Not sure where this goes so just putting it up here with the other package related questions. In any case, while there are quite a few packages in the repository on our.umbraco, there are only a couple that suit "our" needs. My boss was under impression that since this is open source and bla bla bla, there should be dozens of packages we could use and keeps asking me as to why there aren't a gazilion different packages (like with php for example).
I have told him, that I believe this is due to the fact that this is a relatively new community coupled with the fact that most packages are probably either something the creator does not wish to share or it's tailored to specific demands for an existing client (thus rendering it useless as a generic package).
That was enough for him up till now, but now he wants me to get a definitive answer. Hence me making this post =\
My bad, I called it the repository, but I meant that page. The point remains though. Yes there are quite a few packages. But not a whole lot of packages for stuff my boss believes to be essential. For example a calendar system. There is only one at the moment (I love it btw, so please don't hit me Peter). However, my boss was thinking/hoping there'd be a dozen so he could have choices.
I do not disagree there. My boss however finds it hard to believe there is so "little" choice considdering the widespread use of Umbraco (what was it? Over 70.000 websites?). And thus he has sent me on an epic quest to find out why (despite me having already told him why I think it to be so).
From my point of view the main reason why there are "so little" packages is that a for a lot of things we do here at orbitone, there are so many different approaches to making anything, each having a different set of requirement that make it difficult to split it up into seperate packages to start with...
Combine this with the fact that you can very rapidly recreate functionality using xslt (and optionally .net) that it often takes longer to learn how the author of a package intended you to use it, than it takes you to recreate it yourself... (youtube, google maps, navigation, multilanguage features)
As a company so far, we don't create packages for internal use either. Instead we use a site template (SQL + Files) of a blank site with all the custom built goodies in there, the main reason here is because we need to customize a lot of stuff in the umbraco config files (url rewriting, character encoding, folder url's, Elmah asp.net exception reporting, emailharvesterprotection,...) that can't easilty be included in packages, leave alone be reused by someone else
This "image" is maintained by myself and a colleage, and updated regulary.
I have to agree with Rik, there's sooo many options when working with umbraco (both from a dev as a design point of view) that's hardly impossible to create a one-time fits-all package. Most packages serve as a good starting point, but for most of the sites we build, we always need that little tweak that just isn't packaged up (can be options, extra functionality...) so using a package as is rather rare.
It is still worth looking into existing package as it may fit your needs 95%, and only have to build the extra 5%, which is always a great time saver.
Ferdy, no offence to you in the slightest this is aimed more at your employers who I guess own a company right? Does that company also give away its products for free? I expect not!
As a package developer and business owner myself I release packages that I feel will be of benefit to others in the community and to give something back in return for the help I have received. I am curious to know what packages he is hoping to see as I think there is great selection of packages out there to fulfil a great number of requirements or to serve as a starting point for your own developments as in many cases the source has been made available. IMO this community cannot be likened to the wider PHP community as many in this community would prefer to collaborate and create higher quality packages than to compete and continually reinvent the wheel. To take your example above, perhaps the Calendar package that already exists serves the needs of users already and if it does not you can either contact the package owner with your ideas or offer to contribute.
Again, this is not directed at you but more towards your employer - perhaps he can give you the opportunity to develop one or more of the packages he was expecting to see :)
Totally agree with Rik. It would probably take me more time to find out which one of the 10 calendar packages would be the best one than to quickly write one myself - which I know will do exactly what I/the client wants as opposed to having a package that does 'nearly' what I want and I spend another 3 days actually getting it to do what I/the client want. Needless to say some packages have already become quite essential and are a major benefit for my productivity, yet they are more on a foundational level than modules that one can just plug in, e.g. the ImageGen, the fileManager, the Housekeeping package, etc.
In addition to that I think most people here are very busy taking part in the community (which is fantastic) and building great web sites than taking the time to develop modules like a calendar control which you can just plug in, configure and there it goes. One of the reasons for this is probably that it takes an aweful lot of time to develop such a customizable control and keep it compatible to newer Umbraco versions, etc etc, so that such a simple control can turn out to be a full-time effort, also because you as a developer of such a package would only want to publish it if you as a consumer of such a package would actually use it. A good many times have we considered packaging up certain functionality which we have build for the benefit of the community, yet didn't do it in the end out of one or more of the following reasons:
- too specialist implementation, would take light-years to make the package more generic
- not really sure if this would be beneficial for anyone else, so the amount of time put into the packaging might be wasted
- not really sure if we would even use our own package for another project (as said above)
That said the amount of packages avaialble that you can just plug in and you have a full forum/blog/commercial solution etc. have been growing quite a bit lately, which is fantastic. I also have to agree that I've rather have only one but highly customizable package where 10 developers share their work than 10 packages from 10 developers.
