I am looking for this ‘’ Mit Contao Webseiten erfolgreich gestalten’’ but in English.
Or any other books about stating ‘’Contao’’ in English language.
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I am looking for this ‘’ Mit Contao Webseiten erfolgreich gestalten’’ but in English.
Or any other books about stating ‘’Contao’’ in English language.
I don't believe there are any marcel, the only ones I know of are in German.
If you're English, you have to find your own way. There are tons more resources in German and also most visitors are in the German forum... They constantly hound me to become a member to look at posts, and I'm like -- I don't speak german and most translation software makes a real mess, so not sure why they keep trying to get you to learn German....
I always get annoyed with this, because here in South Africa, we speak 12 official languages and I speak 2. My native language is Afrikaans (Flemish derivative) and I also speak English fluently. Most South Africans speak English fluently, so communication between groups is really not that difficult. I therefore find it astounding that we can still live in a world where people only want to speak their native language, when most people live in a global English world now. I guess I could have simpathy for older people, but young ones not speaking English, that really pisses me off...
Globally German is spoken by
First language: 120 million
Second language: 80
Overall: 200 million
Globally English is spoken by
First language: 309–400 million
Second language: 199–1.4 billion
Overall: 500 million–1.8 billion
For Contao it would be better to have more information in English. It just makes sense as there is a bigger market.
This of course is often hard to say being English as most English people don't speak another language well, mainly because our schools don't focus on this much, or didn't when i was at school. 1 year of German and a couple of years of French the majority of which I have forgotten.
I'm sure the German and English forums used to be mixed. This meant that a lot of German members would visit the English sections a lot more. There are a lot of German speaking members that don't visit the English forum much now they have been separated, of course some do but we could do with more.
Hi all, hi Ben,
sure before splitting the german and english forum i have read much more and constantly the english section as now.
Thank you for mention and wishing my book in english language Marcel :)
Guess all books might be nice to have in english language too.
What can i do?
Asked the publisher yet about thinking translation of the german books...
Also publish my workshop website and book website in english too?
I'am sure there is space for development, improvement and increasing contao in documentation.
It is obviously not about how many people speak German or English, but rather about how many know Contao and are willing to buy a book. A lot of publishers like Packt Publishing know about the project but still don't think that a Contao book would be profitable at the moment. And unfortunately, this is not something we can control.
As a Contao team, if your focus is on German, you'll only attract German speaking users and developers. If you don't write great English documentation for people to translate, then there is going to be slow uptake. Most websystems take off when the group release fantastic user and developer documentation. Which can then easily be translated.
At the moment most users and developers are stumbling in the dark, with Leo holding the torch and then turning it off. We don't know the system as well as you do, so we could never write documentation that is worthwhile.
Most forum posts are about simple problems that can easily be fixed by writing great documentation. I don't even participate that much anymore here, because I dont have any time and there's too many newbies filling up the space with lots of silly questions. I'm starting to wonder at the level that school sends people into the world, these days. It's so bad now that I often get PM messages from people all over the world to ask me for help.
And I can't be any good, no-one even comments on the websites I make with Contao, they must be really average then - I'm definitely no expert, nor a professional developer, but I would have loved to have proper documentation when I started my road down Contao lane, especially for developers.
Contao is so good, that after 6 months of installing Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, ModX, Typo3, and the rest of the hogwash, I decided on it. That was 4 years ago and I've stuck with it, but I've been looking around again, if something easier and better comes along, I'll install, test and let's see if Contao kept up with the times. I'm sure I'm not the only one looking around if there is such a steep learning curve.
It is not a question about what we focus on as the Contao team. We did not ask people to write books or publish articles in magazines - it was their own decision. I know that there are a lot of people out there looking for an English book, but apparently no one is interested in writing (or publishing) it.
Contao is a community-based Open Source project with most of the impulses coming from the community. We do not have five german books and two video trainings because we as the Contao team asked people to create them, but because they wanted to! Some of them did not even ask us in advance.
So if you want an english book, try to find someone to write and publish it instead of blaming the Contao team for only focusing on the German market - which we do not!
We definitely try to find a way how we can publish english information. Like Leo said: If there's no native speaker who's willing to write a book or online-documentation in English, there's hardly anything we can do about it.
I already asked a translation-company about the books and they told me that professional translation would cost about 10.000-12.000 €/book! And than we'd still not have a publisher who's willing to publish it as long as the english community is not bigger.
So yes, it is a question we need to give back to the community. You are interested in Contao? Great. Are you also willing to spend some time for the project? Fantastic. Please start writing blog posts or posts here in the forum with tutorials. Even small tutorials help. Maybe start writing in the english Community Contao wiki or start your own online-documentation.
Please don't think that we don't want the english community to grow. We'd love to see it grow! This is a great CMS and we want to tell the world about it. But it is a community project and so we need the help of the community to spread the word and create tutorials.
I know this doesn't solve the problem of who can write or who can translate a good Contao book in English, but I'd just like to ask if, as far as publishing goes, is a publish-on-demand option like Lulu.com a viable option.
Looks like it's a catch 22 situation.
Need more English speakers using Contao but to do this we need more documentation like books in English
In order to get books published in English we need more English speaking people using Contao.
