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Given the disappointment with the recent “popularity contest” I wonder if getting the word out in a persistent/residual way via social networking sites like facebook/twitter would not be a long term benefit for building a greater web presence for Symphony CMS.

Green Eggs and Ham Problem

I believe the biggest obstacle Symphony CMS has at this moment is the “Green Eggs and Ham” issue (I have a four year old so my literary metaphors are ‘youthful’). In other words, if we can get developers to try Symphony I’m thoroughly convinced they’ll like it and want more. The trick is how to get them to try it.

Marketing Strengths

Aside from all the benefits of XSLT/XML and the well structured PHP OOP, I think focusing on the Community aspect of Symphony might be a draw. This is a responsive helpful forum that addresses the apprehension many devs may have: “If I get in to this and get stuck, can I get help - especially since this is a newer CMS?”

So why not create an official facebook page/app that would drive people to this main website but would allow for the viral contagion of the social networking phenomena like facebook or twitter?

There is this group on Facebook already.

Maybe getting some of the developers who have built, large complex sites give behind-the-scenes interviews on why Symphony was the right choice for them. It could get detailed and have screenshots of the admin area to help explain things.

This is a good discussion to have, as it’s something I plan to turn a large portion of my attention to once the documentation is in good shape. In the meantime, I invite the community to use this thread to brainstorm…

Maybe getting some of the developers who have built, large complex sites give behind-the-scenes interviews on why Symphony was the right choice for them.

This sort of thing is actively in the works as we speak.

I can consider myself an unofficial Symphony Evangelist. I use it almost on every projects at my job. I’m also writing a Symphony e-Book in Portuguese.

Let’s use more #symphonycms on Twitter!

Kudos to you all for thinking this, joining the group on facebook now and actively mentioning it in most CMS/web conversations I have on my wall..

As a new so called developer - the introduction to symphony is a little steep at first glance but so rewarding when you get into the nitty gritty..

THere should be levels of adoption for new devs.. Are there a set of page templates that could be defined and put in place in the install that could be made to introduce the (Brochure site with CMS) developers to see the benefits first and then slip in the magic extensions/further opportunities available through the forums and extensions module?

I was introduced by a forum member who happened to be looking for a CMS to save him writing his own all the time..

If I’m being honest - it’s the forum aspect and the continual development of the extensions and ideas for solutions on here that makes me want to do more with symphony.. and this needs to be celebrated in a marketing campaign once documentation is ready and people are comfortable with promoting it.

Adwords? Advertising on facebook? $5 each into to a pot for a bit of a push anyone?

I think a good start would be to rank higher in google. The only reason I found symphony was because I was looking for an xslt cms.

There are little other keywords with which I can find symphony..

The only reason I found symphony was because I was looking for an xslt cms.

In which case the keywords are well optimised :-) Do you have suggestions for keywords you think Symphony should target?

A summary of my thoughts from a few weeks ago in the Joomla? Why not Symphony? thread. In summary I see that there can be promotion by the community, and the core team:

The community:

  • tag stuff on Twitter with #symphonycms
  • go to your local web developer meetups and namedrop or present a Symphony showcase site (I guarantee there will be a Barcamp, Web Standards Group, Refresh or other meetup near you if you look hard enough)
  • mention Symphony CMS on other forums or mailinglists you use (for example forum member dougoftheabaci and I have often mentioned Symphony at the Boagworld forums)
  • add yourself as a follower of Symphony CMS at the relevant LinkedIn and Facebook groups, as well as related groups (e.g. the XML and Related Technologies Network LinkedIn group)
  • post screenshots and screencasts of your sites (and the backend) onto Flickr, Vimeo and YouTube and tag appropriately
  • bookmark this site and your own sites with Digg, Delicious and so on
  • add your developer profile to Collabfinder
  • pick up unanswered Symphony/XSLT questions on Stack Overflow, or namedrop Symphony CMS in relevant discussions (obviously only when valid, no trolling!)
  • blog about Symphony in any way you can
  • target a publication you read and contribute Symphony-referenced content (for example I wrote a small piece about web accessibility for .net magazine in the UK and intend to write a couple about Symphony this year)

Core team

  • have an XSLT ninja (Allen!) compose a solid well-edited post for Smashing Magazine as a guest author or A List Apart. Not about Symphony, but about the benefits of XSLT, which in turn will lead people.
  • write a book! The Portuguese e-book sounds awesome. If I ever get time I’d like to pull collaborators together to write one to be published by Packt or self-published through Lulu. However I’m hoping the new website/documentation will make this less of a priority. Besides, Symphony can develop so quickly that published information can get out of date fast.
  • the Facebook group is rather old (the logo and official URL have changed) so it might be an idea for the core team to set one up themselves so that they maintain control over its future (like the LinkedIn group)
  • present Symphony at a Barcamp or Refresh meeting
  • schwag! The Clearleft guys did this really well for Silverback, namely badges and moocards. At the recent dConstruct and UX London conferences these were everywhere. (example). How about building up bags of schwag to send to various people, either influential peoples or as thanks for efforts elsewhere. All geeks love free schwag, and they’ll more than likely blog about it.
  • encourage more hosts to “officially” support Symphony, like this A2 Hosting landing page
  • figure out how to get the Wikipedia page back…
  • more multimedia-type blog posts, such as screencasts and podcasts. They generate buzz. Or teaser blog posts of upcoming ideas/features.
  • approach the “A list” bloggers who fell out of favour with Symphony many years ago during the pricing restructure, before going open source. Jon Hicks? Many creative developers are picking up ExpressionEngine but I see there being room for defectors to Symphony. Mark Boulton’s recent work with Drupal?

