[TYPO3-templavoila] TemplaVoila future...

[Andreas Becker]

Hi Philipp
Hi Toleiv

Recently I had a long long talk with Mark Stephenson from web empowered
church and he told me more or less exactly the same what Toleiv is trying
to tell you in very understandable words!

"WE HAVE BEEN DROPPED BY TYPO3!"

I write this in BIG letters as this is really very important! "Dropped by
TYPO3"

"In truth, TYPO3 is just not working for most churches because it is just
too hard to use and the TYPO3 community still does not understand that"
he said and he is right! Did you know that WEC spnt litterally over 1 MIO
Dollar trying to help to get better usability to TYPO3 and to get TYPO3
loved by many - using TemplaVoila as it was the one and only way how to
make TYPO3 usable for everybody. Even my students were able to setup small
websites with it easily to present their content.

"I don't think they TYPO3 developers want TYPO3 to be easy because they
will lose development money it remains a paid website developer tool for
people who sell fancy websites to others and make lots of money"
I can't agree more here as with an easy to use system like TemplaVoila and
the "up and running" packages of the WEC we probably would have much much
less TYPO3 Agencies in the world and less TYPO3 Developers - REAL
Developers who like to bring stuff forward!

Many people have put a lot of effort and even a lot of their own money in
promoting TYPO3 and making it much more popular even they had not such
20.000 EURO Projects for a website with much less functionality as
presented in the WEC Packages ;-)

Take in Comparison WordPress. They have a huge community, a lot of money
from the community, they ave even a FREE click and go solution for
everybody who likes WordPress and it is easy to use and you can start a
WordPress Site in some minutes without any error messages which block you a
whole day because some developers had forgotten to deactivate dhal while
packaging the starter packages ;-) Comon Philipp. Since years those are
people like you who don't see the actual potential behind TYPO3.

If TYPO3 website owners don't know a developer who is holding their hand
they are simply lost! TYPO3 is unusable for those people who want to create
content and design websites which brings good information to the world in
an easy and flexible way. TemplaVoila and especially the Framework for
TemplaVoila did exactly this!

"We put millions of dollars and thousands of dollars to try to turn the
TYPO3 ship and it made just a little difference"

Don't you start thinking a bit?

http://webempoweredchurch.org/support/classes/
http://webempoweredchurch.org/support/plugins-page/
http://webempoweredchurch.org/services/download_previous_packages/

Why did the WEC put so much money into the system. Perhaps because of Joh 3
16 but I guess even more because ot was the best and most flexible solution
at this time but had only one big drawback. It was much to difficult. Check
back the mailing lists and see how people actually started to like
TemplaVoila. I am not sure how long you are already with TYPO3 - I am
running it since 2002. In 2003 I started with TemplaVoila and it was a
headache. Bad documentation right, but it was a genius idea behind it which
fascinated me. Than in 2004 I was one of the first joining the WEC Forum as
in US were some people from a church group which had an even better idea.
They simply packed the whole stuff in a ready to go package.

Simply Think about how long it took until TYPO3 mainstream development had
a package - wow it came much much later as those standard developers did
not want a package. They only wanted jobs jobs jobs and big money! Ok this
OK but it is not OK to trash all those people now here who actually did not
earn money by using TYPO3 but financed social projects by setting up
websites like we did or who promoted it to other people and institutions
like the WEC did and so many others.

Since 2004 TYPO3 had one of the best documentations of a CMS - easy
understandable and step by step with an easy to use package which you could
buy at other companies for thousands and thousands of dollars. And for sure
your customer would need again thousands of dollars to get your support
while the WEC support was all time excellent and best of all it was free
and always very helpful.

I would like to thank Mark Stephenson, John Ward, Dave Slayback (Discussion
Forum which can be used in many different ways, Christoph Koehler (WEC
Maps), Jeff Segars(Cal), Ron Hall (Framework for templaVoila), Bill
Tenny-Brittian (all from US) and Ben Fang (with his great templates)
(China) from WEC for their huge investment (MIOs!!!) without any own income
in doing this, but also Kaspar Skarhoje for IMHO his greatest idea, Robert
Lemke for his try on TemplaVoila, But A LOT I would like to thank Dmitry
(Lithuania) who made TemplaVoila USABLE!!! Yes he was the one who was
making it easy to use for everyone. I like to thank Gideon So (Hong Kong)
for his TAB solutions which made the first time TemplaVoila having a nice
backend, It was IMHO the prerunner for TemplaVoila Framework Backend Skin.