I have done a few video tutorials mainly for clients to view, I cover some of the basics and some things specific to certain clients. The basics are things like adding a new site structure and content to articles, using the file manager and adding news and events. These tutorials aren't the best and just really there so clients can view them to be able to learn the system after I have given them a brief lesson.
http://www.youtube.com/user/360fusiontutorials
I have always intended to do better ones for the community but have always had somethign crop up that has stopped me. I will endeveour to get some done beofre Christams that should be of use to new users.
My propblem as a fairly seasoned user of Contao is the basics aren't good enough for me. I need to know pretty in depth things which is where i often get stuck.
@ Planepix - you were the first person to help me by answering my post when i first came over to Contao. Would be nice to see you in the English forum more :D
Maybe it would already help a little bit if we start collecting all available english tutorials and create a big link to this list in the forum header? There are already some good english blog posts or video tutorials out there.
I'll take a look into my bookmarks and create such a list (already created a list of english tutorials for the german board, will post it here as soon as my "board user rights" allow posting of so many links into one post *hint, hint*).
I'll also try to visit the international forums at least twice a week and answer as many threads as possible ... but this doesn't solve the problem like already mentioned. We need to pull together to get this documentation problem fixed :)
I hope you don't mind me chiming in here, even though I don't have the standing or knowledge that the rest of you do...
Question -- of the books in German, are any geared toward development in Contao? Nina, looking at the list of books in the other thread, they seem to be for webmasters, designers, and editors, but not necessarily for developers.
This is my frustration, personally -- I know the system pretty well at this point when it comes to the above topics. I think I'm at a point where I could contribute tutorials here and there (I've been contributing as much as I can on the forums), I just don't know how to get my foot in the door when it comes to developing for Contao.
The point has already been brought up in this thread that this is the area that is really lacking. A lot of us want to learn this aspect of the system intimately, but without any documentation, as Thyon said, we're left stumbling in the dark or reverse engineering existing extensions. It's a difficult task for even a talented and seasoned programmer, and almost impossible for someone like me who isn't. I've also seen the comment made that sometimes undocumented changes are made to the framework that break extensions -- scary thought!
A similar topic came up recently where some ideas were shared:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1970
But the gist is IMHO it's not the "how-to-use-it" guides that are most needed (although of course those would be helpful too), it's the "how-to-develop-in-it" guides, because there are so few who know it well enough, and very, very difficult for the rest to get to the same level as them so we can contribute.
I'm optimistic that the Contao Factory project will grow to be a valuable resource for this.
As far as I know Leo is reworking the developer chapters of his book. I am sure he could tell you more about that since it's not out yet.
As far as I know the german developers are also trying to create more and more tutorials on development. So maybe we could focus on trying to translate them into English. If someone from the german community who is not a native speaker - like me, obviously :mrgreen: - translates them, the native speakers of the english community could polish it up.
I know this is quite an old thread but the issue is still alive and kicking.
I've written modules for various web scripts over the years and the key to (my) success has always been good documentation. The thing is, I've really persevered with Contao because it is clearly more flexible that anything else I've ever used. I can't really fault it's design. The only guide I've found to writing modules is the cd collection. Using this and by disecting other modules, I've been able to do some development. But everything is taking me an age because it's coding in the dark.
I appreciate that the problem revolves around the fact that nobody has seen fit to write an english developers guide (this is all I am interested it by the way - using it is fairly self explanitory) due to a perceived lack of interest/earning potential (pah!). The fact that all the commenting in the code is done in English (even in most of the modules) demonstrates that Leo and the other developers who are writing modules are aware of the importance of this projects being accessible to the the vast majority of the developers in the world, which is great. And I am sure they all share this frustration.
...And granted, getting a translation done by a professional translator would cost a lot, however it strikes me as unlikely that there isn't somebody that is both bilingual and eager (I wish I could help on this front but battling with one language (English) is as much as I can manage :oops: ) to see this CMS really take off - it has the potential to put the competition to shame! Perhaps 'the community' needs to decide what value this has in the long term and club together to pay 'that bilingual person' to do the work (I don't think publishing is an issue any more really is it? I think there are numerous self-publishing services around, even some good web documentation - better for me probably - I'd loose a book under mess on my desk :-) ). Even if there was an agreed core area that was tackled to enable developers to get started maybe add more stuff later, at least we could all start getting more out of our time (which is a fairly valuable resource). Hey you never know, this little bit of resource could be enough to kick start somebody to write some books in English!
Perhaps some means of canavassing to determin a willingness to do 'something' would be a good start rather than the various forum posts that crop up in different areas. It seems such a shame to just maintain the status quo. I continue to look at other platforms to focus my development around and I find various offerings that I don't like with excellent English documentation - it's so frustrating. I'm not trying to blame anybody and I'm not looking for reasong or excuses, just a means by which something usefull can happen :-)
That's all for now!
Old thread, but I thought I should post something to provide some balance. I don't speak German, but I'm grateful that you have provided space and some translations for the English speakers (and I can muddle through German with Google Translate).Quote:
Originally Posted by leo
I'm also grateful that while the project does have a commercial impetuous it's largely driven by the community. At this point I'm still testing and learning Contao, as part of an effort to move away from other CMS's - which are primarily focussed on English speakers. So far I'm impressed by Contao, and if I do move to using it as my main CMS I hope to contribute to the English documentation. I see the lack of English documentation as an opportunity to contribute rather than a failing of the project.
Apropos of little - as a primary language more than twice as many people speak Mandarin than English and German combined, and more people speak Spanish than English.