Symphony.

Over the course of the last month I proposed Symphony to 3 different clients as a CMS solution since it looked very flexible (though not totally intuitive, but there were a bunch of good looking tutorials so not to worry). I installed 1.7 on their various servers and was doing some design work before focusing on really building out the backends. So the time arrives to move forward with the CMS's and so I come here looking for the 1.7 tutorials that I had bookmarked. Only to find all the links for the Symphony-specific screencasts are dead? (please tell me the content was moved somewhere...I can find the old wiki but the links don't work).

And there is ZERO documentation for version 2?

Great way to expand a product's user base. Just leave people to twist in the wind.

Dude, don't be hatin'. Take a chill pill.

All the data is there, but some links were broken due to moving it to the new archive.overture21.com domain. I've just updated the screencast wiki page to fix this, and I'll hunt around for more broken links later on.

Welcome to Overture Steven. There are a lot of talented people on these forums, so you are better off asking questions than making insults.

Sorry for the harshness, but in all honesty I am feeling pretty burned.

I sent clients to look at the Symphony documentation this week as part of the evaluation process for their CMS's. I am not looking forward to the conversations that I will be having. Do you really think its possible to convince a serious business to commit to a product with a broken website and no documentation for its current version? V2 should have been released in parallel to v1.7.

And yes, its my fault for thinking that Symphony is different from the other open-source projects that have disappointed in the past. What was I thinking?

Do you really think its possible to convince a serious business to commit...

Yes. There are a few 'serious businesses' involved, which is probably why the documentation is still pending, since everyone is still hard at work.

But honestly, your tone is just insulting, and it's the only time you've ever come here, you're not exactly encouraging anyone to help you - perhaps you should start over? ;)

@stevenlyons:

I sent clients to look at the Symphony documentation...

Are you kidding? You make your clients read this sort of stuff in order to evaluate a CMS product? Have you sent them links to the Apache documentation and some W3C recommendations as well?

Do you really think its possible to convince a serious business to commit to a product with a broken website and no documentation for its current version?

There are lots of "serious business" websites running on Symphony, built by very talented people. I think the team has done a great job making Symphony one of the most flexible and elegant systems out there, and the communitiy is indeed fantastic. Documentation for the brand new version 2, as you may have heard, is on it's way. Still you would have to learn.

And yes, its my fault for thinking that Symphony is different from the other open-source projects that have disappointed in the past. What was I thinking?

You will surely be more satisfied paying lots of money for a system which is far less elegant than Symphony. This will give you the right to accuse developers.

I understand the problem with the 1.7 based content getting moved, as well more generally having the rug pulled out from under you while working with a client. If anything, Steven, I suppose this thread shows that Symphony is used by pros that care enough about it to take it personally, and in my mind that's a positive thing.

If I was in a situation where I needed to prove Symphony to another decision-maker/stakeholder, I can see being frustrated. When I first arrived here, there seemed to be a disconnect between how apparently awesome Symphony was, and how little cohesive documentation there was. Fortunately there were things like Sephen Bau's tutorial and Allen's blog. Bottom line, with S2, things are coming together in this respect.

Than you, ashooner. You have found perfect words and put everything in the right context.

Scott et al - I've noticed this as well. Would it be possible to put a little disclaimer on the 404 page? Something like "The page you were looking for could be not found. We just switched over to a new system, and the content you were looking for may be on archive.overture21.com/{the page they requested}"

Good idea davethegr8. I'll do that today.

Would it be possible to put a little disclaimer on the 404 page?

Done. Old Wiki and Campfire links will be automatically redirected to archive.overture21.com/X and forum threads that do not exist will have a bonus link, pointing to the archived forum. Hopefully that will suffice.

@steven: i have the same sentiment as most other people in this thread. It's probably been close to two years since I started using symphony and have seen the project grow immensely. I can understand your frustration of lack of documentation, but you have to understand that it's been three guys that started this project and have stuck with it to see it through to where it is today.

I've tried other CMSes/content solutions (drupal, wp, txp, etc), and Symphony (even v1.7) has been the best imo. From what the devs have mapped out in other posts, it seems like the project will get even better.

On another note, you really should be your client's technical liaison. Your clients should not have to go to the dev/documentation section of anything you're working on unless if they themselves want to help out with developing the site. Maybe you should test out several systems yourself to see what the drawbacks/advantages are and then make a decision as to what you may think is best for your clients and even yourself to support. i mean, that's the reason why they hired you, right?