Help us, help you

Michael Boyink is also out of the EE game.

Oh? 😉

I haven’t posted anything new to Train-ee in a while, true enough. And we’re focusing the marketing efforts of Boyink.com on Content Strategy, Development and Marketing.

But just to be clear - I do a fair amount of EE work yet.

(2009…feh! 😉

HAHAHA! Get back in the game, son! 😊

Michael Boyink is also out of the EE game.

Oh? 😉 I haven’t posted anything new to Train-ee in a while, true enough. And we’re focusing the marketing efforts of Boyink.com on Content Strategy, Development and Marketing. But just to be clear - I do a fair amount of EE work yet. (2009…feh! 😉

Well if that is the case… Great to hear! Sorry, but honestly, it’s been pretty radio silent on your end since EE3 was released. I’d wager your books and Mijingo’s webcasts were how a great MANY of us started. We’d love to see materials updated for v3.

Here’s the reality of the situation for me:

If I wanted to get Train-ee back into shape I would need to:

• Completely redesign the site.
• Go through all the site content & either update it or delete it.
• Completely re-write the book (including the use of a different sample website to build).
• Completely re-write the curriculum for the 3 day class.

My “seat of the pants” estimate to do all of that is a year of working at it fulltime (while keeping up with paid work).

Plus design costs.

Plus opportunity costs.

I have to plot those costs against unknown and uncertain sales numbers. Since EL is private & doesn’t have to publicly post financials, all I can go on is where Train-ee sales slipped to even before EE3 came out.

I went from selling 3-4 books a day to one a month. I cancelled classes because no one was buying seats.

Would I sell more if I had EE3 stuff? Sure, but how much? There were a lot of open seats at the conference.

I LOVE to help people learn EE - always have. It’s been the highlight of my career.

But with EE1 and EE2 the demand was clear. I was creating content to meet the needs of a busy developer community already buying the licenses. I was pretty sure I could make a profit on my investment of time and money.

And did.

These days, it feels more like training content needs to exist in order to drive sales. From a 3rd party provider perspective, it’s a bigger risk.

To be blunt: I can’t afford to take that risk.

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.

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).

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 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

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

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 Everyone,

I’m back from my post-conference vacation. I’m going to get caught up on this thread and reply as necessary, thanks for keeping the torch burning while I was away!

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 😊

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 😊

Yes. 😊

Hi James. This is great to see. Wish I’d have been able to make it to EEConf but, wrong hemisphere… From my point of view I’d like to see ‘did you know you can do this’ type material. A lot is left to work out for yourself and even though I’ve been working with EE for 5 years, I’m pretty sure I’m just scratching the surface. Full tutorials on things like template routing, performance optimisation etc wouldn’t go amiss along with code examples. Ryan Masuga’s EE guide is the kind of practical setup advice that Im talking about. I know it’s probably tricky but it also wouldn’t hurt to se Ellis explore some of the more powerful & well-used addons and what they can really do. Again Impretty sure Im not really using EE remotely to its potential. Marketing & promotional materials would also be great. We’re in a constant battle against WP & themes and it would be great to see some slick white-label materials which can be incorporated into proposals or videos which can be worked into our own site. Campaign Monitor are great at this kind of thing as a reference. Anyway, greetings from Brisbane and cheers for kicking this off.

Hi Damien, thank you for taking the time to reply here with your feedback, I appreciate it. Sorry we missed you at the conference!

I agree 100% with you on the educational materials, and I want to make those types of materials available and from our website. And I like the idea of “Did you know you can do this” That is exactly the approach I want to take to get us started down that road.

Could you give me some examples of “Marketing & promotional materials” that you’d expect or could use?

Thanks again!

Thanks for opening up this discussion! One thought that came to mind when we were discussing the community is maybe you could do some sort of customer onboarding email series after a first license purchase, introducing new customers to the various sources of information and community for ExpressionEngine.

Hi Jeremy, great idea! Derek brought up something very similar right before the conference, and I think it can work, my only concern is would that email be getting to the right person? Here’s my line of thinking. The license is most often purchased by someone that has purchased before, and the email would be redundant for that person, but the person the email would be most helpful to may never see it.

But as I told Derek, I think it’s a good idea, and we should try it. Even if it’s only helpful 20% of the time, its likely doing its job.

Don’t know if this fits here, but what bugs me is the very fragmented help/support community. Years ago, there was the EllisLab Discussion Forum (this one) and everything was fine ‘cause all where here and you could find help fast and provide help for otheres. Now, there is eecms-Stack-Exchange, there is the Slack-Channel, there is the devot-ee-Forums and there is this forum here. All with its benefits, and with all its disadvantages. Slack for example is surely great — if you catch the right time and people … otherwhise your question/issue gets lost in the shuffle. And previously discussed issues will never be found again (no archive, no really good search …). The Stack Exchange Channel is great, but could be easily swaped out with a good Discussion Forum. Great would be one ressource, one platform to get and provide fast and splendit community support. «As it used to be» with the old EE-Forum 😉 It does not have to be this forum — it could, but does not have to be … just re-centralized as before 😉 I guess this won’t even interfere with the new paid support subscriptions. But would be a great benefit for the community.

Hi Stefan, thank you for your input! Officially the best way to get support from EllisLab is via a paid support plan, the second best way is the Slack channel, and the third are these forums. I’d like to see the forums back to their old glory, but that would require participation from the community as there was in those days, when slack and stack exchange were non-existent or fledgling. Slack is fast and simple, and people seem to prefer that. Paid support isn’t for everyone, but it is the only way we can offer quality support at scale. The forums are great for building community and maintaining a record of help, and questions, but they require participation.

In short, I do not disagree with you, but the forums can only thrive if everyone works together. Which I hope we can work towards, together.

One question I regularly get from prospective clients when pitching for work is about after sales support - i.e. if we build the site and drop off the planet afterwards how easy would it be for them to find another EE developer to take over the reigns. While we intend being around for many years yet clients like to be reassured that their investment is safe. We have the Pro network of course but this would need a high profile in any promotional material. Another one, we often get asked if we can build a site that does XYZ, and while we know we can do it in EE we don’t actually have a live working site with similar features to show them. It would be good to have an extended case studies place where we can show clients EE doing all sorts of magical things.

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?