I think everyone has pretty much covered the reasons (Emphasis on quality and collaboration rather than quantity, and Umbraco is more of an extendable framework, than a set of modules) so I won't really go into those.
Rather than justify why things are this way, I think Simon has the right idea in that it would be much more advantagous to outline what packages your employer would like to see. It might be that you've overlooked an existing package, or just that nobody has actually thought of it yet, in which case it might spark the imagination of some of the more active package devs. Alternatively, why not give some of them a go yourself, you'll be suprised at how easy it can actually be.
Failing that, it might just be that Umbraco isn't the right fit for him/her?
I've met and trained hundreds of umbraco users and your boss' observations are fairly common. If youlook at how many 'modules' umbraco has compared to other systems you'll be disappointed. After the initial shock that such a capable and widely used system appears to be lacking some basics you'll find --as have all umbraco users-- that this is not a bad thing. Here's why...
Point 1: A module that doesn't meet your needs is useless
Let's suppose you have a requirement that your site have a 'news module'. Now what you mean by a news module and what I mean are almost certainly not the same thing. For me, a news module is a section on the homepage's sidebar that list the seven most-recent press releases, faq entries, tech notices, and blog posts. But never anything more than 30 days old even if that means fewer than seven items are listed. I also want to pull out the first 80 characters of the text, split on whitespace, and add a link with "[read more]". That's what my site might mean when talking about a news module. Your site would surely be different.
Point 2: A massive collection of similar modules wastes time
With some CMS's you can select among tens or hundreds of news modules that others have built and shared. Surely one of them (nearly) meets your needs. So you create a test site and go about installing all the candidates that sound good based on their description. Having spent the morning installing a bunch of pre-built modules you may find what you are looking for. Or not. But either way you have spent a lot of time.
Point 3: When it is easy to make what you want, you get what you want
With umbraco, I can build that news module to my (or your) specs in an hour. Granted, I'm pretty handy with umbraco. But it isn't difficult and I can teach you how and you can become a Certified Umbraco Developer in two days. Or you could learn on your own. Or pick an existing package that is close and modify it as others have suggested. The point is --and this is what distinguishes umbraco from other systems-- umbraco is a framework you use to build what you want, rather than a rigid system that forces you to adapt to it. In the same way that you have complete freedom to make any kind of markup you want rather than being constrained to only skinning and themes, so you also have complete freedom to build the logic and functionality just the way you want. And doing so is quick and easy. So quick and easy that many 'modules' are never put into the community because they are just so simple to produce to your exact specs.
If you really want a CMS with a ton of modules you should look elsewhere. If you want a framework you can readily mold to exactly meet your needs rather than conforming your needs to what othes have provided... umbraco is an awesome choice.
Thanks for asking such a great question. I hope this is helpful.
@MartinB No need to be mean. He can be a bit annoying at times yes (mostly because explaining anything slightly technical is harder then teaching pigs how to fly) but he does look out for his employees. Especially the recently graduated ones (like me!)
@The others. Thanks for your answers. I'll type up a nice report for him tomorrow. Sorry if it seemed like a dumb question, as I said I already gave him my opinion as to why. Guess this was his way of subtly telling me to get the opinion of some more experienced people (I did graduate only recently after all. And I am stil a bit too easily cowed in just shutting up and doing as I am told :P)
@Matt The building it myself part is actually what I am gunning for. I am still pretty new, but I like programming. And I'm also a "hands on" and "D.I.Y." guy when it comes to programming. But yeah, the boss does need to give me permission and time to do that. As for specific packages, he's mostly miffed about the amount of webshops available. uCommerce (which I will be installing later this week) will most likely be deemed too expensive (hence me ignoring untill now). I know there is commerce4umbraco by Paul Sterling and Benjamin is working on something as well. But I couldn't get commerce4umbraco working right so I had to give up on that.
@Douglas Thanks for the encouragement. I personally hope that sooner or later I can convince my boss to send me to one of the umbraco boot camps (would look nice on my resumé as well :D). But since I just started 3 months ago, I think it's a bit early to push for something like that. Either way, thanks for your input.
