Help us, help you

COMMUNITY - Forums: front and center

I think this would be very helpful. I noticed that yesterday that every time I go to ellislab.com I have to click around to stumble into the community. Of course I just setup a bookmark now, but for new users they can head straight there. Another thought that occurred to me for the community, is to devote a block of time each day or every other day or something to commit to the Fourms. It’s going to take an effort from both EllisLab and the community to make EE a “popular” cms. At least for a while, each of us could commit to 30m or whatever at set intervals of our choosing to spend time reading through latest posts, trying to answer even if we don’t have “the answer”, etc. Something like this would greatly help everyone out as well as show the EE team that it’s worth investing the in the forums.

Hi Andy, could you explain how you would make the forums front and center? On the current site the forums are two clicks from the homepage, and the new site will have a similar structure in that regard, so I would love any feedback on how you would make them more obvious, keep in mind they currently can’t be a link in the main nav. I like you thoughts on forum participation, I would like to see if we can get some commitment to that.

Forums: front and center

I would say, Community front and center in general. But probably call it something other than community. I visit the forums through a bookmark because I never remember how to find it and nothing on the EL website says “hey, go here to be a part of something cool”.

Hi TJ, on the current and future site we use Community as an umbrella section for everything that is related to the community surrounding ExpressionEngine. Are you suggesting we remove the forums from that umbrella and make them their own thing?

Don’t hide the Slack channel. I mean, most people will find it eventually, but its existence is not exactly advertised

Hi Ingmar, Slack is a pretty new addition to the community section hence its placement, but we do send folks to it via twitter, email and support all the time. On the new site it is better highlighted and more accessible.

I agree with a lot of the suggestions, especially echo much said by Stephen Callender above. There needs to be learning resources right on the site, beyond the docs and forums. It’s too hard for many new people to find some of these resources on the web, especially since tutorials and books out there are still only for EE2. When a dev is researching a new product, they want to see some examples under the hood as easily as possible. When I learned years ago, if was the Mijingo webcasts that made it click. Before that, I was lost in changing my way of thinking to EE, coming from page based CMSs. However, those are now outdated, and Michael Boyink is also out of the EE game. EL needs to produce or partner to reproduce similar tools for EE3 available right here.

Hi Jeremy, I agree, and that is why I want to make educational resources for ExpressionEngine a top priority going forward. When I first came to EllisLab, something I wanted us to accomplish was to “Make awesome, and teach people how to use awesome” This is something the whole team still very much agrees on, and we are all dedicated to doing both. ExpressionEngine 3.0 was step 1.

Some good stuff posted so far. Here are a few quick ideas, some similar to ideas above. - refresher blog posts, tutorials, etc. with new/old features of the CMS. I forget about new features often if I read about them initially, but don’t implement them right away. - Real-world examples of features. Sometimes just looking at tags and variables in the docs isn’t enough to tell me “this will solve this issue you are having”, or “this will make doing this easier”. - more people need to visit the forums to get/give support(including me) - Ellislab employees and/or other EE experts should post helpful blog posts to third-party sites, Smashing Magazine, for example. This will help attract new users. EDIT: holy crap, I joined these forums in 2009.

Hi Mike, thank you for the long time patronage, we appreciate it! I agree with everything, and we want to make it all happen! But I would like some guidance on posting to third party sites, like Smashing Magazine. Is that a form of advertising? How would we go about accomplishing that?

Ellislab employees and/or other EE experts should post helpful blog posts to third-party sites, Smashing Magazine, for example. This will help attract new users.

I think this is VERY important to expand the awareness.

Hi Jeremy, I’d ask the same question to you as well. Is that a form of advertising? How would we go about accomplishing that?

I was just thinking of one thing that might bolster the forums is to have more than just EE related items here. For example a forum channel for sharing snippets of code, sales, meet-ups(i think someone mentioned that) , favorite resources, cool projects we are working on, integrating with other products (i.e. discussing CRM integrations, or SSO ). In other words, helping make the forum as the meeting place for the community by giving us a safe place to talk about many areas of our business.

Hi Andy, So more varied forums and categories? Or would a general hang out type of forum suffice?

An off-topic area like we have in Slack might help too with general community and friend building (although I’ve been disappointed more people haven’t joined that Slack channel so maybe not).

