An Open Discussion on WebsiteBaker's future

[Luckyluke]

I'm getting a little worried about this discussion. I experienced both Sharmpro and Johnp as very helpful and alert forum members over the past months.
But in this thread you seem like different persons!
Your tone of voice is quite unpleasant I must say. Both of you seem very exited all the time, and frankly speaking I find you insulting. Although both of you obviously are no native English speakers (nor am I), you normally communicate clearly. But in this thread anger makes both of your writings not only offensive, but often it is almost impossible to understand what you are exactly trying to say.
.........
Vincent

I concur what Vincent said here.
I'm concerned of the way of the conversation here.
Everybody here is doing a hard job. So, stop blaming each other.
I think we are going the wrong direction in discussions.
We all have to move forward.

Nobody has to be angry here. WB 2 is a very good product and if there are people in the community who wants to make WB 2 even better, that's a good thing.
And I'm sure WB 3 will be much better because it's a new design, technology etc. But I will tell more after the first release.

I shouldn't post here a lot because I'm new in this community.

I hope you don't misunderstand me, I don't want to point a finger at anybody. I love you all

Grtz,
Luc

[Macros]

Long time i say nothing ....

but i thing, this is the wrong way.

@Ryan: I thing, it's too late to do this how you want to do this. I like OpenSource, but i know how it should be... And here the community is splitet.

@kweitzel, rueberwurzel and so on: Alex is not so bad, all will think, he has his own head, his direction and sometime he will shoot too fast, but i think, WB will not stand here, without him. And in every good team i know, 1 people have to be a bad guy to get fast forward.

@LSW: think about come back, i know, you will make money, and you know me, for me this or the fork is a system to play.

@all: i know about more than 30 people who have gone and only leech WB and they have much nice features...

rgds.
J

[Stefek]

Hello LuckyLuke.

That's cool what you say.
Has nothing to do with "how long in the community".

Look at LSW, he was for a long time in the community and left nothing but trouble & crap.

So intentions are more important.

@Vincent
Thank fo your comment

@Sharmpro - come on. That's not the way to handle conversations. I know it's a hard time for some people,  but keep your maners.

@Ryan
Thank you for answering the most of my questions.
It was good if you change the name. For both - WebsiteBaker and your new Product.

I have some questions left, but I am very busy with my own business tonight.

Best Regards,
Stefek

[johnp]

@Vincent

I would like to know how you think my voice in this thread is insulting, offensive or unpleasant?

It was not choice to start this thread, it was Ryan's! After I emailed Ryan when a post
Regarding our intention to fork from Sharmpro was moved and I got in touch with
Ryan to get his permission to create a thread under

WebsiteBaker Development
https://forum.WebsiteBaker.org/index.php/topic,11671.0.html
in regards to a fork edition nothing more.

And as a reply to

I think we all should acknowledge that everyone in this community wants the best for all of us, so there is no need be mistrustful as you are.

I have only tried to be as fair and as pleasant as I can. I can't see how one nor you could
come to a conclusion that I might be insulting, offensive or unpleasant and further more
what could I have said that could bring you to such a conclusion? The Truth!

I am finding your last post to this thread not throughly though out and you probably did not
completely read through everything and for my English it's just fine.


Further more I would like to add to this I have done everything I could to get Ryan and I
to come to some kind of middle ground and it is hard to do when one fines getting in
touch with him is almost impossible

JP

[kweitzel]

@everybody:

Might I remind you that we are talking about the furture of this project and NOT about the personal behaviour of some people? frankly spoken, I don't see much of that.

Let me state some facts here that I was invited to share in a closed forum environment, which I will not do:

Code Select Expand

1) The Servers and different webspaces are located with people who are dedicated to
Website baker and not any faction or fork candidate

2) From what I gather this part of the infrastructure will stay dedicated to WebsiteBaker

And now my thoughts about the future:

As you have all seen my proposed Organization for the WebsiteBaker Community I will elaborate a bit more on that:

The should be leaders team which consists of 3 people. My proposed areas are "Community", "Development" and "Infrastructure / Operation"

- Community

The Community Team needs to cover all the work which has to do with community work (e.g. Forum, User meetings). Additionally that Team should cover Marketing and Press.

