When sitecake version 3?

feature request
#9

Hi guys, sorry for late response. Lots of good proposals and observations here.

First, you are right that this is basically a side job. Don’t get me wrong here, when I say side job I don’t mean less important. We take everything we do seriusly, and sitecake is after all our first born :), but we can’t live out of Sitecake sale and that’s why some things are progessing slow. The lack of funds is also the reason why there’s almost no marketing except few promotion sales and campaigns on few different services (codecanyon among others).

Also, I agree that if we want to speed up development, we need to figure a way to raise more funds. Sitecake from it’s begining has changed several pricing models. We had journey from open source to now days pricing model. Also had experiment with different prices for both whitelabel and non-whitelabel versions. We even had freemium version of sitecake with limited functionality at some point, but current pricing model (with prices we have them now) turned out as best solution so far. But it’s obvisly not good enough.

As for identity crisis, I wouldn’t call it like that, but you are right when you say that we are tryint to walk two paths toward both developers/designers and end users. In last few months we are putting our thoughts on how to distinguish those two paths and which one should we take at the end. So we came up with idea to create SaaS (Sitecake as a Service :)). This path would satisfy designers and developers who would have easy solution for their clients with smaller websites where they woudn’t have to think about server requirements and settings, FTP, charging… They would just need to upload template (or buy it on SaaS platform) and instantiate new sitecake site. This also opens up possibility for designers and developers to sell their templates (and plugins after Sitecake v3) on SaaS platform and it would take some burden of Sitecake core team in regards of support because support tickects would mostly be real issues opened by develeopers and designer with technical knowledge and usage support from end users would be handeled by designers/developers them self. That means less time on support for sitecake core team and more time to focus on main product which is Sitecake CMS. So, Sitecake CMS would remain focus of our development, which is important for all developers and designers who wouldn’t use SaaS.

All that being said, it’s clear that we have an idea of how should we continue from here. Only thing that left to figure out is funding.
For SaaS solution we will try to ensure funds through some kind of sturtup accelerator as SaaS platform would be a new service.
Further development and maintenace of Sitecake CMS would need to fund it self. So what would you say if we would start charging Sitecake CMS per site (domain)? There were mentions of donations, but that wouldn’t be neceserry in that case. I think that @MichaelC is right when say that many designers/developers charge $50 to $100/hr so that would be at least $1000+ per site. Sitecake price in compare to that is preatty small. Designers / developers wouldn’t even need to take that of from what they charge to their client. They would simply offer their clients Sitecake as solution for content editing, and if on our site official price is per site, it would be legitimet to ask your client to pay for that if he want Sitecake integration. We don’t even need to implement any kind of restrictions or checks, but go with our users honesty. As there are more sites with sitecake installed that would mean more funds and more stability and new features and improvements. Most of sitecake users use sitecake on more than one website, so that’s means at least double funding.

So, what do you think?

#10

@predragleka

Let me first start by thanking you for all the work you’ve put into Sitecake and the support you provide here.

I would need more details on what you have planned for your Sitecake as a Service and how it would work specifically before I can make any informed comments.

At the end of the day, there’s a lot of competition in this space. Whether it’s WordPress and the dozens of CMS tools available or the many flat file competitors to Sitecake. It’s important for Sitecake to carve out its niche. Thus far, I think you’ve done a good job. I did some extensive research into flat file solutions and finally settled on Sitecake.

As such, I urge you to Google “rapidweaver cms” and see what these companies are doing, their price points and try their demos. I think you’d be surprised. There’s one that sells for $99 per domain and I don’t think it’s as good as Sitecake. Again, they’ve carved out their niche and are doing quite well.

#11

Rapidweaver charges $297/year for their PULSE - unlimited sires

#12

I tried the demo on pulse and coudn’t figure it out, too confusing. Wouldn’t spend my money on it.

#13

@MasonVT

Exactly what I’m talking about. Pulse is a good example of where I believe Sitecake is better/easier/ cheaper. Yet, they seem to be a thriving company with a number of employees.

#14

@MasonVT @MichaelC

There is no comparison at all between Sitecake and anything else. Pulse is a designer suite of cms pages, blocks, blogs, media, stats, etc. That is probably why they have the staff and cash mentioned. But Sitecake isn’t a cms, nor is it trying to be. It is designed to be an extremely simple text management system for developers, and perhaps end users to simply plug in editable sections into a pre-existing site. That’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t involve a huge learning curve. You build your site with Pulse, Dreamweaver, or whatever, and use whatever structure you want (Bootstrap, Foundation, html, etc., and don’t have to learn anything besides how to install it. In my opinion, that is the beauty of it.

As far as Sitecake finding its niche: not only has it found it, it has created it as well. I have searched on and off for years for this, and have found nothing. Everything wants to impose its structure, markdown, markup, plugins, extensions, and all kinds of crazy shit that I don’t want or need. All I want is what sitecake offers: Add a div, create a password, and let the client go nuts. Even if they totally screw things up, the scope is limited, and with as many undos as you give them, they really have to work at it to cause any major damage.

