Is Craft CMS really a viable site in the Stack Exchange family?

Question

Proposal: Craft CMS

There is no doubt that this site has had a truly remarkable marketing campaign on twitter, going from proposal to commitment phase in a day. But how can it expect to meet the requirements of a successful SE site? As I look through the proposed questions they all seem viable on either Super User where there are no existing questions or on Stack Overflow where there are a few questions. I know absolutely nothing about Craft CMS, so I looked it up Wikipedia where it does not seem to be mentioned.

It looks like a proposal for a fairly insignificant product, that has a moderate following, but until yesterday, there has been insufficient questions in the SE sites that would be appropriate, to bring the site through a private beta release.

The answer to this question is important because while you may be able to collect 200 commitmented followers you need at least 100 of them to established on other SE sites. Why should 100 established SE members, commit to support this proposed site?

Answer 1

Thanks for asking, James. It’s a question worth being considered. Craft is a relatively new product – 1.0 only came out a year ago – yet throughout the past year several people have asked us if we think it would be a good idea to start a Craft proposal on SE. Many of our customers come from other CMSs with their own dedicated SE Q&A sites (WordPress and ExpressionEngine for example), and they know how beneficial a dedicated SE site can be to working with these types of products. However we’ve always been of the opinion that Craft is too new to warrant it; that the timing wasn’t right.

That said, I do think the timing is now right. Craft usage has been accelerating this year, especially since 2.0 came out in April, and the community has desperately outgrown its Google+ group for Q&A. It’s a very powerful system with a ton of built-in functionality with varying levels of complexity, and a very active userbase that’s eager to help each other out.

As for why there hasn’t been much activity on the existing Stack Overflow or Super User sites, I think the answer is pretty simple: A) it’s a community that’s used to having dedicated Q&A sites for their CMSs, so SO and SU are generally not even considered, and B) Craft already has a dedicated Q&A site in its Google+ community, which is where we’ve been encouraging everyone to go. Regardless of whether it’s a good tool for the job, it has the existing userbase, and people are always going to ask where they think the question will actually be answered. So I don’t think the current lack of activity on SE sites has any indication of whether where will be traffic when there’s a dedicated Craft site here. On the contrary, I expect this site is going to flourish (and we will do our part to see that that happens).

Cheers,

Brandon

Answer 2

Craft CMS is a Content-Management-System by Pixel & Tonic. It can be compared to Wordpress, ModX or Drupal. Although the community is small it's very active and growing fast.

See: http://buildwithcraft.com

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The reason why there are no questions on Stack Overflow nor Super User, is that the community uses a Google+ Group for Q&A:

https://plus.google.com/communities/106505340287442511226

But due to the growth of the community, G+ isn't a viable solution for Q&A anymore.

Currently the 1.691 members on G+ ask about ~10 questions per day. Adding questions of the 'Craft-Dev' G+ Group, the community currently asks about ~15 questions per day, meeting the Area51 beta requirement.

Answer 3

While I think the answers above really hit the nail on the head - Shouldn't SE be more inclusive than exclusive when opening up to a new community? I realize SE doesn't want a wasteland of a community but as an outsider participating in this process (for the first time I might add) it doesn't feel very welcoming.

While we've got a several hurdles to go, I have no doubt that the support is there for Craft to grow and thrive inside (and outside) the SE community. Brandon and his team have done a wonderful job building and supporting a platform that brings a breath of fresh air to the CMS landscape.

As a designer/developer now running a digital agency we (Taecho Group) have adopted Craft as our main CMS solution for clients and the feedback we've gotten has been outstanding. We've dealt with less "bugs" and had faster on-ramping for clients than any platform we've used perviously. I've got nothing but good things to say about Craft and I can't wait to see how it continues to grow in the coming years.

Craft doesn't need to be the biggest or oldest to be a shining star in the SE community.

Answer 4

James, it is an important question, and gets to the heart of how StackExchange operates.

An important gateway to a new community is the ability to demonstrate contribution in other communities. We were able to generate a site for another related product, a few years ago, exactly because the members were skilled, and so could go out and get scores from answering in more established groups.

Their commitment on StackExchange then registered the required points, because the individual committers had high enough scores. Then the other needed and wanted StackExchange activities snowballed from there.

That other site became successful even though specialized, because of its members. I think you could apply the principle of reaching out in constructive ways to gain another type of interest community, being social in a way StackExchange wants to require.

Craft Cms is a wonderful environment and tool for people wanting to do certain kinds of creative, communicative, and satisfying work, and it already attracts many persons with those kinds of skills which other communities will appreciate, so I suspect it will continue with its rise, and become a very successful community here.

It doesn't need to be a giant, or be about what 'everyone' is doing, to accomplish that; just able to be a good neighbor.

Good luck on where your own interests are, James,

Clive