- Development

In the Development Team all work regarding the development of WebsiteBaker, split into core and core add-ons, as well as template- and add-on testing to ensure the quality of the official released materials. Also programming work for the different WebsiteBaker Sites should be covered there.

- Infrastructure

I bet you guessed it already, the Servers, Webspace and everything will be managed within the Infrastructure Team. They will do all the administration work. This team will also propose changes to the server and software infrastructure.

Now a couple of the tasks at hand here will require cross team work, which is something that will be ensured by the leaders. The leaders will also jointly decide on the direction (short and long term) and major changes. They will delegate some of the work required for fact finding to team members. The final decision on everything will lie in the hands of the leaders team ant not anybody else!

Now obviously you ask yourself how the community comes into action here ... i would expect the community to make suggestions to either the team members or the leaders team, whom will then have to act on this. As you can imagine suggestions like "I want this one to be chucked out" will be dismissed entirely.

Suggestion we do expect are:

• External Scritps to be included
• Marketing Operations
• User Meetings
• New functions to be created
• Team member proposals

Also finished code (bugfixes, new functons, etc.) should be suggested for inclusion.

Please, let us all work on this instead of this bitching around ...

cheers

Klaus

PS: please excuse my abuse of code and qoute for highlighting ...

[sharmpro]

I owe an apologize to the one who felt offended by my last post.
Just take the 'offensive' tone away and read carefully.

Regards,

Stefano aka sharmpro

[Ryan]

Just in response to the most recent replies:

-----

@ Vincent & Luckyluke:

I agree. We have been busy pointing fingers rather than focusing on the task at hand.

------

@Stefek:

"It was good if you change the name. For both - WebsiteBaker and your new Product."

- I will talk about this in my next post..

------

@johnp:

"Further more I would like to add to this I have done everything I could to get Ryan and I
to come to some kind of middle ground and it is hard to do when one fines getting in
touch with him is almost impossible"

- What troubles are you having in contacting me? Yes my PM is disabled in the forum, but my signature contains a very clear way to contact me which (now) works If you are having troubles contacting me please let me know because I'd like to fix this.

------

@kweitzel:

"Might I remind you that we are talking about the furture of this project and NOT about the personal behaviour of some people? frankly spoken, I don't see much of that."

- Klaus, you are completely right, we need to focus on the main point here.

I think you concept of three teams could work, and it would be interesting to establish a list of who the potential team members could be. Maybe this is the next step?

[Ryan]

Ok, here is my latest idea that could potential save a lot of headache's. I did mention this briefly in one of my replies earlier to Stefek. Remember, this is only an idea and it is not definitely going ahead....

PlatformRAD is the name of my product that will be my commercial, fully hosted/"software as a service" (SaaS) solution. The website for this product/service is platformrad.com

WebsiteBaker 3 could instead be released as PlatformRAD Open Source edition (OSE). I would run the community from platformrad.org which would consist of a forum/bug tracker/subversion/wiki, similar to the current WB portal.

WebsiteBaker 2.x would stay at WebsiteBaker.org, and if the community decides to rewrite the core of WB2 they could and then release it as WB3.

The motivation for doing this is that WB3, as it currently stands, is a completely different product to WB2. I intend to run things slightly differently, and therefore it doesn't seem to fit in well with the natural direction the WebsiteBaker project is heading (which is much more open).

The current WebsiteBaker project would then be able to progress without restrictions on what I currently want for WB3/PlatformRAD.

I don't really see to much disadvantage in doing this other than it could potentially split the community. However, PlatfromRAD open source edition (OSE) would be a completely different product to WebsiteBaker (2.x and future versions) so I don't see this as too much of an issue.