Hi TJ, do you mean the hobbies channel? I think maybe the content of that channel makes it seem like it is only for people with hobbies? Maybe not?

As a wannabe, design child who found EE back in 2007, I thought I write few words too. note: Im not coder or real developer, Im just a dude who loves to make(trying to) sites for me and close family/friends since I dropped out from Ad-business few years ago. Back in 2007 there was a lot of people who shared, helped and provided good working examples of codes when someone asked “how”. There was no such thing as “this sounds like a paid support issue” back then, and at least I got help almost everytime I asked a stupid or a simple question after I had tried everything I could but no success. I then came here to EL Forums, posted and very often got a desent answer that helped me to figure out how I can make things happen. Since then pretty much has happened. Either people are too busy or money is too important now-a-days (or there is no time anymore for people to share and care). What I wish from my point of view is the following: - Ready to tryout codes for core functions following with clear documentation and tips where you might use them. Layouts, channels, forms etc. - Take no offence when someone old/new user is asking for a bit of a help, it might take that 10-30mins of your time out from your job/main work but if you do know the answer and can provide an simple example, why not to share that? It doesnt take away your customers I think. Money is way too important today or there is no longer that much heavy EE users/devs hanging around internet anymore to share and care? - videotuts, free for beginners, paid for complex/company projects. - Code snippet archive within EE docs or even better, there and here. Also, I’ve always loved the way how Solspace add-ons are done. There is clear examples and there is even ready to install demo-templates and beyond that, they have been nice every single time and tried to pinpoint where to look’n read when asking something. I have now just one EE3 installation live and still I do not even know what I could do more with core vs EE2 core modules. Does that tell something, figure out? I also do not like that conversation is so spread now-a-days. There is too much different channels. You should center the community somehow under one sign-in instead of having to go here and there. Centering saves our time and yours. I have been the pain for many of you in the time I’ve been here, but also in the “busy days” even I tried to help others here at the forums because I was here daily bases to read and look and sometimes even I did have an idea how to help others when found questions about something related to ee templating/codes. That sure is a miracle 😊 Today, I hardly visit any of the EE channels because its too money-centered. Read: Very often someone is pointing out that the Q I asked is more likely something that I should pay to get an answer. I know its business but still. I hardly ask that hard ones, I think. Anyhow, tutorials, snippets, better docs(they are good but good real-use examples are missing). And be more present also here. Get back to blogging with ideas and how-to’s. Smile and share. I had something else on my lil mind but lost it. Might re-post when I hit the light bulb again 😊 Cheers

Hi Riverboy, thank you for the input, we really appreciate it. I promise you that we care about a lot more than just money here at EllisLab, but we also have to keep the business running so that we can have a website, and software to use. We’re working towards nearly everything you’ve listed here, and I hope you’ll find in the coming months and years that we’re really all about making and teaching awesome.

Hi All, EE user from Italy. Many good stuff posted so far, and i agree with a lot of suggestions First of all, I really appreciate the fact that EllisLab has increased their online presence for support (easy to find Derek offering supports on Slack), there is an active involvement with the community. I make some EE add-ons, hashed together with my limited brain power. I’m not selling them, I’m not asking for anything in return. If you find them useful, go ahead, fill your boots and finish that job off. Got a problem or a feature request? Get in touch and I’ll do my best to set you right. If I can’t help, I’ll let you know without wasting your valuable time. I’ve built this handful of add-ons out of a genuine interest to learn, with a genuine desire to give something back for the years of support I received from users on the ExpressionEngine forums. Users whose advice and interest was not included as part of my ExpressionEngine purchase agreement. The above is an excerpt from a blog post by Iain Urquhart Allow 3rd party developers to distribute and support their wares on the EE forums We need to get back the Forum on track and the community spirit! Integrate the Slack Channel with https://muut.com/blog/release/slack-integration.html as suggested by <dwg-andy> Ciao

Hi Lincoln, thanks for the feedback! Some good ideas here. We would like to have a more centralized add-on market, where support and purchases can be made from a single location. We like that idea. I will look into the slack integration.

