Open letter to Ryan et al.
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- Ryan M Pierson
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 243
- Thanks: 164
- Technical Writer
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wombat wrote:
This is a good point, Thanks Grzegorz! What happened between 2014 and 2016?
Not the views of my employer, just my observation as someone that is absolutely glued to CMS market data... I'm speaking from personal thoughts here. This should not be taken as a statement of policy. I'm also not going to get into our staffing. That's not my place to speak to - I just write the docs and communicate with you guys.
In a nutshell: Joomla happened - but so did a few other things.
Joomla Situation
We said this a couple years ago when things really started to take a turn. Joomla has been losing major ground in the past three years. Year-over-year we're seeing less and less people interested in building new Joomla sites. This has a direct impact on template sales because less new Joomla users = less new Joomla websites = less templates being purchased.
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This is Joomla's search trend line from Google. You can see on the graph exactly when new releases happen because there's a tiny little bump that tapers off. This has a direct impact on sales of Joomla templates. If you aren't interested in Joomla, you aren't as likely to buy a Joomla template to build your next website.
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According to W3Techs, about 48.1% of Joomla sites are still running on versions of Joomla that aren't even supported anymore. The other 51.9% are using version 3, but that's half of a fraction of the marketplace.
In 2010, among sites that used a CMS, Joomla was enjoying a 12.0% market share. That's pretty good! Today, that percentage is 7.0% and falling by ~.2% every quarter.
We're not the only ones to see a sales decrease because of this. Joomla.org even wrote about the "fall of Joomla" explaining that things are looking less than awesome right now, but there is hope on the horizon.
Joomla theme companies across the board have been closing shop. They've either given up their club memberships and greatly reduced the rate at which new templates are created, adopted new CMS platforms to support, found some other way to make up the difference, or closed their doors for good.
How Do we Fix this?
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One of our answers was Grav. Flat-file CMS are rising in popularity, and being able to be the first to support a new platform was what helped make RocketTheme a top choice for Joomla early on. Grav, so far, is turning out to be a great player in that space. Its growth this past couple years has been incredible to watch. Above is a graph of the last year alone showing it has grown 2.5x in 12 months.
Does that mean ditching Joomla for Grav is in the plan? NO! Joomla is still our first platform of development for any new template. But where Joomla's popularity decreases - putting all your eggs in one basket is risky.
I think at the heart of your concern is whether or not our smaller team has an impact on quality and quantity of our themes being released. On quality: no. We still have the same quality standards we've always had. We actually find less after-release issues than we have in the past - in part because Gantry 5 isn't carrying the backwards compatibility weight that Gantry 4 was.
Quantity... maybe? Honestly I couldn't tell you one way or the other - and I wouldn't want to speculate.
The delay this month was on the design phase and not in development, and we couldn't necessarily have multiple artists working on it at the same time or it would lack cohesion. The development phase of this template is going smoothly so far - considering its delayed start.
Finally, I'll stress this once agian. I am not speaking for anyone but myself in this reply to you. I hope this has at least given you some insight into why we added Grav into our family - and why we don't focus 100% on Joomla at this point. -
The following users have thanked you: Hugo Avila
- Ryan Matthew Pierson / Technical Writer / Buda, TX USA
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- Ryan M Pierson
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 243
- Thanks: 164
- Technical Writer
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Martin Hansen wrote:
I am a member of several template clubs. Who has the best customer service? Rockettheme! The dedication and attitude of the moderators are supreme. Ryans answers in this very thread are but one of countless examples. Most suppliers ignore dissatisfied and worried customers.
To be fair to the critics, we needed to improve our communication. I'm happy to work to fix this problem - with the help of you guys.
Now, is Rocketheme perfect? Absolutely not. I guess Joomlas market share is showing in their budgets. But hey, I heard Joomla is growing
Hope so! We love Joomla!
Of course nothing is perfect. I am not thrilled with your current design choices. I know aesthetics change and are subject to individual taste. But I find recent templates to be “weak and unattractive”.