Please let me know what you think of this idea.

[Stefek]

WebsiteBaker 3 could instead be released as PlatformRAD Open Source edition (OSE).
...
WebsiteBaker 2.x would stay at WebsiteBaker.org, and if the community decides to rewrite the core of WB2 they could and then release it as WB3.
...
The current WebsiteBaker project would then be able to progress without restrictions ...

Hello Ryan. This is a great idea, and being for several years in Marketing/Advertisement Business I see that this will be the best solution for your new product.

I don't really see to much disadvantage in doing this other than it could potentially split the community. However, PlatfromRAD open source edition (OSE) would be a completely different product to WebsiteBaker (2.x and future versions) so I don't see this as too much of an issue.

If you will do this, I can assure you, that the community as it now exists will follow up your future progress.
I also think, that we will create more interest - involve new people into this project - for WebsiteBaker and no one is going to "hide the roots". Thus more people will know about your new project via this forum.

@kweitzel:

"Might I remind you that we are talking about the furture of this project and NOT about the personal behaviour of some people? frankly spoken, I don't see much of that."

- Klaus, you are completely right, we need to focus on the main point here.

I think your concept of three teams could work, and it would be interesting to establish a list of who the potential team members could be. Maybe this is the next step?

Because he is sleeping, I want to give you a reply on this.

One of the persons really interested in a Leading Position (as you maybe assumed) is me.
I aim to take responsibility into the Marketing of WebsiteBaker (primarily the Brand of WebsiteBaker and External Public Relation(ships))
This is only one of the Sections where we will need Leaders for.
I hope we can tell more in the next days.



Thank you for helping us in this times, so we can change for the better.
(And this discussion really brought light into the situation.)

I also like to thank Matthias, Christian and all the "old crew" - they brought a great product last February.
I hope the best for the Development Team and I am very curious about the next official WebsiteBaker Release.

We owe you.

Regards,
Stefek

[Ryan]

Hi Stefek,

As your response to my idea is the only one, I assume that everyone else agrees with your response and supports my idea. I'll give it another few hours but I'm pretty sure on this decision for PlatformRAD.org

Ryan

[centran]

I think that is a good idea Ryan but only if people are going to continue to develop WB2 for a long time. However, if the idea was to keep WB2 going for a little while longer(2.8) and then move on to WB3 I do not think it is a good idea.

Will the WB2 core be around and actively developed in 2+ years or would have people moved on to WB3? I think people would move on to WB3 since the core is supposed to be better and easier to deal with. In that case then I recommend a tag line for the new product such as "PlatformRAD complete hosting featuring WebsiteBaker".... but people seem to be pretty set on continuing with WB2 so two complete products might be the way to go.

Those people who want to split off really need to be thinking about this and deciding. I am not one of those people. Maybe a new topic with a poll should be started and only those interested in continuing with WB2 should vote and discuss.

[BerndJM]

Mainly (but not only) @centran:

I think it's a good decision from Ryan to give the "WB3-baby" a new name because:

If he name it WB3 there will be a very short room left for WB2.x
There will be published a 2.8 - 2.9 - and with a 2.999999999 the maximum will be reached.

So, with this decision for a new name for his "going further WB Version" the WB2 fans have the chance to look a little bit more in the future, a perspective which was a little bit shortened with the official announcement of "WB3". And made more or less rumor in the community.

So I think if Ryan give his new bae a new name the street for WB2... will be really free to make it's way.

Regards Bernd

[Ralf Hertsch]

@Ryan

I think it's the best solution to give your new child a new name and a own platform 

It is also my firm conviction that WebsiteBaker will be developed ahead by community and will always keep in tradition.

So let's talk briefly about organisation/teams and then roll up our sleeves and continue the WebsiteBaker story...

