I installed and started playing around with October this morning and I like what I've seen so far. My only reservation as yet, is that adding any content (pages, content whatever) requires a knowledge of HTML - and whilst the authors claim that 'everyone knows a little HTML' I know this not to be the case.

So whilst I think October will be a great tool for building websites that I, as a dev, can maintain - it's not something I can hand over to my clients so that they can maintain or add content themselves. They will need a WYSIWYG editor and all those other nice hand-holding content management tools.

Am I correct in my thinking here - this isn't a CMS for the end-user but a tool for devs?

i think ; current backend is for deelopers and CMS need backecnd for users with user friendly interface WYSIWYG and other items

Hello there :) I would also like clarification on this!

In my humble opinion, there already are more than enough CMS' for end-users. It was about time someone created one for us developers. I think developers and agencies should understand October as a sort of barebone CMS on which they can build great websites for clients. That at least is what I myself am planning to do with October. Now, there emerges a question of course: Clients want to be able to edit their own websites from time to time. And while Octobers backend is downright brilliant for developers, it is certainly not suited for clients. So we need to develop plugins that enable our clients to edit things right in the frontend. I just started developing a simple plugin to enable frontend editing of certain sections, defined by a component.

That is, how I would like October to be: The perfect CMS for developers. Crafting CMS for end-users never made sense to me in the first place, as I've never encountered a backend that didn't confuse 'normal' people. What really made them happy was whenever they were able to do administrative tasks right in the frontend.

October is on a great way to become the most developer-friendly CMS in the world. I really hope, it doesn't change its course.

Cheers, Till

Last updated 10 years ago

Thanks for the input - I agree with you Till, I think October has the potential to be a useful tool in the developers toolbox. I'm still poking around in it's innards and getting to understand how it works but I think building another layer to allow client management of content will be a fairly early challenge that I'll undertake.

I think tillsanders342 hit the nail on the head here. /agree

This software is of course in beta, and its extremely modular; I think it was the intention of the developers was for the development community to create high-quality plugins to make end user functionality better. But instead of doing it themselves, why not let people define what good end-user experience is for their needs?

I dont think october was meant to replace wordpress in terms of bashing crap together and hoping it works. :P

Last updated 10 years ago

By the way, apart from some installation problems some people happen to encounter, it feels really stable already! Good job!

I think it was the intention of the developers was for the development community to create high-quality plugins to make end user functionality better. – eeinblack377

I really hope so. This approach would finally make sense :)

I dont think october was meant to replace wordpress in terms of bashing crap together and hoping it works. :P – eeinblack377

Made me smile :) I once visited wordpress' core. What a mess :D

Last updated 10 years ago

Hi All,

What to me would make sense is adding one or two key tools that would give end users some level of control of the site. It is unavoidable that they want to be able to edit their content easily, and we use tools to help us produce more consistent work and more quickly produce our work, so either way, there must still be something that serves the non-developer user to make it a success.

Last night over chat, a WYSIWYG editor discussion came up, and Samuel revealed that they have an OEM-level license for Redactor, which can be found here: http://imperavi.com/redactor/. Someone has already submitted a Redactor integration for review for the marketplace.

It is important to provide a way for end users to have some level of control of their sites. Having a CMS for a developer only makes sense in terms of development, not it terms of usage. We can't do absolutely everything for the client, nor do they want to pay us to do that, so bring on the end-user plugins!

I've been running my own web business for four years and prior to that, developing for six full-time, and the end user always wants the same thing in the end, some level of control. Systems that casually ignore this don't tend to do well over time.

Even though the October team isn't targeting Wordpress, I sure am. This is finally a proper toolset. Wordpress made it actually too easy for the casual person to submit an awful plugin on top of an already-awful codebase. At least they're reviewing plugins prior to submittal, and the necessity to understand advanced coding concepts is going to keep the lazy coders away. ;)

Last updated 10 years ago

October operates on the assumption that you at least know how to code basic HTML and CSS. Once you cross this line in a CMS, it opens up a new world of possibilities. This is where other CMS systems are so disappointing, they are trying so hard to make it easy for non-technical types that the skilled developer suffers.

You must ask yourself, if a client knew how to build a website, why wouldn't they do it themselves? They don't, either because they don't have time or they are not interested in learning. So it is up to you, the developer, to build it for them and support it later on! This is where October gets the recipe perfect, in my opinion.

With October, you are empowered to build a custom solution for your client, rapidly, and leverage other developer's works by using the marketplace (and even share some of your own creations). It is not a cookie cutter solution, it is more like Lego building blocks. The developer builds an awesome front- and back-end, and then the client manages it. The developer is satisfied and the client gets what they actually wanted, a system that was built unique for them.

Also, when you have 50 clients and one of them needs help, isn't it nice to be able to log in to the CMS from anywhere (perhaps you are on holidays) and fix their site immediately? Rather than fumble around with your IDE, FTP/SSH connections.

If you are a developer building for yourself, then you are the client... so this is an obvious win-win.

Last updated 10 years ago

I was waiting for the release of October since I came across from it a while back. I'm a beginner web designer and last week I landed my first client and now I have been looking for a CMS because I barely understand php. So I been messing with this one and I'm finally understanding how October works? But it isn't what I thought it was going to be.

Here's what I made for the design

All I want to do is make installation page editable. That allows the website owner to create his own list of steps. But it seems like I have to make the component by hand code and I don't get php. This is too hard for me, all I know is HTML and CSS.

