Symphony.

So after finishing the work on my first half-decent Symphony site, I'd like to share some of my findings with the community, mostly lauding, and mainly to post somewhere else than in 'troubleshooting' for once.

First of all; the community: small but active and high powered. I feel like the people on this forum are actually eager to help. Reading some threads, seems to me a lot of bright heads are in this community.

I have tried Joomla(omg headache) and a CMS a friend wrote, still nothing can top the ease of use for the client that symphony has. I say ease of use for the customer, because I thought it's pretty strict on the developer.

For instance, I had never written xslt before, and had hardly thought a lot about the flow logic behind using a template engine. It was quite a rollercoaster, but I feel like I've unearthed a wealth of knowledge. That's a good thing because I've spent tripple the hours I can invoice :P

I've also noticed that symphony isn't very well represented outside of the symphony site itself. I did lots of googling to discover the reason behind most error messages. There doesn't seem to be a lot of 'buzz' out there on symphony.. I think this is a shame, because I of course want symphony to grow in popularity if I'm to keep using it.

Other than, I think Symphony is smart, lean, powerful and flexible. For now I've only did some minor magic, but I plan to use Symphony again for an upcoming, more complicated project. So expect me with loads of questions soon ;)

So a big thank you to: fawx, designermonkey, moonoo2, phoque and davidhund for trying to help or helping me out during the creation of my project :)

Kind greetings, a fellow geek.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of 'buzz' out there on symphony

I think this is mainly because there isn't much 'buzz' about XSLT. Unfortunately, most developers hate it and many resort to other template engines like velocity.

@Vandenberg, thanks for the feedback.

Unfortunately, most developers hate it and many resort to other template engines like velocity.

@remie, you are correct. In my humble opinion, many of those developers "hate it" because they choose not to understand it. You always hear, "it comes with such a 'steep' learning curve." That excuse is tired and old. I'm sorry, if I can pick it up, anyone can. :)

OK, my small rant is over for the day.

@Vandenberg, however small my contribution, happy to help a fellow Symphonian convert :)

Unfortunately, most developers hate it and many resort to other template engines like velocity.

That's a bit odd. In my opinion XML/XSLT is good general skill for web developer.

Siem, thanks for the kind words and (again) great to learn of your positive experience with Symphony. I agree on the community: it's quite small but I've found it a very positive place: helpful, friendly and skilled people.

XSLT was new to me too and it took a little getting used to. The general Symphony concepts took a little while to learn too. But I've found I picked it up quite quickly altogether and was able to create a highly dynamic website with Symphony in very little time.

The learning curve, to me, certainly was not steeper than that of other systems such as, say, EE. The biggest hurdle was getting my head around the XSLT recursive approach to templating.

Anyway, I agree that, to many in our field, XML/XSL has a bad rep. I understand a bit where people are coming from ("Boo, XML has failed on the web!") but I believe it is based on a misunderstanding.

I agree that the pragmatic approach of HTML(5) ("Paving the cowpaths" etc) has worked while the puristic (XML, XHTML(2)) has not, but this has little to do with the fact that Symphony uses XML as a data-transfer layer and XSLT as a templating layer. These are both, in my view, excellent and appropriate choices for data-handling and templating.

Symphony's XSLT templates output HTML in 99% of the cases (but are flexible enough to output much more!) and the whole "XML has failed" argument does, therefore, not apply. It is "throwing the kid out with the badwater" as they say in Dutch ;)

Anyway, kudos on sticking with it and all the best with your upcoming projects! Nice too, to learn of another Dutch Symphonist: keep in touch ;)

Maybe it isn't necessarily a bad thing to keep the community small and skilled. It seems to me that somehow the use of XSLT in Symphony is good for filtering out all the dilettantes in our industry and keeps people away who are unwilling to learn new stuff.

dilettantes

Award for best vocabulary goes to a non-native speaker. I had to look that one up! ;-)

LOL, me too! :D

I think you have a point, Jens. I have the impression that it's very easy to find professional people to work with in this community. ;)

Award for best vocabulary goes to a non-native speaker. I had to look that one up! ;-)

Maybe it's more common in german. ;-)

Maybe it's more common in german. ;-)

[OT]In Italian is "dilettanti" and it's quite common! ;)[/OT]

Alright let me give this one a quick response before it gets hijacked for linguistic purposes ;) I've come down with some bad flu so it took a while.

But it's an interesting point though, I've been abusing found action scripts and hassling forums for years before coming full circle with my scripting skills in Flash. Learning XSLT feels like going there all over again, and it's really demanding a lot of effort. But I'm willing to try to know Symphony so well, so that one day I might be on the helping side.

@davidhund You're going to have to clarify some of the things you said there someday. Btw, weren't you the guy that invited me for a Dutch Symphony platform about a year ago? I wasn't up to it then, I might be now.

Allright time to do some more couch surfing.

Siem, I'm sure learning XSLT could be a pleasant experience due to the helpful community. The one thing about XSLT is that it's quite 'old' technology and that there are few recent resources/writeups. But there is heaps of documentation.

PS: What exactly was unclear from my reply? PPS: And yes, I was that guy ;) Would love to talk some more about a Dutch Symphony UG with you.

Happy surfing, get well soon…