We have had meetings about this over the past couple months. How to better convey to our artists our vision so they can bring it to life in the design. New designs are coming, and we have heard the critique of our recent templates loud and clear.
Keep in mind though, and this is a very odd data point, but the designs that get roasted the hardest in the forum also tend to be the ones that generate the most long-term interest. It's counter-intuitive but that happens now and then.
Ryan, thank you for taking our concerns seriously. But in the big picture they are minor. Congratulations with your child.
Thank you so much. I'm going to disappear for two weeks around what looks like mid May, if not sooner. Don't worry though, nothing I do delays a release in any way. I already have a lot of my stuff pre-written and automated so there should be no gaps in content. - Last Edit: 7 years 6 months ago by Ryan M Pierson.
- Ryan Matthew Pierson / Technical Writer / Buda, TX USA
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- oceano
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 635
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Ok, so tomorrow is the last day of the week, we start be less serious and we have the only important question.....we got tomorrow the new template or we wait next week?
Really relaxed just courios
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- Hartmut Schwab
- Elite Rocketeer
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@oceano:
Ryan M Pierson wrote:Hartmut Schwab wrote:really? Its too difficult to say par example this week or next week?
It won't be this week, but it could be next week. It's really difficult to say for certain because we don't know if we're going to run in to a bug during testing that takes a long time to fix. The problem is that if I say possibly next week, then we will get post after post from people saying we promised them next week.
That's the challenge. BUT... I detailed a LOT of what's going on in the open letter thread. Please read my responses there for longer explanations. - Last Edit: 7 years 6 months ago by Hartmut Schwab.
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The following users have thanked you: Ryan M Pierson
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- Grant
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 236
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- Web Development
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Ryan,
I sincerely appreciate your commitment to communicating as openly and honestly as you can in this thread. It's also awesome you're expecting to bring a new little being into the world soon. Hope that goes smoothly.
You've already answered the main complaints here so I won't beat this horse to death but would like to second most of the complaints leveled at RT. Not at you personally of course.
I'd like to state that I'm a big fan of RocketTheme and have been since I joined 8 years ago. I love Gantry 5 and excited about the development of Grav. It definately has it's place and love the fact that RT is ambitious enough to blaze a new path.
I'd like to voice a few thoughts and hopefully mine some clarity. At least from my perspective as a customer, and someone who read all the other posts.
1 - I think the point that Grzegorz was making, at least from my point of view, is that the RocketTheme team has gotten all super ambitious with Gantry 5 and Grav but the team to get all this ambitiousness done has gotten smaller. I don't want your ambitions to stop in the least, but this has definiately had an affect on churning out new templates in my opinion.
I distinctly remember RocketTheme stating that one of the key points of Gantry 5 was to make template creation much easier than in the past. If this is the case you should be able to have the same number of staff members (not less than years past) and keep up with this awesome ambitiousness. Instead their are lesss people and your customers are feeling it and trying to communicate that with your team via you. We hope our message goes up the chain.
2 - Why on Gods Green Earth (or Matrix) is the RocketTheme team doing any more work on Gantry 5 before making a Particle Marketplace? This is a giant... "I have no freaking idea why it isn't at the Top of the list and done already". It can be another revenue stream for the company like the App Store is for Apple (Google Play etc.). You take a peice off the top for others to post theirs even perhaps. But that there is no easy plug and play way, for any average user, using Gantry 5, to import new particles seems mind blowing.
As others have stated, it would improve the power of every one of your templates. And being that you guys are currently getting hammered by many of us for not enough employees to handle your ambitions without sacrificing the amount of templates we get each year, it would go a long way to making us subscription customers happy. And everyone else using Gantry 5. You've already created some great particles so why can't you guys at least engineer an import feature, even before a full blown marketplace? Hard to understand this unless it's explained to me.
