MODx - End user target | MODX Community Forums

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wendy Reply #61, 20 years, 6 months ago

Hey RussLipton, Yours is totally right in our current state, but my previous LONG post is just a suggestion for the long term plan that need to be considered even when we are still in our current state right now.

I’m more to people who like to look and plan forward. So all my suggestion need to be diggest from this current state to the long term planning.

Btw, I took some time in digesting all my own statement from previous post and fix it wherever I think a little bit off from what I want to express, and with my limited english of course. So hope it’s more understandable this way.

PS: I’m just the same user like you RussLipton, I have no position in this MODx team that I’m important compare to you, and that’s what I like about MODx. When I joined the team, I’m not aiming to rule out the community with whatever position that I can achieve on this community, instead I see it as a priviledge for me to help and support all users in this forum with all responsibility given to me. All users’ opinion are counted in this forum, and your opinion is very well stated. Sorry if it sounds like an attack to your argument, but when I type it, it’s not suppose to sound like that though.

Sincerely,
Wendy Novianto

Wendy Novianto
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davidm Reply #62, 20 years, 6 months ago

Well, lots of stuff has happened on this thread in two days !!!

Thanks Russ for your great post, and Wendy : man I’ll need to take some time to read it all ! I do need to digest all this (or more importantly, answer when I do have more time). I’ll try to make a synthesis of all this, though Ryan pretty much sums it up quite well ! And I always like to have Jason’s input, helps put things in perspective with Tattoo...

I’ll get back to this thread when I have more time... very nice input guys grin

!
Ball is in my court to make something out of it !

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RussLipton Reply #63, 20 years, 6 months ago

Wendy,

First, given my shallow understanding of ModX to date, I agree: ModX is not a framework a la RoR or CodeIgniter.

Second, it may be that ModX will ultimately put some of its tools directly into the hands of end-users by intent. That is beyond my knowledge of your plans. However, I believe it would be misleading to develop a marketing story that took this as a given (it may never happen) and, inevitably, created the impression that it has already been realized to some degree. The very act of defining a tier that includes ’end users’ would have totally created that impression for me, first coming to ModX.

(I should add that, if this is on the road map, I believe it is a mistake. I believe it would be far preferable for ModX to put customization tools into the hands of developers and designers as THEY serve end-users. Giving developers and designers the right architecture, features and support is a task that is already - and will increasingly be - impossible for real human beings. Adding end-users to that requirement asks for breakdown of systems and persons over time. In other words, let developers and designers target and support their natural users: end-users.)

You say, "Guys we do really need this well organized tier system. There is no way we can build a sucesfull software without any input from the top tier to the final tier end tier to the final tier, after all all software developments are all comes down to the end users."

Definitely.

But this can happen as ModX works with developers and designers who are in direct touch with their communities. And, to be sure, some ModX core team members themselves meet the needs of end-users. So, there will be plenty of communication and feedback. There need not be explicit inclusion of end users as a tier to be directly included within the already controlled chaos of ModX. I don’t believe it will make ModX any better for end-users to aim at that; worse, actually through distractions, misdirections, wasted energy and confusion of mission.

In fact, if the ModX team can separate itself from end-users, this encourages developers-designers to use ModX since there need be no fear that ModX itself is cannabilizing their customers.

You also said, "If we are talking about bringing MODx into something that it will disappear eventually from the end users who use the extended system build on top of MODx, MODx itself will soon fall apart."

I am sorry if I created a misunderstanding. I don’t mean that end-users won’t know that they are using a ModX-developed site. I don’t even mean that ModX won’t welcome end-users directly; only that ModX will welcome end-users who are on the way to being developers and designers. My Mom will never be on the way to that. She should not be (and need not be) welcomed into the ModX (specific; e.g., here) community.

(Actually, 99% of end-users could care less if they are using ModX or Etomite or TxP or TypePad, but that is another story. The 1% will find ModX or can be pretty easily helped to find it).

I respectfully disagree about the ease of defining classes of more-or-less advanced users. Again, I don’t believe it brings a benefit, but a loss. ’Developers’ and ’designers’ are well-defined industry roles with meaningful content. Indeed, there are beginning designers as well as advanced designers, to be sure, but why try to categorize this?