@Paul If only that were real. That would be so awesome :P
I totally agree with you on the eCommerce front (I've actualy got a conference call tonight to discuss this very subject). I'd go checkout www.supersimplewebshop.com as another good option (you might have to ping them an email or tweet) and if you could make it to umbUKFest in october (http://our.umbraco.org/events/umbraco-uk-festival-london), Im actually giving a demo of integrating umbraco with nopCommerce, so there are a couple more options for you.
I'd love to go, but that's in London and I'm waaaaay back in Arnhem (that's in the Netherlands for the geographically challenged people :P) :( Also not quite sure I could afford a second trip there (went there on vacation this summer, awesome city). But definitely something I'll keep in mind.
Hey, i feel your pain. Don't get we wrong! I've been through the same thing with employers that were also very nice people in general, but total tools when it came to the more technical part of things.I've wasted much time on that account :-)
I'm not mean, but i can see why you thought so, my appologies (it brought back bad memories) ;-)
We created lots of websites and applications in the last year. We had to develop a few basic functions ourselves, but for the most part available packages added needed functionallity, like supersimple webshop or contour for forms. Basic part is: do not try to invent the wheel. Partner with other NL umbraco companys like Infocaster (Arnhem) or Axendo (Leusden). This speeds up development. Any questions: mail me at zomeren at aride dot nl. Greetz, Marco van Zomeren
"lack" of packages
Not sure where this goes so just putting it up here with the other package related questions. In any case, while there are quite a few packages in the repository on our.umbraco, there are only a couple that suit "our" needs. My boss was under impression that since this is open source and bla bla bla, there should be dozens of packages we could use and keeps asking me as to why there aren't a gazilion different packages (like with php for example).
I have told him, that I believe this is due to the fact that this is a relatively new community coupled with the fact that most packages are probably either something the creator does not wish to share or it's tailored to specific demands for an existing client (thus rendering it useless as a generic package).
That was enough for him up till now, but now he wants me to get a definitive answer. Hence me making this post =\
Regards,
-Ferdy
Look here: http://our.umbraco.org/projects
There you can find all the packages for Umbraco. The repository only shows the best rated packages ;-)
My bad, I called it the repository, but I meant that page. The point remains though. Yes there are quite a few packages. But not a whole lot of packages for stuff my boss believes to be essential. For example a calendar system. There is only one at the moment (I love it btw, so please don't hit me Peter). However, my boss was thinking/hoping there'd be a dozen so he could have choices.
Isn't it better to have fewer high quality packages rather than having a huge ammount of packages that might not be at the same quality?
Just my opinion.
I do not disagree there. My boss however finds it hard to believe there is so "little" choice considdering the widespread use of Umbraco (what was it? Over 70.000 websites?). And thus he has sent me on an epic quest to find out why (despite me having already told him why I think it to be so).
From my point of view the main reason why there are "so little" packages is that a for a lot of things we do here at orbitone, there are so many different approaches to making anything, each having a different set of requirement that make it difficult to split it up into seperate packages to start with...
Combine this with the fact that you can very rapidly recreate functionality using xslt (and optionally .net) that it often takes longer to learn how the author of a package intended you to use it, than it takes you to recreate it yourself... (youtube, google maps, navigation, multilanguage features)
As a company so far, we don't create packages for internal use either. Instead we use a site template (SQL + Files) of a blank site with all the custom built goodies in there, the main reason here is because we need to customize a lot of stuff in the umbraco config files (url rewriting, character encoding, folder url's, Elmah asp.net exception reporting, emailharvesterprotection,...) that can't easilty be included in packages, leave alone be reused by someone else
This "image" is maintained by myself and a colleage, and updated regulary.
I have to agree with Rik, there's sooo many options when working with umbraco (both from a dev as a design point of view) that's hardly impossible to create a one-time fits-all package. Most packages serve as a good starting point, but for most of the sites we build, we always need that little tweak that just isn't packaged up (can be options, extra functionality...) so using a package as is rather rare.
It is still worth looking into existing package as it may fit your needs 95%, and only have to build the extra 5%, which is always a great time saver.
Just my 0.02$
Cheers,
/Dirk
Ferdy, no offence to you in the slightest this is aimed more at your employers who I guess own a company right? Does that company also give away its products for free? I expect not!