3 - If the bottleneck is design, why is there not 2 or 3 templates in the design phase at all times? Another design employee or two would seem to help put an end to this 6 to 8 weeks per template. Or if a dedicated employee is impossible there is always Fivrr
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I guess it boils down to we use to get 12 well designed templates per year. Now RT has less staff than before but more more ambitious plans. With most of us we go 2 or 3 releases before we see one we like. With 12 templates a year we get one we like every 2 or 3 months. Which is not so bad. But when you move the clock to 1 template every 1.5 to 2 months with not enough templates in the pipe we get one template we can use every 4 to 6 months instead of every 2 to 3 months. That is a big difference. I guess that summorizes how I feel and probably many of the others that have spoken to this.
Guess I did beat the horse a bit more but I really do appreciate you Ryan and everyone at RT. Just wish you guys would hire a few more people and go back to one a month. You've stated already that you guys have started the process sooner and that should help. But might take a bit more than that. And if you guys ever get back to one a month you have more great templates to sell which should not only cover the cost of another employee or two but keep subscribers from jumping ship. A win win.
Best,
Grant - Love Joomla! & RocketTheme.
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- oceano
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 635
- Thanks: 43
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I think I find someone i like you at RT
www.orangecountychoppers.com/
When they started there was Paul Sr. the son and 3 others mechanics.
after they started be famous in the TV series where they build the custom chopper you see them grow in number meanwhile Paul started new progect.
I remember an episode were Paul fight whit the son because they don't have enoght people for finish a custom chopper.
After that they employ more poeple, go in trouble whit the money and after, as they can work more realaxed build the best custom model they had build and they started a new era.
I remember they find a new designer that give new idea eccc.
Today they are a lot and they sell 10 times like when all started.
One problem you have is that who design your template is a person that don't have new idea ( come on look in the past and look the last template that is like a 90 colours design and use effect dated same era ).
I work in the hotel industry, I'm sure that Andy can't employ more people and is question of money, all we have this problem, and i like that him try the same to give more than him can the same.
Same for a marketplace for the particles. All is question of fingers that work on the keybord, 9 person can't in real follow all this things, i'm not a coder or developer, but I understand how much big all this is and hard to follow for few person.
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- David Goode
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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- Web Designer and Host
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I think Ryan has done an outstanding job in answering these questions in an open and honest manner and I personally know hard that is and how long it takes as I have done many similar responses to other concerns in the forums.
One thing I too would like to see is an easy way to import particles. Then I had to find a particle to meet a client's needs. Once I found it at a third party site, I read their instructions for installation only to find they are the same as those in the Gantry 5 documentation.
So for all those of you who want to mix and match particles from templates it really is a simple job to install the particle. In a nutshell you copy all associated files to the template custom directory and edit the custom.scss to include the dependencies and that is it. I think the longest it has taken me to transfer a particle is 5 minutes. I spend more time checking the demos to see which particle matches the functionality required!
Once installed there can be issues with the CSS or JS so I simply delete the originals from the template. Sure, they will get added again if I have to update the template but they can be removed again.
I am sure a particle importer would be nice but I kind of suspect that it would be an absolute nightmare to build, so I am quite content that the simple copying of files to the custom folder works effectively for me. - Last Edit: 7 years 6 months ago by David Goode.
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- Ryan M Pierson
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 243
- Thanks: 164
- Technical Writer
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oceano wrote:
....and....next week?
I will update you in every thread I can find when we have more news. Like I said in the other thread earlier this morning , we do not have an estimated date for specific reasons. I also echoed the same information on Monday .
We will likely not be able to share a release date until the actual release date is upon us. Why? Because we're testing and bug fixing up to that point and we never know ahead of time how long testing takes. Sometimes it's a day. Sometimes it's even longer. - Last Edit: 7 years 6 months ago by Ryan M Pierson.
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The following users have thanked you: oceano
- Ryan Matthew Pierson / Technical Writer / Buda, TX USA
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- wombat
- Rocketeer
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Thanks Ryan,
I said it all here also;
www.rockettheme.com/forum/general-discus...eme-requests#1347438
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