1.
concrete5 workshop
Russell Searle
Principal Consultant, Psicom
Melbourne Business Apps Group
Free Open SourceJoomla! User Group
27 March Nov 2013
14 2013

2.
Agenda
• Overview
• Feature set
• Site builders
• Designers
• Developers
• Enterprise
• Marketplace
• Learning concrete5
• Demos
• Best bits of concrete5
• Q&A

3.
Overview
• Content system focused on ease of use
• Equally pitched to site builders, designers and
developers
• Register sites with community
• Browse, purchase and install add-ons direct from
online marketplace
• Some enterprise services
• Not a mature product or ecosystem yet, but very
healthy and promising

4.
Features for site builders
• Leverage content creation and authoring model
• Page-centric approach
• In-context WYSIWYG editing and page assembly
• Lego-style page assembly:
• Page types, themes, blocks, stacks, content, HTML
• Drag-and-drop, cut-and-paste, clipboard
• Informal and simple, short learning curve
• Straightforward dashboard within easy reach
• Comprehensive content authoring services

5.
Features for designers
• Simple framework-agnostic theming
• Adapt an ordinary HTML theme
• Add a few lines of boilerplate PHP to the index page
• Bootstrap 3.0, YAML etc themes in marketplace
• Artisteer produces concrete5 themes
• Theme may include several page types, single
pages, attributes

6.
Features for developers
• Standard MVC pattern
• Hierarchical folder structure for overrides:
• Custom objects in site root folders override core and package
objects in core / package folders
• Theme pages override site page types
• Special rules for helpers, overrides of packages and package
elements, and themes
• JQuery, Zend Framework classes, ADOdb layer
• Very good documentation and forums
• Certification options, community badges
• Good opportunity to build marketplace add-ons

7.
Enterprise offering
• Extended content publishing workflow
• Internationalisation
• Site architecture and stability audit

8.
Marketplace features
• Marketplace is emerging
• Some vertical business applications, but not a full range
• Most add-ons are UI widgets, content blocks, developer tools etc
• Single-site licences, one-off purchases, no subscriptions
• Vertical business apps:
• eCommerce with many plug-ins; bridges to other shopping carts
• Real estate
• Directories, ad servers
• Membership, sports clubs
• Document library, media library
• Events and bookings
• Forum, social media …

9.
Learning concrete5
• Getting started videos
• Online editor’s guide
• Video training tracks for editors, designers and develo
• Online expert training classes (course fees)
• Developer reference
• How-tos and forums
• concrete5 books from Packt

10.
Demos

11.
Best bits of concrete5
• JavaScript front-end page assembly workspace
(major improvements coming in v5.7)
• User-friendly HTML5 content assembly
• Straightforward development of add-ons
• Very good documentation and training

12.
Q&A