I don’t want to learn pulse, grav, rapidweaver, simplecms, etc, etc, and neither do my clients. They just want to keep their site up to date with new information, not be a part time web designer.

@predragleka says there are plans for plugins for v3, and there are already ways for clients to create pages.

How about this, both for pricing and features:

  • Drop the $39.00 pricepoint
  • Have the White Label version be the entry level at its current price, and as a download, not saas.
  • Split Sitecake into two versions.
  1. Let the current 2.4.7 feature list stay as it, both in features and in price. (Heck - as far as I’m concerned, you could even remove page manager, and add bold, italics, colors and highlights to the text, as I mentioned before. Similar to CK Editor, but way pared down. As far as I can tell there is nothing like this, and the price and features would accommodate the needs of small time developers like me.
  2. What you are planning with v3, saas, etc, could then go as far as it wants, and charge as much as you want for these designers MichaelC mentions who charge $50 to $100/hr so that would be at least $1000+ per site.

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From a business perspective, trying to create a new CMS is a great way to fail. There are thousands of them out there, with decades of development. Plus to create a new one is more development time, more support time, more keeping up with the browser time, and more marketing time, all for two people who are working on this part time. I see no road to success trying to compete in the CMS market given your current setup. However, to keep focusing on what the current version does, and keeping it up to date and adding text formatting options (I know, I can’t shut up about that). It would take MUCH less development time, and a chance to refine what exists, and spend more time marketing what you have.

Once ss (simple sitecake) is established and paying you what you want, then you could consider expanding to the (suicidal) path of creating a full blown CMS.

Well, there it is. Sorry for the delay in replying to your “What do you think” question, but I finally did.

Merry Christmas!

#15

I was not promoting Pulse, just the opposite. My problem is having to edit or format a whole block of text as opposed to being able to manage just potions of the text. Maybe I’m missing something?

#16

I would argue that Pulse has the “staff and cash” because of their great marketing and understanding exactly who their client is. It wasn’t always a “designer suite” but that’s what it eventually turned into over the years.

If I owned Sitecake, I know exactly what I would do and it would certainly be a different approach. Here’s an example of where Sitecake’s marketing needs to do better: I stumbled onto this tool called Blocs, which is a visual web design app for the Mac that outputs HTML. It specifically mentions that you can develop CMS driven web sites.

I figured that maybe they developed something similar to Sitecake. Then you continue reading and it states, “Blocs has integrated support for a range of premium (paid) and open source (free) third party Content Management Systems.” They mention Pulse, specifically.

Well, why isn’t Sitecake on the list? Imagine if the people at Sitecake worked with the people at Blocs to help integrate Sitecake into Blocs?

This is exactly what I’m talking about. This is exactly what I’d be doing…finding all these HTML-based tools and working with them to provide integration. Heck, maybe even work out a bundling deal for the $39 and they can upgrade to the whitelist version directly from Sitecake.

Ultimately, there are entire communities of people who have no idea that Sitecake event exists. This is really the problem and it’s a relatively easy problem to solve.

#17

Once V3 is out, I would sugest dropping the 39$ price tag as well, and just charge for plugin and theme transaction like open cart and wordpress. I buy lots of modules and also make them. Would love to see that here. I was working on a CSS animation plugin but I will wait for V3 instead.

#19

@virgiltu
I know this is old but, a plugin for v2? Do you have any working boilerplate example to share?

#20

Plugin system is ready and operational but we are not going to release it untill we find a developer who can work on further development and documentation maintenance.

If anybody is interested feel free to apply.

#21

operational in current version 2.4.10?

#22

Yes, in the current version.

#23

Can you pm me an example plugin u guys mentioned before? or whatever documentation there is? I want to tinker around with it if that is okay with. No going to share just want to get to know to the system. simple boilerplate would make my life easier.

#24

@Nik not even “no we can’t it’s a top secret?” type of answer for me? :slight_smile:

#25

I am sorry for the delay but I do not know what to answer. We have no boilerpates, no docs at all. @predragleka developed the system but he is too busy to create docs. At least for now.

I need an somebody who can commit to continue development, write docs and offer support for the plugin system. If you want to apply we can talk.

1 Like
#26

That’s exactly why I’m asking. I wanted to check out an example before I could commit to developing my own boilerplate along with API documentation to share with public. I saw a couple of posts by your developer noting an example contact form plugin which would be nice to have as a testing ground. So I asked if you could send it to me :slight_smile: I have no idea how things work and in what state they are when it goes to plugin system so it’s hard to say.

1 Like
#27

I meant this post,

it’s been a while so it’s is save to assume you guys prolly have those examples working.

#28

Ok well, this is getting weird and rude at the same time. I’m trying to help you here but whatever. Good luck guys.

#29

Mario, I am so sorry that I’ve missed your post.
I just sent you pm.