourcecms.org, etc. There is a CMS mailing list as well as an open source CMS mailing list for example to market to.

I'm actually surpised at the number of folks already here :lol:

I'm voting with Dave on letting growth happen without promotion at the moment. Once we have an initial, tested version to release (and hopefully a name/logo/domain, too!) we'll move forward on the marketing front. Heh, then it gets _really_ interesting.

I'm actually surpised at the number of folks already here :lol:

I'm voting with Dave on letting growth happen without promotion at the moment. Once we have an initial, tested version to release (and hopefully a name/logo/domain, too!) we'll move forward on the marketing front. Heh, then it gets _really_ interesting.

Exactly, I think the 30+ people that are here are very interested in what's going and contributing in some way. That's better than 200+ people all asking how to install and use MODx, at the moment. We'll have that soon enough

Also, we're better off waiting for a solid release with branding because if too many people try it out too soon, they might be turned off. Better to give them a rockin' product right out of the box. Not that MODx isn't already rockin'! :wink:

I originally posted this as a "devils advocate" to feel out some of the feelings here.

I am extrememly glad that those who have posted back have the same feelings and I, too, am 100% behind the decision to wait for a solid release before trying to build up members.

Looks like we're really off to a solid start

I have an idea to help if you all interested!

We could conduct an interview between me and ModX developers about Modx and I will post the interview at http://opensourceCMS.com

With the kind of traffic we get now a day I am sure it will bring some traffic, interest and membership to this project. I hope opensourceCMS can help Modx like what we did for Etomite.

What do you think?

Please let me know.

Thanks

Chanh,

That would be really wonderful, and we'd very much appreciate the opportunity. I can't wait for you to see the end result!

:D

Thanks!

I was wondering where you guys stand regarding this "getting the word out" thing ? This thread has not been updated for some time, and since I am definitely here to stay and already getting the word out both in the french speaking community (through webmaster-hub), and through textpattern’s community I thought I would ask... and also share what I think.

The opensourcecms move was a nice one, and I must say I am grateful since I discovered MODx through their website. It’s amazing that I didn’t come to MODx before since I am scanning sourceforge.net and googling around about opensourcecms every week. It’s one of the rare cases when I won’t be the first french guy to discover a promising new CMS (and it kind of itches my ego ). But let’s get back on track...

I think right now MODx is reaching a defining moment of sorts : it’s definitely ready for production (few things need to be polished) and could be dubbed a release candidate (I know, every team has its way of naming and versionning their "baby" ). As I stated earlier in a previous message, there are some community life cycle issues that have to be taken into account.

Because of its flexiblity and modularity, it has the potential to attract numerous (and hopefully talented) designers and coders. Because it’s user friendly and has nice frontend editing, it could attract a lot of end users and amateurs, and will be a great tool to sell to corporation. Also, a lot of "details that matters" could make people switch from the competition, mostly the way usability seems to have been taken into account in the design of MODx (not even mentionning the AJAX-web2.0-hype-effect aka buzzwords compliancy )

All in all, you might end up with a fast and possibly overpowering growth of the community. Wrong case scenario, this "breaks" the current dynamics : often what happens when most members of the community are in "use-only" mode . Best case scenario : you attract enough coders, designers and advanced users to handle the case load (that would be pretty lucky !) In between, you can get many variations but in time you’ll get either one of those.

The trick is to manage this growth and for me, it means attracting coders, designers and advanced users first. One of the best channel to do that is forums. That’s where grey matter is, so to speak Or at least, where early adopters are... The best way to really score points doing some communication in other communities is carrying some credits where you talk about MODx. Exactly how I handled it so far. I spend most of my time on textpattern and webmaster-hub’s forum, where (imho) many talented designers and coders come rather frequently. I didn’t get many responses but the ones who responded are people I know to be of value (one of the admins@webmaster-hub, a plugin writer and some advanced users@textpattern-forum . I have their attention and now they are trying MODx and most probably some will come here and become assets to this community.

Of course, you’ll also need to make yourself known "where it counts" : opensourcecms for english-speaking target, Framasoft for the french speaking target (we french MODx users are writing an article that we’ll submit, in time, to them), xxxx for german... etc.

I still have to do a real brainstorming, and one thing we could do is list the "channels" we deem interresting and try to establish some planning, the "when" is as important as the "what" or "how". The other thing that would be interresting is to establish which people in MODx community could talk about MODx in other communities where they carry some credit, and if they feel like doing this kind of promoting.

David, spot on again!

I think you’ll be very interested and pleased with in some of what we’re just putting on the finishing touches regarding future iterations of MODx. Expect more very soon (i.e. the 24-hour clock is ticking...).

OK I’ll watch out
Seems that I jumped on the train right on time !

I’ve come accross references to the Tattoo name, I am curious to know how it came up, other than leaving a mark on the face of the CMS world But if I read between the lines, I should PM you to get more details...