As I said in the other post, one thing that would work wonders is a favourable mention on a well-respected blog such as Smashing Magazine. They have a huge readership and it equals big exposure to a targeted crowd.

I think the team tried a small Adwords campaign earlier in the year but not sure of the results. I’ve lost count of the number of “£30 free” vouchers I get in magazines and promotions for Adwords, so I wonder whether these could be pooled together.

Although pricey, something like The Deck or Fusion Ads would be far more targeted in my opinion. They are very choosy over which sites can show their ads. Or placing an ad on a high traffic site such as Smashing Magazine.

this needs to be celebrated in a marketing campaign once documentation is ready and people are comfortable with promoting it

Too right! I sense there is little incentive to promote Symphony heavily until the website is updated and documentation is published. Without this, new potential users may not give it a second look.

I just started working on a project which will incorporate 74 websites/domains for a real estate group here in Dallas, Texas using Symphony and the ninja technique. There is no other CMS I’d rather be using.

Symphony really pushed my buttons as a frontend developer because it allows me to make full-fledged cms’s without (to much) trouble. The step-in is pretty high though, xsl is a pretty uncomfortable thing to learn.

The reason most popular CMS’s are popular is because they are dead simple, Symphony on the other hand offers a universe of possibilities (form anything into anything.. sounds like magic). So..

THere should be levels of adoption for new devs..

It’s almost an insult seeing how easy it is to install and modify Symphony but the key I think is in making the extensions even more visible. What scares most people is getting out of there comfort zone to use a weird language like xsl (especially for devs who are on a constant deadline, if it’s your bread and butter, why take the chance?).

(especially for devs who are on a constant deadline, if it’s your bread and butter, why take the chance?).

That’s what held me back for a while.

I recently offered to do a “Getting Started with Symphony” article on Nettuts which was just going to take one of their existing templates and convert it to a working site using Symphony.

The reply:

Hi Brendan, We have our hands full at the moment with framework tutorials; however, we might consider these after October! Feel free to check back in at that time.

Thanks! Jeffrey Way Nettuts+ Editor

Symphony isn’t for the average user, so simple Adwords campaigns won’t cut it, it needs to be like nickdunn said, more targeted campaigns.

Another way to increase expose could be articles like, “How to setup a Subscriber List with Campaign Monitor and Symphony”. An article like this would cover the basics of events, extension installation, and is something that Campaign Monitor would be likely to help promote.

An article like this would cover the basics of events, extension installation, and is something that Campaign Monitor would be likely to help promote

Agreed. Tying articles in to third parties would help with self promotion and demonstrates an active community.

I started with a couple of ideas:

But there are other third parties that we could integrate with; Campaign Monitor being a great example since there are already excellent Expression Engine plugins. Others include OpenInviter, Vimeo, possibly YouTube/Flickr for photos, tighter Twitter integration, Pingomatic, Ankoder (next on my to-do list!).

The step-in is pretty high though, xsl is a pretty uncomfortable thing to learn

Reducing the barrier to entry is another great topic that deserves its own thread, even though it’s related to the marketing/promotion of the CMS. I hope this can be quelled slightly with the new documentation which I hope will feature small XSLT snippets as tutorials.

So it seems promotion of personal projects does creep in occasionally on ALA (even if Mr Jones is an established figure).

Shouldn’t we focus on finishing the parts of symphony that aren’t (documentation?) before trying to get more people to use it?

Bauhouse’s designprojectx tutorials were quite helpful for me. Perhaps a page here at Symphony that would catalog all the different tutorials and articles developers have written is in order. Maybe we could submit those articles et al in the same way we submit sites and extensions etc. Just a thought.

I’ve been following Symphony CMS (SC) for about 6 months and I know that I will like it. But I haven’t gotten to it yet because I cant find any screencasts on it.

My biggest problem is getting to know the template- and URL structure. I know XML/XSLT from other systems, but a 30 minute screencast on how to get from a static markup to a dynamic SC site would do it all.

Also a thought: When I look at a site and want to know which CMS is used, I usualy go look at the source (smart developers always view source ;-)).

With this thought, I provide all the sites I make with the following meta tag:

<meta name="generator" content="Symphony 2.1.1 - www.getsymphony.com" />

Offcourse, in XSL this would be:

<meta name="generator" content="Symphony {$symphony-version} - www.getsymphony.com" />

Just my 2 cents…

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Symphony • Open Source XSLT CMS

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  • PHP 5.3-5.6 or 7.0-7.3
  • PHP's LibXML module, with the XSLT extension enabled (--with-xsl)
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