Regards
Ralf

[ruebenwurzel]

Hello,

the decision to name your new CMS other then WebsiteBaker was the only chance for WebsiteBaker to have a future. And I'm pretty shure it will have a long future. There are a lot of guys here wich are very interested in bringing WB to another level. Keep the basics, with easy to use for the users, but in the backgound with rewritten code. We now have the chance to make a WB 2.8 (based on 2.7 only with a few features and a new layout) and parallel develop a own WB3.

So, as Ralf said, let us make targets and form teams wich can implement these targets.

Matthias

[Stefek]

I agree completly with everyone who has spoken in the last few hours.

BerndJM

So, with this decision for a new name for his "going further WB Version" the WB2 fans have the chance to look a little bit more in the future, a perspective which was a little bit shortened with the official announcement of "WB3". And made more or less rumor in the community.

"made more or less rumor in the community" - That's abolutley right.

Ralf (Berlin)

I think it's the best solution to give your new child a new name and a own platform 
It is also my firm conviction that WebsiteBaker will be developed ahead by community and will always keep in tradition.

Yes - that's right.

Matthias

We now have the chance to make a WB 2.8 (based on 2.7 only with a few features and a new layout) and parallel develop a own WB3.
So, as Ralf said, let us make targets and form teams wich can implement these targets.

Absolutley agree Matthias.
As I told - again and again - it is not the entire project which has dificulities / problems.
And now with this certainty Ryan gives to the community we will be able to bring order into this.
So we won't need to change this things which allready worked fine.

Once this point is handled we can make fast progress.

Regards,
Stefek

[Ryan]

Ok guys, based on the positive feedback, I am definitely going ahead with the idea. WB3 will be no more, instead it will be PlatformRAD 1.0 (Open Source Edition). Further information will be available at platformrad.org in the coming days.

[Stefek]

That's great News, Ryan.
Really.

I will have additional Questions for you depending on the WebsiteBaker Project.
I will send you a short E-Mail in the next few days.

Best Regards,
Stefek

[Ryan]

Hi all,

I have made a few postings to explain to users following different threads what exactly is going on.
Here is the post (text copied from WebsiteBaker.org/3) I made in the WB3 board:
https://forum.websitebaker.org/index.php/topic,11774.0.html

Now that has been sorted, it should now become easier (hopefully) organising new positions and structures.

Ryan

[davon]

I'm using WB only for a temporary and very limited project of my own because of the code module and the overall handling of WB which isn't overcrowded with things admins often don't need. I think for a single user or a small group of people who are working on the same target this CMS is fantastic. And the documentation is great too, easy to understand and gives ideas about the possibilities. Anyway, everyone here knows what i mean because thats the reason why we all are here.

But i have to admit that i'm looking into the forum only now and then, because it looks in a couple of cases a bit chaotic to me. Sometimes i'm wondering if all Mods here are working as a structured team FOR the community, or not (example: i didn't understand the appearence of WebsiteBaker Template Contest World Wide 08 without a well placed announcement about it before ("we are thinking about... how's about, anyone interested?").. no, Bang! Here's the contest. But if there should be such an announcement, i couldn't find it because it seems to be well hidden). Well, i don't want dig too deep, but i wanted to mention that the forum is the point i don't like very much from the whole WB project.


Two days ago i visited after a longer break again, looking for news about WB3 (Any news about it? / Whats new in general?) and then i saw the Latest News from Ryan and started to read this thread here. First i though "Darn, not good".. Two days later i'm still unhappy with this "new way" and still think "Darn, not good".

Splitting power finally don't create more power, but people still want to figure this out by their own experience. Walk that way, but as a off time WB user i'm not happy with that.

[kweitzel]

Hi Darn, hi all

thanks a lot for your comments on this. You are right, there has not been much in terms of communication going on. We are moving forward with WebsiteBaker and indeed it is a good move of Ryan to call his new project something else, although I am quite interested in the new project as well!

There is a group of dedicated people who are working on bringing WebsiteBaker as a community project forward and things like this contest you refer to will be handled differently in the future (top down instead of bottom up) ... The aim is to have the working structure in place latest by end of the year and then there can be further planning ahead.