As a package developer and business owner myself I release packages that I feel will be of benefit to others in the community and to give something back in return for the help I have received. I am curious to know what packages he is hoping to see as I think there is great selection of packages out there to fulfil a great number of requirements or to serve as a starting point for your own developments as in many cases the source has been made available. IMO this community cannot be likened to the wider PHP community as many in this community would prefer to collaborate and create higher quality packages than to compete and continually reinvent the wheel. To take your example above, perhaps the Calendar package that already exists serves the needs of users already and if it does not you can either contact the package owner with your ideas or offer to contribute.
Again, this is not directed at you but more towards your employer - perhaps he can give you the opportunity to develop one or more of the packages he was expecting to see :)
Totally agree with Rik. It would probably take me more time to find out which one of the 10 calendar packages would be the best one than to quickly write one myself - which I know will do exactly what I/the client wants as opposed to having a package that does 'nearly' what I want and I spend another 3 days actually getting it to do what I/the client want. Needless to say some packages have already become quite essential and are a major benefit for my productivity, yet they are more on a foundational level than modules that one can just plug in, e.g. the ImageGen, the fileManager, the Housekeeping package, etc.
In addition to that I think most people here are very busy taking part in the community (which is fantastic) and building great web sites than taking the time to develop modules like a calendar control which you can just plug in, configure and there it goes. One of the reasons for this is probably that it takes an aweful lot of time to develop such a customizable control and keep it compatible to newer Umbraco versions, etc etc, so that such a simple control can turn out to be a full-time effort, also because you as a developer of such a package would only want to publish it if you as a consumer of such a package would actually use it. A good many times have we considered packaging up certain functionality which we have build for the benefit of the community, yet didn't do it in the end out of one or more of the following reasons:
- too specialist implementation, would take light-years to make the package more generic
- not really sure if this would be beneficial for anyone else, so the amount of time put into the packaging might be wasted
- not really sure if we would even use our own package for another project (as said above)
That said the amount of packages avaialble that you can just plug in and you have a full forum/blog/commercial solution etc. have been growing quite a bit lately, which is fantastic. I also have to agree that I've rather have only one but highly customizable package where 10 developers share their work than 10 packages from 10 developers.
Hope that makes some sense,
Sascha
What a waste of time having you sit here to figure out why there aren't enough packages that fit your employers needs, lmao! :D
Your boss seems to be a tool tbh but i can read between the lines that you are of the same opinion :-)
Poor guy
I think this thread warrants a read of the 1 April blog post from Niels:
http://umbraco.org/blog/2010/4/1/umbraco-42-coming
-Paul
Hi Ferdy,
I think everyone has pretty much covered the reasons (Emphasis on quality and collaboration rather than quantity, and Umbraco is more of an extendable framework, than a set of modules) so I won't really go into those.
Rather than justify why things are this way, I think Simon has the right idea in that it would be much more advantagous to outline what packages your employer would like to see. It might be that you've overlooked an existing package, or just that nobody has actually thought of it yet, in which case it might spark the imagination of some of the more active package devs. Alternatively, why not give some of them a go yourself, you'll be suprised at how easy it can actually be.
Failing that, it might just be that Umbraco isn't the right fit for him/her?
Many thanks
Matt
Hi, Ferdy,
I've met and trained hundreds of umbraco users and your boss' observations are fairly common. If youlook at how many 'modules' umbraco has compared to other systems you'll be disappointed. After the initial shock that such a capable and widely used system appears to be lacking some basics you'll find --as have all umbraco users-- that this is not a bad thing. Here's why...
Point 1: A module that doesn't meet your needs is useless
Let's suppose you have a requirement that your site have a 'news module'. Now what you mean by a news module and what I mean are almost certainly not the same thing. For me, a news module is a section on the homepage's sidebar that list the seven most-recent press releases, faq entries, tech notices, and blog posts. But never anything more than 30 days old even if that means fewer than seven items are listed. I also want to pull out the first 80 characters of the text, split on whitespace, and add a link with "[read more]". That's what my site might mean when talking about a news module. Your site would surely be different.
Point 2: A massive collection of similar modules wastes time
With some CMS's you can select among tens or hundreds of news modules that others have built and shared. Surely one of them (nearly) meets your needs. So you create a test site and go about installing all the candidates that sound good based on their description. Having spent the morning installing a bunch of pre-built modules you may find what you are looking for. Or not. But either way you have spent a lot of time.