Am I looking at October as an easy solution when in reality it is not? Should know php before even bothering messing with this. How should I approach this? Can anybody help? Thank you.

There are a few questions here, so I'll try and help by tackling them one at a time.

Am I looking at October as an easy solution when in reality it is not?

I think it depends on where you are coming from. Do you have any experience with CMS's? If you're used to flat HTML/CSS, then October is going to be more complicated because flexibility/extendibility always comes at the cost of simplicity. However, I think October is doing a good job with this tradeoff, and it is more friendly to HTML/CSS coders than the other large CMS's like Drupal, Wordpress, DotNetNuke etc.

Should know php before even bothering messing with this

It would help, but really I think you can get away with knowing less PHP than most other CMS's except maybe Wordpress. With Wordpress though, you probably won't be able to write your own custom theme without knowing some PHP. .

Without PHP or Javascript knowledge, I'd say you can probably still design a custom theme with October (which is actually kind of amazing), but the functionality will be limited.

How should I approach this? Can anybody help?

When you say you want to make the installation page editable, can you explain a little more? Do you want the client to be able to edit it to add their own language, or do you just want to be able to add some new language in there for them?

Either way, this is a little trickier because the installation files are not part of the CMS, they are just designed to get up and running.

Last updated 10 years ago

Hello, I have to say that after being seriously fed up with Wordpress for many different and GOOD reasons. I have been searching for months now for something more of a custom way to build the backends and found the Laravel Framework and then I found gratefully the October CMS.

I have to admit that I have never been any good PHP coder but I do understand a little of the basics in PHP coding and with WordPress I had the whole "package" for workarounds for example with the Custom Fields Plugin on WordPress I could make almost whatever I wanted without any huge knowledge of PHP and also give my clients the easy way to add/edit/delete their contents but some how WordPress is a real pain in the ASS (excuse my french) but for example if Wordpress wasn't updated regularly it could be BOT hacked, some clients always had hard with understanding how get arround in Wordpress so I basically end up customizing almost the whole backend of Wordpress so my clients would understand it and that meant more work more wasted time!

So when I found the Laravel and October CMS I said "Ohhh YES.. that the CMS I have been looking for"

1. Because I just loved how Laravel lets us build the Theme and how it is constructed
2. Looks clean and can be customized for my clients to easily understand where to go and update their contents
3. Can easily make changes to the website from anywhere.

Now that said. The down sides are because October is probably totally new but needs to be addressed. For example not much tutorials to be found more than the Weather Plugin tutorial. the Documentation are great and are helpful but it totally confuses me most probably because I don't have any good Lavarel and PHP background so this is why more practical/useful tutorials are needed!!!

So I would say what is needed is a October CMS tutorials on how to make a typical "blog" plugin step-by-step that could be useful for any typical project.. And it should basically include these type of things:

1. A plugin on how to make a "blog" which is more client friendly..
2. With adding custom fields, like file or image-upload, text area, text input fields etc.
3. Thumb size settings for the image upload with different sizes
4. how to relate the posts to categories.. 5 finally how to display the different contents on the front-end and the backend

Having a well structured tutorial on how to be able to do all this will open the doors for making many different custom plugins for our clients and make it easier for many of us to understand October better!

Basically with this kind of tutorial any kind of website can be made! So I hope the people behind October will read my post.

Last updated 10 years ago

I LOVE this developer first approach to a CMS. Just search for the end user backend functionality that you need and install it. ensure it is integrated to the site and deploy. I hope the CMS stays lean and ensures proper coding standards for plugins to avoid as many coding clashes as possible. Of course we may get clashes when large overhauls are done in multiple plugin. however, again, i hope coding standards allow for easy fixes for this sort of conflict. Too many hours have been spent debugging and fixing plugin conflicts in wordpress.

Granted the average end-user will need a good tutorial and prebuilt plugin packages to suite the kind of plug and play expierence of wordpress. But this will come with time

Last updated 10 years ago

I think this plugin is very interesting shahiemseymor/ckeditor, but I have only one thing with it. when I click on source, it doesn't give us possibility code completion and it is highlighted the code. I found this http://matthewkastor.blogspot.com/2013/03/integrate-ace-editor-in-ckeditor-source-view.html and the sample is: http://atropa-editors.net63.net/ckeditor.html. I working, but I cannot put on october to make it working. Any help will be welcome!

Roodly Stevenson

Can you make a topic in the support forum of my CKeditor plugin. So, I can check it out. Thank you:)

How to make a topic, Because I don't see any button like create a topic or make a topic. Thank you!

@tiroodly2376 Go to the CKEditor plugin page, click Support tab then click Post a new topic.

We would love to join to this - in fact - october developers appreciation thread, because october was the tool we were looking for. Developers first is the way to go, we can easily add things for end-client to work with in octo and we love how rapid development here is.

I am a dev, and i need to know how can i develop my own custom module in OctoberCMS?

I see the framework as the best of both worlds. I can basically develop right in the backend interface for most simple websites. Then, I create an administrator that only has access to the content blocks, and assign that account to the client. And, lastly, I install the WYSIWYG plugin and enable it for only the content pieces. You end up with a very flexible system for development, and a very simple way for the customer to edit what you'd like them to be able to edit. I'm not sure what the fuss is about, actually, as it seems like it's set up perfectly.