And there are many more who made TYPO3 with TemplaVoila very popular
especially for Designers and Content Creators, Editors and people who
wanted to have a website which they can understand and flexible modify
without need of another developer (hard core coder). i.e.Detlef Schaebel
(now if20)(Germany) and Dieter Bunkerd (Thailand) with his Templates for
TemplaVoila used i.e. by the Tourist Association of Thailand TAT or
Thailand property Gate, one of the biggest portals for Property here in
Thailand. They started to combine easy to use TYPO3 based on TemplaVoila
with the YAML CSS Framework.

A Big Thank You goes to you Toleiv. You really were reliable and doing a
good job in cleaning up messes and to keep the TV ship running, even so
much icy standard dev rocks came in the way. I have probably forgotten many
- sorry. But with stopping TemplaVoila TYPO3 is losing the LIFE and its
color on board of TYPO3 Titanic.

Yes we all enjoyed this life. AOE Media was presenting TV as the one and
only solution over years like many others did to. After WEC it seems that
TYPO3 is loosing more and more of its good people and developers who have
an interest in community and especially in USABILITY! Like it has been said
already all those great things

Work Spaces
Easy Language handling

which made TYPO3 a great tool for organisations in a multilingual
surrounding seem to be no more working like they should work by using
Extbase.

Some years ago the King Kaspar left his Thrown with a nice picture and
cepter in his hand (Kaspar) and now his QUEEN TemplaVoila is following him.

And TYPO3 will sooner or later too! .... if people like you continue like
you!

The new kid on the block is THEMES and it is by far the best developed
Framework since Framework for TemplaVoila. Actually it is using many ideas
from it - especially user experiences. Kay is doing a great job to get
things done. Unfortunately again it seems to have different streamings.
Grid Elements, the great stuff of Claus Due, DCE etc. In themes everything
could get together and could get to a new Templating/Theming System. Have a
look - it is worth it and test it entirely.

As THEMES can even import your existing TemplaVoila Framework skins or even
Wordpress templates it could open up complete new dimensions for TYPO3 in
terms of usability if - IF - well if not again a battle between those
developers who only want to create dependent customers and those who simply
want to get websites up and running - perhaps even for free will not search
for another "ENEMY" after TemplaVoila has been killed!

Is there a need to switch? to what? well to Themes - YES!
or simply go to wordpress like promoted on the WEC website:

Based on these changes, if you really like TYPO3 then we recommend
> continuing to use it. It is a powerful system that will get even better
> with time. However, if you'd like to transition away from TYPO3 then



> *WEC currently recommends WordPress*. See WordPress.com. It is very
> popular and easier to learn.



> And with WordPress you are likely to find a few plugins that appear to
> have borrowed ideas from WEC ministry extensions. Also, even with all the
> powerful social media features, WEC still recommends having a church
> website. If you'd like help transitioning to WordPress or another platform
> then Hop Off A Cloud can help you with that. <
> http://webempoweredchurch.org/about/news/>


Well and many other companies will be able to help to do the switch too.

Srijan Technologies - once a great supporter of TYPO3 - is meanwhile one of
the main motors in drupal usability development. No wonder that you will
recognize TYPO3 ideas there. Or Contao who has been called TYPOlight
because TYPO3 was the big example the developers tried to make better and
more usable.

Even T3N switched now away from TYPO3 and is using an "old kid on the blog"
which comes along with lots of integrated features i.e. a shop solution etc.


