[TYPO3-english] is TYPO3 for me

[Philipp Gampe]

Hi Gour,

> Finally, somehow, I have 'discovered' TYPO3 and, of course, could read
> many 'hate' stories on the Net (there is even anti-TYPO3 list) where
> several users complain how TYPO3 is complex, unintuitive, not many
> usable extensions etc.

Most of those people have never understood the core concepts or have simply 
given up after installing, because TYPO3 CMS does not come with a one click 
and go button. This is by intention, because TYPO3 CMS understands itself as 
"enterprise content management *framework*". Therefore there is not default 
website (except the introduction package and lately government package which 
both serve as simple setup, not as quickstart).

> I did install it on my server, and I must say that it looks quite good.

Great :)

> I mentioned my (present) web needs above, but in terms of functionality
> it boils down to:
> 
> a) decent blog engine with comments, support for Disqus, possibly
> pingback/trackback which would be use on all the three sites (private,
> non-profit, company)

TYPO3 is not really suitable as a real blog, but there is a very good news 
extension (called "news"), which is really really powerful. Combine it with 
one of the comment extensions (e.g. "comments" or "dialog") and you are 
almost there.
Pingback/Trackback is not supported AFAIK.

> b) extensions for google-maps front-end, Piwik support...

Note that google maps is not completely free anymore, but only for the first 
x requests.
There are extensions for google maps, but I do not know how good they work.

You can get piwik support with "piwikintegration" or you can run piwik 
standalone and just include the HTML/JS snippet.

> c) extension to handle public download area counting number of downloads
> for media files (audio, video)

Do that with piwik for that or set up TYPO3 CMS to redirect download links 
though jumpurl. You can get the most reliable numbers by parsing the 
webservers logfile :)

> d) extension for document management to provide private downloadable
> area for our (registered) clients, so that each client can access
> his/her private support docs/multimedia-files etc. (to be used on
> company site)

You can not really do a full document management like with MS Sharepoint, 
but you can get really for with DAM.

> e) simple shop so that customers can offer our 'products' which are
> actually just homeopathy & counselling services - nothing complicated
> since there are not thousands products to be handled.

There are a bunch of shop extensions, but if it gets more complex than a 
handful of products, then you better use a real shop system instead of 
TYPO3.

> Moreover, in the beginning, we need simple checkout to provide info how
> customers can pay for their orders via Internet banking etc., but later
> we'd like to offer accepting of credit cards payment, so having nice
> infrastructure in the typo3-based shop to easily write custom payment
> module for the form-api gateway would be great.

This greatly depends on your needs.

> In the future, we may need to add some calendaring extension so that
> customers can 'book' free time for their appointment when ordering some
> service.

Try the extension "seminars". You might also look at "cal", but this is a 
monster extension, targeted at typoscript experts.

> f) support for Croatian language so that we do not need to translate
> front-end from the scratch.

Have a look at http://translation.typo3.org/hr/

> That's pretty much all what we need at the moment and wonder how TYPO 3
> can fulfill those requirements?

See the inline comments. It all depends on your skills. Everything is 
possible, some stuff might be easier and some stuff as pretty taff.

> While playing with 4.7.6 introduction package I noticed it's a bit
> sluggish - the PHP memory limit is set to 256MB, although my shared
> (webfaction-like) account can use maximum 500MB, so I'm interested if I
> could use TYPO3 in such environment to serve the above
> low-traffic site(s)?

256MB should be fine.

> Based on what I read and heard, it seems that one can accomplish a lot
> just by using Typoscript without the need to go low-level and write
> extension in PHP? Is it true?

Yes, but creating extensions with the "extension_builder" is fun too.

> I do not mind learning a bit of PHP, but I simply do not find myself as
> Pro PHP developer writing complex extensions.

You can mostly get along by configuring some PHP arrays and some simple 
functions.

> How is TYPO3 support for non-Apache servers?

AFAIK most bigger sites moved to a nginx+varnish combination. In general, 
TYPO3 CMS does not depend on a specific webserver.

> Is it possible to rewrite its mod-rewrite rules to suit
> Cherokee/Lighttpd/Nginx which could provide better performance than
> Apache?

Look around, but the rewrite rules a really simple:
Strip any number in front of .js and .css (you can turn that of and use get 
parameters).
Redirect everything not in fileadmin/ typo3 /typo3conf /uploads to index.php

That's it.

> Any caching tip I do miss to optimize my 'introduction' site's
> experience?

Depends on your environment. The introduction package uses good defaults.

> Many extensions listed in the registry seems outdated/old and wonder
> what is the backward compatibility for extension in general?

Pretty good. TYPO3 CMS uses a policy to not remove a function unless it has 
been marked as "deprecated" for at least two versions. You can see those 
deprecation notices in the deprecation log (if turned on).
Some extensions do not work any more, mostly because they did not use the 
API (properly).

> Will the present extension continue to work in the upcoming TYPO3-6
> which I could not install today...but that's for another message.

Most of them should. TYPO3 CMS 6.0 has a full compatibility layer just for 
backwards compatibility.

> Considering the work on Neos and that learning TYPO3 is significant
> investment of time for the future, will the knowledge  about TYPO3-4 &
> TYPO3-6 be useful for Neos, at least, in the scope of Typoscript?

You will find some common things, but Neos is a complete rewrite.
The Neos TypoScript has been greatly extended and (AFAIK) works a bit 
different.
It depends a little what kind of knowledge you mean. Extension programmers 
can use quite a lot from the extbase and fluid coding, but you will not be 
able to reuse that many integration skills.

> Excuse me for a long post, but it's not a simple decision and I must
> say that based on what we experienced so far, TYPO3 is really in
> another CMS league, from the application itself, to the organization,
> size etc.

You will need some time to get into it.
It really depends how much customization you need (pro TYPO3 CMS) and what 
your basic programming skills are.

Best regards
-- 
Philipp Gampe – PGP-Key 0AD96065 – TYPO3 UG Bonn/Köln
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