In my opinion EE is very much focussed on the English speaking market. For example, there isn’t a lot of information to be found in Dutch, German, Italian ofr French. We tried to set up something (http://expressionengine.nl/) a few years ago for the Dutch market, but didn’t really get around to it. However, i still think it would be good to offer end client targetted information in different languages

Hi Jelle, that is a great idea, and we’d love to provide that stuff. Unfortunately we are an English speaking company, and we don’t have the resources to offer translations or information in other languages, even though we really would love to. We really have to rely on third parties to do translations.

For getting into EE, I think what’s missing is help to see the big picture from a practical side of how you might build a site. I’m more referring to a ‘visual guide to EE’s parts and how they go together’ sort of thing than just an example site or two. I would imagine this is hard to re-approach “through the eyes of new users” once you know the ins and outs of EE… In the docs, I personally always appreciate more, more, more example code, as that’s how I seem to learn the quickest. I think the barrier could be brought down to coding add-ons as well if there were simply more well-coded / good examples. The forum could be great again for community building and help, but to make that happen it needs some love. I appreciate the clarity and ease of using http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com (especially when adding code samples). Because of the format it seems quicker than the forum, at least for gathering existing answers. Choosing one of the two to promote as the community choice for answers would seem to be the best way forward. If it’s the forum, then improve the features. Slack is great, and seems to be growing in use. Not sure what the solution is though for archiving some of the killer tips dropped by the EE community. So, having said all that… There does seem to be one area that is always difficult to find answers for – in particular for newer users: The viability of some of the widely used 3rd party add-ons. Where do you go to find out any real world info on add-ons? It’s so scattershot, and yet critical (at least for me), when building sites. Not sure what the answer is, but devotee isn’t it. Maybe an ellislab hosted feed of select add-ons with their latest release and what version of EE it supports. Maybe that links to a sub-forum for each add-on? I’m going to look at this post later and wonder why I can’t put 2 thoughts together clearly, but there it is 😊

Hi Travis, Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it! I think we are on the same page regarding more and better educational materials coming direct from EllisLab, this is a goal and I’d like to make it happen soon and quickly. We are working on improvements to the forums, and they will be going forward our official community space, in addition to slack. We don’t operate or run the stack exchange, that is 100% community driven, so we don’t have any say in it’s growth or direction, or unfortunately content.

We would like to have a better solution to the add-on conundrum, but its a difficult problem anyway you slice it. That said we are thinking about it, and it is something we’d like to solve eventually.

Will the Pro Network ever be reopened to new members? Hard to attract new advocates when the door to the walled garden was locked and the key misplaced 😊

As Derek said yes it will be.

Hi TJ, on the current and future site we use Community as an umbrella section for everything that is related to the community surrounding ExpressionEngine. Are you suggesting we remove the forums from that umbrella and make them their own thing?

You’re asking me for answers? Golly gee. I didn’t know there was going to be a test after the lesson!

I don’t know that I have an answer for you exactly, I just know that the forums are currently hard to find — at least for me. Whatever my brain is looking for, it doesn’t find.

Hi TJ, do you mean the hobbies channel? I think maybe the content of that channel makes it seem like it is only for people with hobbies? Maybe not?

Yeah, maybe hobbies is off-putting or something. Out of 800-some members, only 40 have joined the #hobbies channel in Slack. But maybe that’s just because they don’t want to be more involved in the community apart of EE? Or possibly because Slack has its own discoverability issues with channels. In any event, it doesn’t feel like we have any off-topic area to be a community involved with each other beyond EE in the forums.

You’re asking me for answers? Golly gee. I didn’t know there was going to be a test after the lesson! I don’t know that I have an answer for you exactly, I just know that the forums are currently hard to find — at least for me. Whatever my brain is looking for, it doesn’t find.

:D Fair enough, I suppose they are a little too hidden on the current site. I’ll see if I can’t iterate that to be better for the new site.

Yeah, maybe hobbies is off-putting or something. Out of 800-some members, only 40 have joined the #hobbies channel in Slack. But maybe that’s just because they don’t want to be more involved in the community apart of EE? Or possibly because Slack has its own discoverability issues with channels. In any event, it doesn’t feel like we have any off-topic area to be a community involved with each other beyond EE in the forums.