Point 3: When it is easy to make what you want, you get what you want
With umbraco, I can build that news module to my (or your) specs in an hour. Granted, I'm pretty handy with umbraco. But it isn't difficult and I can teach you how and you can become a Certified Umbraco Developer in two days. Or you could learn on your own. Or pick an existing package that is close and modify it as others have suggested. The point is --and this is what distinguishes umbraco from other systems-- umbraco is a framework you use to build what you want, rather than a rigid system that forces you to adapt to it. In the same way that you have complete freedom to make any kind of markup you want rather than being constrained to only skinning and themes, so you also have complete freedom to build the logic and functionality just the way you want. And doing so is quick and easy. So quick and easy that many 'modules' are never put into the community because they are just so simple to produce to your exact specs.
If you really want a CMS with a ton of modules you should look elsewhere. If you want a framework you can readily mold to exactly meet your needs rather than conforming your needs to what othes have provided... umbraco is an awesome choice.
Thanks for asking such a great question. I hope this is helpful.
cheers,
doug.
@MartinB No need to be mean. He can be a bit annoying at times yes (mostly because explaining anything slightly technical is harder then teaching pigs how to fly) but he does look out for his employees. Especially the recently graduated ones (like me!)
@The others. Thanks for your answers. I'll type up a nice report for him tomorrow. Sorry if it seemed like a dumb question, as I said I already gave him my opinion as to why. Guess this was his way of subtly telling me to get the opinion of some more experienced people (I did graduate only recently after all. And I am stil a bit too easily cowed in just shutting up and doing as I am told :P)
@Matt The building it myself part is actually what I am gunning for. I am still pretty new, but I like programming. And I'm also a "hands on" and "D.I.Y." guy when it comes to programming. But yeah, the boss does need to give me permission and time to do that. As for specific packages, he's mostly miffed about the amount of webshops available. uCommerce (which I will be installing later this week) will most likely be deemed too expensive (hence me ignoring untill now). I know there is commerce4umbraco by Paul Sterling and Benjamin is working on something as well. But I couldn't get commerce4umbraco working right so I had to give up on that.
@Douglas Thanks for the encouragement. I personally hope that sooner or later I can convince my boss to send me to one of the umbraco boot camps (would look nice on my resumé as well :D). But since I just started 3 months ago, I think it's a bit early to push for something like that. Either way, thanks for your input.
@Paul If only that were real. That would be so awesome :P
-Ferdy
Hi Ferdy,
I totally agree with you on the eCommerce front (I've actualy got a conference call tonight to discuss this very subject). I'd go checkout www.supersimplewebshop.com as another good option (you might have to ping them an email or tweet) and if you could make it to umbUKFest in october (http://our.umbraco.org/events/umbraco-uk-festival-london), Im actually giving a demo of integrating umbraco with nopCommerce, so there are a couple more options for you.
Hope that helps.
Matt
I'd love to go, but that's in London and I'm waaaaay back in Arnhem (that's in the Netherlands for the geographically challenged people :P) :( Also not quite sure I could afford a second trip there (went there on vacation this summer, awesome city). But definitely something I'll keep in mind.
Well, I'm just glad we don't share the same 'boss', although I work @ Arnhem too ;-)
I work in Ede Kipusoep. And it's not -that- bad. Just annoying at times. But the colleagues more then make up for it :)
Hehe Ede is almost the same ;-)
I can imagine it's annoying sometimes, but indeed, nice colleagues are priceless :-)
eCommerce could also try uCommerce. We've starting investigating for one of our clients...
Oh, and there is a calendar control thats part of the Business Web Start pack thats pretty good too ;)
@Ferdy
Hey, i feel your pain. Don't get we wrong! I've been through the same thing with employers that were also very nice people in general, but total tools when it came to the more technical part of things.I've wasted much time on that account :-)
I'm not mean, but i can see why you thought so, my appologies (it brought back bad memories) ;-)
We created lots of websites and applications in the last year. We had to develop a few basic functions ourselves, but for the most part available packages added needed functionallity, like supersimple webshop or contour for forms. Basic part is: do not try to invent the wheel. Partner with other NL umbraco companys like Infocaster (Arnhem) or Axendo (Leusden). This speeds up development. Any questions: mail me at zomeren at aride dot nl. Greetz, Marco van Zomeren
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