@all: I know there are a lot of people around willing to contribute one way or the other. Please do bear a bit with us and we all will be able to move forward with WebsiteBaker! If you are willing to contribute, please do send Ryan or me a message.

cheers

Klaus

[ipfelkofer]

Hi,

I'm using WB since more than a year and think, it is a very good CMS.

Now, I would like to support the further development of WB as muuch as I can. That means, I'm not a programmer but I have a lot of experience in documentation and user point of view. I used to run customer support division of a global IT player during my receent years in business.

In the meanntime I am retired, have lots of time and could easily spend a siggnificant amouunt of it on WB!

Let me know, whhether I can be of any help!

Armin

[Adrian2k7]

Hi,

I really don't know why Ryan is "leaving" with a "new" project.

Originally he developed WB 3, I think WB is its own brand. Now he changes the name and went away from this only to get out of this stupid discussion (?).
But of course he still developing WB3, just with another name. So expect, when Ryan is ready all the WB using people will switch to his new platform, because everybody knows it is truly WB3.

WB is really easy to use and easy to extend, but it is still not the best in engineering. 2.8+ makes no sense to me until it's core is not up2date. I think it's okay like it is. There only have to be bug fixes. All the energy you guys have should be concentrated on WB3.

Wait until Ryan has his new platform ready and then jump on board there. Or go on thinking making your own WB3. It's okay that he wants to develop the core alone. I'm sure he will make it. While that you could clean up this webiste and make the documentation(for 2.7) something that could be called documentation.

[kweitzel]

Hi Adrian2k7,

nice comments there ... why don't you get in contact with ruebenwurzel or me to help out on the documentation side of things?

cheers

Klaus

[marccouture]

Wow, I can't believe I missed this thread...  I wish all the best to Ryan in his new endeavor. 

That said, as an end-user leading smaller projects mainly in the non-for-profit and educational sectors, I will be definitely sticking with WB, regardless of the direction development might take, as long as it remains the most user-friendly CMS available.  WB's core is not a problem from my point of view... but the availability of extensions (modules, themes, etc) and resources to code them is.  For example, I still cannot for the life of me understand how WB does not have its own forum module.  I think WB has to integrate more "Web 2.0" functionality to remain relevant against other solutions.

I can only imagine how hard it can be to juggle between "featuritis" and "WB needs to be so easy my braindead sister can manage her web site on her own".  WB is the closest to achieving this balance, while running under so-called "weak" leadership.  Damn, if all my projects worked as well as WB development has, my boss would call me a genius...

Cheers.

[Lotus]

Hi, cant believe I missed this thread either, got a few things on my mind.

As the WB2 core is getting older its enevitable that it needs to be updated using newer, more effishient and optimized technologies to meet tomorrows demand. Some has stated that WB2 is not stable and secure, that its an ongoing project of pachwork. This frightens me as we use WB as a base to build custermer solutions upon. To cast away Ryans efforts is a bad choise, this is the man with the right visions.

It it would be any forking, I think it should be WB 2.8 that would turn into something else and the PlatformRAD would be WB3.

A successfull app is for me:

• An advaced core (fast, stable, secure, etc).
• Simple and beautiful admin that anyone can use with hidden more powerful administration capabilities.
• Lots of possibilities when making templates corporating features
• Lots of configurable mods in every category (news, media gallery, download gallery, forum etc)
• As little demands as possible to PHP and MySQL configurations (safe_mode etc.)
• Easy to install (or hard at first till you know the trick)
• ..and maybe a few obvious and less obvious things..

Any way, as WB is a great app I think the name is somewhat no good. What about something more corporate like PlatformRAD? I agree with those who think its hard to know what is going on in the community. Contests, great modules and snippets, great code who solves problems in the template, templates, reporting bugs, new announcements..its all hidden somehow in this forum. The AMASP project is great but why not incorporate it in the .org site?