[TYPO3-english] Why there is not an " official " online Forum for TYPO3 ?

[Andreas Becker]

Hi Ahmed
Most people here on the mailinglist try to earn their money by setting up
TYPO3 websites. The quality of answers and questions is much much higher
than in any other forum i.e at drupal or joomla or even zikula. Forget about
Joomla and this stuff - or try to read their posts - We have here soon the
biggest Joomla Conference in front of our office and people from all around
the world will come here. Those of them whom I showed already TYPO3 where
"WOW what is this!" I hope to get lots of Joomla Converts!

Often they have never heard about it and that is actually very good ;-) as
here we have a huge newbie market to be discovered with TYPO3. Most people
get frustrated by TYPO3 when they start setting up a site from scratch and
they move back to Joomla or even to Drupal. Only a few come back but their
costumers will mostly come much sooner back and ask us for help - this is
our experience.

1. because they have problem with the timeframe the other agencies need to
make the changes they need
2. most of them got simply stucked as a Joomly developed the site who is no
more in business and the one the replacement they've found wants to setup a
complete new site, charge full and needs lots of time and also he don't know
if he will be still doing Joomla next month!
3. they got frustrated by the hard boders Joomla has in terms of extending.
Click and go Joomla is mostly already finished with the click and go, while
a TYPO3 click and go solution is based on standards and open for all kid of
features even in future thru many many versions.

1. i.e. with our T3Pack a customer can start filling his site just in no
time - as soon as the domain is linked. As we are working 100% compatible
with the WEC "Standards" we can give them quite easy support even we haven't
setup their sites!
2. He can reuse most of the customers HTML Templates - that is what they
have here a lot - and we map them to TV or modify them to their needs. Its
not a big deal!
3. When they see the list of possible Modules/Plugins/Extensions they don't
want Joomla again or Drupal. Those Developer who are working with us and
stayed with TYPO3 actually don't mis Joomla or Drupal. They are happy
because of the way TYPO3 is using the Templates (we are working with TV
mainly), They get in House Training and if there is a problem we can't solve
than we cooperate and I post on the German List or English or French one.

To build up a TYPO3 Site it is important - so my experience - to know others
and to communicate with them. The mailinglist is a very good too to do so.
You wake up in the morning, delete the mails you're not interested, you
answer those you can answer and help and you are receiving your answers of
questions you had.

The Forum I mentioned isn't active when they are actually sleeping. You can
see the same effect on the mailinglist. When we post something at 7 or 8 in
the morning we perhaps receive an answer about 4 or 5 in the afternoon. This
is because we are GMT+7, USA is GMT-5. Depending on who is posting most you
have lots of activities during the business hours usually the forum is in.

The number of posts says nothing about the quality of questions and
answers.

Where are you located? In which country? What is your technical developing
background? Get in touch with us and lets see how we can help you or even
cooperate? What do you think!

The best way to spread the word about TYPO3 is the one through good
references and examples. We are in South East Asia and offering also TYPO3
Training, Workshops and write Articles for Magazines and News or go on
international Conferences and Fairs to promote TYPO3 here and surrounding
Countries - ie. Hongkong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand,
China, ... Another TYPO3 Agency from Switzerland just started to do
something similar in Japan.

Around here there are lots of companies which are quite interested in TYPO3
when they had a look at it - i.e. in a presentation or an online example
Page they can access - Live CD and more lively TYPO3 Marketing Collateral.

Have you thought about doing something similar. Setup a User Group, organize
Workshops and get more people around you which join your TYPO3 activities.
This is IMHO the most effective way to get things working with TYPO3.
Depending on where you are you could join perhaps also with others in your
region.

TYPO3 is much more than only an CMS it is real *100% Community Members Software
.*

Look, we do also eZ-Publish sites i.e. for media publishers, but they don't
have such a community and often it is a pain in the ass if you need urgent
help - it is of course not if you are a Premium Member! Same will happen now
to Magento I guess!

People should really move to 100% Community Run OpenSource Products, where
there is no ONE and Only company concept behind it. The TYPO3 Company
Employers is actually the Mailinglist Members. around 3000 - 5000 people I
guess.

Try the mailinglist, get on IRC like Ries mentioned - on his site you will
find most of the IRC communications, perhaps Ries could post a link to it
here - and try to get in touch with PEOPLE and cooperate and communicate
with them.