I just assumed it was because people didn’t want to hear about board games, yoyos or Voyager (the only Trek) :D. To me hobbies does sound specific and maybe even a little off putting? Maybe if it was just General, or Hangout, or Lounge… It would attract more conversation off topic.

Hi Andy, could you explain how you would make the forums front and center? On the current site the forums are two clicks from the homepage, and the new site will have a similar structure in that regard, so I would love any feedback on how you would make them more obvious, keep in mind they currently can’t be a link in the main nav. I like you thoughts on forum participation, I would like to see if we can get some commitment to that.

I think part of it may be that at 2yrs I’m still new to the community. To me the community is more the people that are in the forums and slack rather than the Pro Network. Honestly I don’t even really no much about the Pro Network. Yet, when I click on “Community” from the main nav I get smacked with the Pro Network. I don’t even notice the little green button in the corner for the forums. When I see the Pro Network I think I’m on the wrong page. Below the Pro Network is the EE Jobs section. Again, not the community as I see it. Then we get to Slack. And then to some resource sites. For me, if we want people apart of the community, then The forums should have that large spot where the Pro Network is. Encourage people that this is an awesome place to come and talk. Learn from each other and grow your business. I would think the Pro Network should have it’s own spot on the site. To me that’s advertising for people looking to have an EE site made, not the the people that are in EE daily building their businesses on it. p.s. I promise I have nothing against the Pro Network..lol

Hi Andy, So more varied forums and categories? Or would a general hang out type of forum suffice?

More varied. Please no more “general” type rooms. I know that too many rooms thins everyone out as people tend to find a room to hang out in all the time, but too few rooms muddy the conversation. Yes, that goes for Slack as well. On Slack, I’d rather have everything separated out into specific rooms and the ability to view multiple windows at once, than one room where we are talking about databases and SEO in parallel. Like wise on the forums, I’d like to see more specific rooms. Example a room for SEO, but we don’t need SEO->Template Tags and SEO->performance optimizations and SEO->social media. Just one room for SEO topics. Like wise a code snippets room. We don’t need individual code snippets for templates, php, js, css, and COLBOL (at least not now), but just a room where I know I can search for useful snippets of code for something I’m trying to do.

thanks again for your time and willingness to converse.

I think part of it may be that at 2yrs I’m still new to the community. To me the community is more the people that are in the forums and slack rather than the Pro Network. Honestly I don’t even really no much about the Pro Network. Yet, when I click on “Community” from the main nav I get smacked with the Pro Network. I don’t even notice the little green button in the corner for the forums. When I see the Pro Network I think I’m on the wrong page. Below the Pro Network is the EE Jobs section. Again, not the community as I see it. Then we get to Slack. And then to some resource sites. For me, if we want people apart of the community, then The forums should have that large spot where the Pro Network is. Encourage people that this is an awesome place to come and talk. Learn from each other and grow your business. I would think the Pro Network should have it’s own spot on the site. To me that’s advertising for people looking to have an EE site made, not the the people that are in EE daily building their businesses on it. p.s. I promise I have nothing against the Pro Network..lol

OK, yeah that makes perfect sense, and I agree the current page is too heavily weighted in that direction. Here is what the current top of the Community page will look like for the new site. I’ve tried to make the forums a bit more strongly weighted, and reduced the amount of room dedicated to the pro net.

More varied. Please no more “general” type rooms. I know that too many rooms thins everyone out as people tend to find a room to hang out in all the time, but too few rooms muddy the conversation. Yes, that goes for Slack as well. On Slack, I’d rather have everything separated out into specific rooms and the ability to view multiple windows at once, than one room where we are talking about databases and SEO in parallel. Like wise on the forums, I’d like to see more specific rooms. Example a room for SEO, but we don’t need SEO->Template Tags and SEO->performance optimizations and SEO->social media. Just one room for SEO topics. Like wise a code snippets room. We don’t need individual code snippets for templates, php, js, css, and COLBOL (at least not now), but just a room where I know I can search for useful snippets of code for something I’m trying to do. thanks again for your time and willingness to converse.

Makes perfect sense. We’ve reduced the rooms in an attempt to simplify, but perhaps we swung too far one way. Definitely something we should discuss internally.

Thank you Andy!