In other words, I believe the terms ’beginning’ and ’advanced’ are entirely othogonal to sound marketing of ModX and have arisen (understandably enough) from the debate about end-users. The confusion about end-users, in turn, stems from a disconnect about serving end-users with an awesome framework that is used by developers and designers (good) versus trying to reach and train end-users to become part of the ModX community itself (bad).

Once (or if) agreement emerges about the relative role of end-users, I believe it will be possible to dispense with the advanced users terminology to the gain of ModX. Tiers (if any, by the way), should be task-based, not relational (core) or knowledge (advanced)-based.

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opengeek Reply #64, 20 years, 6 months ago

Quote from: RussLipton at Mar 27, 2006, 11:43 AM

First, given my shallow understanding of ModX to date, I agree: ModX is not a framework a la RoR or CodeIgniter.

Although I would agree, the current "framework" and API is not directly competitive with RoR or CodeIgniter, MODx 1.0+ will be. I’ll be demonstrating very soon how our 1.0 refactoring will in fact make MODx an equally great tool for serious designers as well as serious developers (something I think the existing PHP Application Framework falls a little short on), and how the new MODx core will be implementing a derivation of the traditional MVC patterns optimized for PHP, that RoR, CodeIgniter, Symfony, Agavi, and many other frameworks have more or less copied from the aging Java Servlet model.

Quote from: RussLipton at Mar 27, 2006, 11:43 AM

Second, it may be that ModX will ultimately put some of its tools directly into the hands of end-users by intent. That is beyond my knowledge of your plans. However, I believe it would be misleading to develop a marketing story that took this as a given (it may never happen) and, inevitably, created the impression that it has already been realized to some degree. The very act of defining a tier that includes ’end users’ would have totally created that impression for me, first coming to ModX.

(I should add that, if this is on the road map, I believe it is a mistake. I believe it would be far preferable for ModX to put customization tools into the hands of developers and designers as THEY serve end-users. Giving developers and designers the right architecture, features and support is a task that is already - and will increasingly be - impossible for real human beings. Adding end-users to that requirement asks for breakdown of systems and persons over time. In other words, let developers and designers target and support their natural users: end-users.)
...

Russ, I agree whole-heartedly with your evaluation; MODx is ultimately a Content Management Framework, allowing Designers and Developers to rapidly develop and deploy highly-dynamic, standards-based sites and Administrators to manage them in the way that best fits the disposition of their end-user( s ). I definitely want MODx (and Tattoo) to stay highly focused on the task of being the best Content Management Framework possible, enabling Web Professionals (and organizations of) to eventually craft easily reproducable, niche core packages (i.e. aimed at a particular industry, client-type, etc.) that can ultimately improve the quality and efficiency of delivering custom client solutions in their particular area of expertise.

As Ryan has said since the beginning, MODx is not YAPS (Yet Another Portal System) and will not become one in any sense. It is an open-source platform to enable Web Professionals to use it to their advantage in producing a wide-range of web-based client solutions. If those solutions happen to be targeted at end-users then great, there’s your new open source business model.
wink

Jason Coward
Chief Architect @ MODX
http://www.jasoncoward.com | http://twitter.com/drumshaman | https://github.com/opengeek

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RussLipton Reply #65, 20 years, 6 months ago

Jason,

Is there a vague target date for ModX 1.0?

I could possibly see Admins as a third ModX user class (not that you focused on that) but even there I would guess that it is developers and designers who will decide what ’Admin’ (as well as the UI for admins) means for a given application/site as they specialize the framework for the requirement (e.g., skin and restrict the manager).

It is hard for me to envision a third tasked group besides developers and designers. That is nothing else than asking, "is there a third tasked group that will use the framework/CMS to ’make’ stuff for end-users?" I don’t think so. Even the core team members are ’nothing but’ developers and/or designers.

(Of course, core members have due authority based on their relationship to the ModX project; again, that is orthogonal to this.)

(Update: I have been wrestling with still further ways to allay understandable concerns that I am on some trip which would exclude end-users. Even looking past the desirable side-effect that end-users who aspire to developer-designership would be welcome, I have this picture in my mind: picture the ModX-specific community as a group of 10 or 100 or 1000 developers-and-designers creating awesome end-user applications/sites (for big bucks, I should add ;-). That teeny, tight, slick, integrated community of 100 (or 1000) will make applications that might be used by hundreds of thousands or millions of end-users. Think 37 Signals. So, is such a ModX community end-user averse .... or end-user friendly? I know what end-users would say: friendly.)