Kian Gould (AOE Media in T3N)
"Drupal <http://t3n.de/tag/drupal> erlebt starken Wachstum in Bereichen wie
User-Generated-Content, Collaboration und Intranets. ... auch Drupal hat
sich nun entschieden, auf Symfony und damit deutlich saubereren Code zu
setzen als bisher."
"Wenn man sich ein Adobe CQ5 anschaut, was ein tolles kommerzielles Tool
ist, kann es nicht viel mehr als beispielsweise ein TYPO3 mit Modulen und
Konfigurationen, aber es ist einfach als Produkt viel besser verpackt,
integrierter und von Anfang an für Marketer ausgelegt."
--
"Drupal experienced strong growth in areas such as user-generated content,
collaboration and intranets .... also Drupal has now decided to put on
symfony, significantly cleaner code than before."
"If the Adobe CQ5 you look at what a great commercial tool, it can not be
much more than for example a TYPO3 with modules and configurations, but
it's just much better packaged as a product, built and designed from the
outset for marketers."
--

The webempowerdchurch did exactly this over 9 years. They presented
packages with lots of configurations inside which were working instantly.
No error messages just after starting the installation like with the new
TYPO3.org Packages! Those packages of WEC were made for people - for
marketers and they worked just perfect!

Agencies who had no TYPO3 Developer started using TYPO3 and got interested
in more! The community was growing but unfortunately those changes since
4.0. and than 4.3. coming more and more often as Alpha in a Final release
cover brought up frustration. A lot! Beside this the decision to invest a
whole bunch of money, time and workload on developing an own framework
instead using an existing one like symphony zend etc was reducing the
chance to be number one. Meanwhile TYPO3 got overrun and as already read in
this thread it is reducing itself until it will be useless more or less.
Unfortunately!

Modx is another way to go for those who want easy and flexible templating!

Kian Gould bringt es auf den Punkt:
"Da ticken die Open-Source-Communities noch anders, sie müssen lernen, dass
was sie können so zu verkaufen, wie es die kommerziellen Anbieter tun."
"Since the open-source communities tick or otherwise, they must learn that
they can then sell, as do the commercial providers."

"Früher war beispielsweise in Deutschland jede Kleinst-Website mit TYPO3
gemacht, inzwischen wird meist WordPress oder Drupal verwendet."
"Previously, each micro-site for example, was made ​​in Germany with TYPO3
now mostly WordPress or Drupal is used."

"Drupal hat es geschaft, sich im NGO- und Regierungs-Sektor einen Namen zu
machen und hier findet auch sehr viel Wachstum statt, ebenso natürlich im
Community-Bereich. Die meisten großen Drupal-Referenzen sind
Community-Sites wie beispielsweise die Twitter-Community oder die
NVIDIA-Developer-Community."
"Drupal has managed to get out to do in the NGO and government sector a
name and here is also a lot of growth instead, just as naturally in the
community area. Most major Drupal references are community sites such as
the Twitter community or the NVIDIA developer community. "
<http://t3n.de/news/state-open-source-cms-441808/>

For sure not without a purpose AOE MEDIA was promoting always TemplaVoila
on their Websites. For sure they realized that Usability and Flexibility
for Editors is an important factor. Sad to see that TemplaVoila will be
buried.

I hope we won't sing soon:

Where are all the users gone? Long time passing
Where are all the users gone? Long time passing
Where are all the users gone?


Where is all the money gone? Long time passing
Where is all the money gone? Long time passing
Where is all the money gone?

Where is all the good devs gone? Long time passing
Where is all the good devs gone? Long time passing
Where is all the good devs gone?

Where is all the projects gone? Long time passing
Where is all the projects gone? Long time passing
Where is all projects gone?


On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Christian Weiske <cweiske at cweiske.de> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
> > Philipp Gampe wrote:
> > [...]
>
> That whole mail is exactly what Tolliev wrote in his blog article:
> > it is constantly under some kind of PR-attack from the other solutions
>
>
> > > it is still used within the community and various indicators proof
> > > that it is still very popular
> > Which indicators? At least devs seem to ignore it??? Or what was your
> > point? If there are many users, then it should not be so hard to
> > acquire contributors or sponsors, shouldn't it?
>
> I use TV personally for several (also in new) projects, and @work we're
> using it exclusively. Templavoila works.
>
>
> Philipp, it's sad to see what you - and as it seems the rest of the
> "officials" - think of TYPO3 and it's users.
>
>
> Tolliev - thanks.
>
> --
> Christian Weiske
>
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>