Hi James,

In terms of marketing, the current logos and professionals network are great but some (shareable/embeddable) videos perhaps which demonstrate the capabilities of the platform, the CP etc etc, perhaps showcase some major (non-controversial ; ) sites which run EE.

Check out what Campaign monitor offer here:- https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/ - this was hugely helpful in providing content for our new site (https://propellerglobal.com/email-marketing)

Have a look at the video bottom of the page. The guides at the bottom of this page are also great:- https://www.campaignmonitor.com/agencies/

This is the kind of thing I had on mind. Totally understand this material takes time and CM have spent a lot of time on it but it all helps us promote the platform.

Cheers Damien

Hi James, In terms of marketing, the current logos and professionals network are great but some (shareable/embeddable) videos perhaps which demonstrate the capabilities of the platform, the CP etc etc, perhaps showcase some major (non-controversial ; ) sites which run EE. Check out what Campaign monitor offer here:- https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/ - this was hugely helpful in providing content for our new site (https://propellerglobal.com/email-marketing) Have a look at the video bottom of the page. The guides at the bottom of this page are also great:- https://www.campaignmonitor.com/agencies/ This is the kind of thing I had on mind. Totally understand this material takes time and CM have spent a lot of time on it but it all helps us promote the platform. Cheers Damien

Thanks Damien, that does help a lot!

Hi Rob! Do you have any recommendations for making the Pro Network more high profile? We always send customer to the Pro Network when they require services beyond what we can offer. As for the second suggestion, are you wanting us to host a more robust showcase of sorts? Or do you think that is something that agencies should offer?

The first thought is to promote the network more, maybe more prominent on the home page and the main EE page - wherever “public” clients may look for info, it’s just about reassurance.

Showcase - yes the general idea was to more “official” content, whether that’s showcase articles as you have now, or more in depth articles about how EE helped with a specific requirement rather than a full site build.

Hi Rob, The wiki will likely not be making a comeback, but we are wanting to create a new learn section for the site that will be similar, with tutorials, videos, templates, and code samples to get folks started and help them with more advanced items as well.

Yeh I guessed that about the wiki but good to know you have some learning stuff planned.

The first thought is to promote the network more, maybe more prominent on the home page and the main EE page - wherever “public” clients may look for info, it’s just about reassurance.

The new site will have the Pro Network linked from the homepage and the community landing page. So hopefully that’ll help a bit. We are always pointing customers directly to the Pro Network whenever they need help that falls outside our services. Lastly we do have some ideas and goals for the Pro Network that we’d like to add and roll out to help make it easier to leverage your inclusion.

Showcase - yes the general idea was to more “official” content, whether that’s showcase articles as you have now, or more in depth articles about how EE helped with a specific requirement rather than a full site build.

We’d like to offer more content of that nature, however, since we don’t build sites, this is something that third parties really need to write and submit for inclusion.

Thanks James, seems like you have a lot of things covered.

Thanks James, seems like you have a lot of things covered.

We are trying Rob! We super appreciate the feedback and suggestions, and I read and consider everything that “comes across my desk” I strongly believe I cannot do my best work alone.

I’d love to see some best practices guide in terms of server setup, common things that tend to create problems with different hosting environments. So many times I find myself re-opening stack exchange or forum threads from 5-6 years ago to find a solution for some weird server issue. There’s no list of common issues and configuration options that need to be set up for a flawless server setup for EE. Sure there’s the server wizard that checks the basics. Common issues I tend to have: csrf causing logouts for clients, gzip compression errors, xss file filtering. I know it’s hard to pinpoint what the biggest issues for most people are but surely you can share your ideal configurations for shared hosting environments.

Another thing that bothers me is the lack of materials for best practices for templates. Perhaps this could be a more in-depth tutorial on how to build a simple news portal, how to structure channels, single entry pages etc. A lot of times I find myself building out a huge structure to a site and then wondering if there was an easier way with less channels, less variables etc.

Setting up git was a huge undertaking for me, took me months to figure out all the details, variables and database issues and it’s still not as rock solid as I would like it to be. There’s quite a few articles written on this topic but I feel that it should be a part of your official documentation. Version control is a must for any software development and I don’t like that fact that I have to change EE’s core so much just to get it working. Database syncing is a pain for me and I frequently run into issues that have no clear way to solve.