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davidm Reply #66, 20 years, 6 months ago

Quote from: OpenGeek at Mar 27, 2006, 04:38 PM

MODx is ultimately a Content Management Framework, allowing Designers and Developers to rapidly develop and deploy highly-dynamic, standards-based sites and Administrators to manage them in the way that best fits the disposition of their end-user( s ).

Again, I’ll drop by later to elaborate on all that has been said... In the meantime : thanks for this one : pretty catchy grin

!!!

Sure is stored in the marketing guys great quotes

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wendy Reply #67, 20 years, 6 months ago

I think the majority do agree with the fact that there will be no end-users (other than advanced designers and developers) to be the target market, even in the long run. Am I getting this right? FYI, I’m no longer arguing about the targeted markets. With these several paragraphs describes below, I’m just trying to sum up my whole discussion, and ended this debate in peace wink

If my understanding right, then the community of MODx will just be surrounding the advanced users (advanced designers and developers). So, down the road if several developers decided to extend this framework to support the end-users (newbies, bloggers, and kiddie web designers) and release it as open source as well, will this need to be released not under MODx banner? A good example will be Drupal and CivicSpace. From what I know, it seems to me that CivicSpace is aiming to a more specific target market, which is more targeted to the end users, and it runs under different banner I believe (correct me if I’m wrong). Will this be the only solution that we need to go, if we decided to extend this to user friendly system?

From my previous argument, I just want to have an open opportunity for this community to build an extended version on every new releases of MODx to be targeted into specific end-users market, but these releases will still be under the banner of MODx. I can see the benefit of this, when MODx get into forming a legal foundation. For now, the use of MODx is for private usage only, exclusive for a small company or freelancer. It’s a good market, but down the road, aiming directly to the end users might brought us into a much bigger market opportunity. I haven’t done my homework yet in researching the exact number and etc from this specific end-users market, but from my intuition, this end-user market will have a bigger impact in preserving this open source community.

I’m assuming, for now MODx is not ready for end users (newbie, kiddie designers, bloggers) yet. But I also assume that in the long run, there will be possibility for MODx to run its own community branch that support and release the extended version of MODx/Tattoo framework, which are targeted to the end users directly. If that’s the case, then I’m all for it. But if what you guys agree on is to exclusively stated that MODx only for developers and advanced designers, then I’m all against it (Btw , when I said "I’m all against it", I don’t really mean that I’ll quit from MODx community, but what I really meant is to keep persuading you guys until you guys decided to have products aiming at the end users grin

Man.. what a stubborn member I am wink

)

Sincerely,
Wendy Novianto

Wendy Novianto
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sottwell Reply #68, 20 years, 6 months ago

This might help with the "end user" issue, they install MODx for free.

http://siteground.com/modx-hosting.htm

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davidm Reply #69, 20 years, 6 months ago

Wendy, let’s remember that though MODx is not aimed at end-users in the sense that it’s not meant to be used by them to build websites. But it most certainly aims at end-users as editors of content !

There is a difference between a category of people : designer, coder, end-user and their use of the system : expanding the system (coding modules, plugins, snippets), building custom dynamic and rich websites (designing MODx powered websites) and using the system to administrate or edit content.

I think that’s a major thing to keep in mind there.
As a powerful and flexible tool, MODx is a system for professionnal or proficient people.

Note that I have added the "or proficient people" : I think part of the reason people get confused about who the target is, is that some of the target are not professionnals per say but what the net hype call "pro-am" : amateurs who are building websites out of passion and are highly skilled.

One of the things that makes MODx so compelling to professionnals (IMHO) is that for them it more or less fits like a glove to serve their purpose :

build custom websites : custom looks, custom data structure (with TV) and custom features (with modules/snippets/plugins). It’s a great asset to meet the client’s need.
be able to deploy them fast, and maintain them easy (which one of the great strength of MODx to me...). It also a great asset to offer tight prices and quick delivery times
help not prevent building standard compliant accessible websites. It’s a great asset for a website’s perennity, portability and efficiency.

Probably there’s lot more to add there...

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wendy Reply #70, 20 years, 6 months ago

Ok, after this long discussion, I think I will agree to what you guys are talking about.

Sorry for consufing some of you guys.

Sincerely,
Wendy Novianto

Wendy Novianto
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