Symphony.

I hate it. But I'm an art historian.

There are designers and developers, but I think there is also an intermediate in this list: the frontend developer. I know a lot of people who doesn't know PHP, also don't make posters, they have all eyes on HTML, CSS, JS and usability. Symphony is everything they need, and XSLT is the perfect language to data manipulation (forget php lines on the html template!).

I'm all in favor of screencasts, tutorials, articles, etc spread around the web.

forget php lines on the html template!

well, did you ever have a look at twig, or fluent or things like that?

Don't take me wrong, I really like xslt, but, there're some problems that come along with using it within a website context, e.g. as @creativedutchmen pointed out here. Also schama validation is a big concern with regards to performance.

Furthermore, there is no ongoing development in a php context. The php language stuck with xslt 1.* ever since, and that also applies for the c lib libxslt (which is of course the reason we have that situation with php).

Using xslt has clearly shifted towards JAVA.

@iwyg, the problem I described is actually fairly easy to mitigate: don't have all files on the network.

When setting up your own server environment (with Amazon, say) just be sure every server has the latest copy of the production code (php, xslt) on its physical harddrive. Then you can offload all assets to the NAS, have your uploads stored there, your log files, everything besides the actual code.

In fact, this is how pretty much every PaaS is doing it; they offer a set of servers to which you deploy code, and they offer a large bucket to which you can store your application data. Even though not everybody likes it, S3 really is a good place for uploads, especially when combined with CloudFront.

Thomas, I don't really know others template engines... Thats because the last 3 years I only use Symphony for all projects and once a while have to fix some weird template code in Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla or CodeIgniter... What I mean in last comment is that common CMSs have this approach. And template with php makes things harder for frontend developes (often referred to as designers). For me, it is not the XSLT language that matter, it is much more the behavior, and I imagine that are others solutions as good as XSLT.

@Nils I don't have free reign to access the server command line in my company. Based on Things it should have... I would like to emphasize avoidance of the command line in the new Symphony community. Server administrators are gatekeepers in my office and even make it difficult for very experienced web developers to work. I don't mind XSLT, and I'll learn whatever it takes including PHP, but adding extensions and modifying CSS from the admin interface would be great.

https://github.com/symphonists/filemanager @glen this was useful for editing assets in backend.. there isnt a 2.3 Compatible version yet... it's coming though ;)

I will definitely put this to use when it's available. Thank you.

New Topic related to growing the community. I realize this isn't a simple problem...

Gain acceptance by non-vpn providers in the United States such as Fatcow, GoDaddy, etc. Fortrabbit would be great in the United States (maybe soon). I find Soario a little elusive on how it works (monetarily), and I don't need a pre-setup version. I would like to work with them to improve connecting with a starter audience. Does anyone else have this opinion?

@glen acceptance by non-vpn providers such as GoDaddy is more likely to bring plenty of uneducated people trying to find a ready-made CMS rather then developers and designers who are looking to discover a CMS to meet their needs.

It would be nice to have but I wouldn't prioritize it. Additionally you'll need to have good documentation and support on how to set up, which are areas that we're currently lacking in.

Software users are a layered group. Presently I see Symphony having a strong developers layer with room for some growth, but the administration interface (AI) users as a small group with lots of room for growth. It would take the documentation and forum support to expand the AI users, but if you attract other AI users to do it ... like me ... it could leave the developers free to develop.