On the TYPO3.org site is also the Beta of a kind of Mailinglist Reader and
Search! - sorry don't have the link here, perhaps someone can help with
this. Thanks

Andi



On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Ahmed Moosavi <r.mesbah at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Andy ,
> Thanks for you reply :)
>
> I know there is a lot of German resources for TYPO3 , sometimes I use
> online translation tools to have a solution . But I dont know why this
> community forces it's new comers to be very strong people and hard to
> find the facts :D Yes we can find the solutions in 5 hours , that it may
> be found in 10 minutes . But finding the solutions is hard.
>
> I'm thinking about expanding typo3 to the whole world and it's sorrowful
> to see something like Joomla expands more than TYPO3 . Typo3 will have
> permanent wastage by this way , Should we point out regionally about
> typo3 or it's allowed to look to international community around it ?
>
> It is not a good advice to learn a language to have better CMS
> resources. I may learn the German language but you cant say to all of
> people to learn German.
>
> You introduced one of the Forums about TYPO3 , It's not also official
> but maybe helpful. But if you compare it with "Joomla" Forum you will
> find the Joomla forum just today before noon had hundreds of posts , but
> what you offered as TYPO3 forum has not just a one post for today. And
> this relationally is not named Active or very active.
>
> By the obsolete English tutorials that TYPO3 has from many years ,
> Personally I learned basic TYPOSCRIPT before knowing there is something
> like FlexForm which you can make the sites by mouse. I'm not silly as
> well :D But what I'd firstly found readable for learning TYPO3 it was (
> TYPOSCRIPT ) :p And I've learned the hardest way that and I can make
> sites by typo3 before I know what can I do with flexforms . This problem
> still exist , The TYPO3 does not introduce a comfortable Roadmap to the
> English users and with an Opensource community when you lose a region of
> the world you will lose expansion. And it seems there will be more
> attendance needed for English users.
>
> Also pointing to the physical meetings of the community that covers only
>  hundreds of people also naturally is good and needful and brilliant
> but not enough to cover what Typo3 can do with the world by the virtual
> internet paths. The typo3 power is to weaken by this way. And can be
> more stronger.
>
> All the best
> Ahmed
>
> Andreas Becker wrote:
> > Hi Ahmed
> > Which problems do you actually have?
> >
> >    - TYPO3 offers lots of social activities all around the world.
> >    - International worldwide Confernces
> >    - They go skiing and diving
> >    - Meet in many many UserGroups all over the world
> >    - They have this Mailinglist
> >    - Very good German Forums (advice - learn a bit German it helps! a
> lot)
> >    - Very good and very active English Forums -
> >    http://webempoweredchurch.com/support/community/
> >    - Lots of German How Too sites
> >    - Very good - I guess the best - How To Sites are in English
> >    http://webempoweredchurch.com/support/howtos/
> >    - Lots of German Video Tutorials - but they are quite expensive!
> >    - Lots of good English and German Literature
> >    - a huge developer community which meets here on the mailing list and
> >    which is usually also willing to help you - most of them!
> >    - They have an University and many other special Training Meetings
> >    - gives you one of the best products in the CMS Market - with a very
> high
> >    price value - checkout some German Agencies what they charge for a
> simple
> >    site and their customer books are full as otherwise they would not
> charge so
> >    much!
> >    - A very good and qualified outsourcing community which delivers high
> >    value TYPO3 Products to the market.
> >    - all of them are connected to one Line which is actually the
> >    mailinglist. There have been already so many discussions about forum
> or
> >    mailinglist and I guess you will never change TYPO3 from getting rid
> of the
> >    mailinglist but exactly only this would help to build up a centralized
> forum
> >    - but why should they do this, who takes care of it, what about all
> those
> >    other existing forums and the people which earn there money with it ??
> Best
> >    use the mailinglist as it is, as it is the by far fastest way to get a
> >    response, much faster than any forum!
> >
> >
> > So again the question - What are you actually missing? What should a
> Forum
> > help you to get what no already exists? What would you like to contribute
> to
> > get this missing thing working?
> >
> > Andi
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Ahmed Moosavi <r.mesbah at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hello ,
> >> Why typo3 has not an official centralized online active forum like most
> >> of other content management systems ? I know there is some unofficial
> >> English forums but they are not active as this mailing list is.
> >>
> >> The mailinglist is good but an online forum has better structure for
> >> searching and subscribing and archiving and some other editorial options
> >> like from better quoting and threading to the attachments and better
> >> graphical GUI that absolutely effects on better performance for Typo3
> >> assigned times . Also I think mailing lists is very coldest in
> >> relationship than an standard forum and a forum makes better and warmer
> >> community for this association.
> >>
> >> Typo3 lacks some social basis and I think there is not a clear Roadmap
> >> for a new user to go and most of new users is stumping as they confuse
> >> about creating just a simple site , and it makes a huge lost in the way
> >> of a biggest community that decreases the TYPO3 developments.
> >>
> >> Best Regards
> >> Ahmed
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> TYPO3-english at lists.netfielders.de
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> >>
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