This Week in TYPO3 (2015, Week 13)

Categories: Community, This week in TYPO3 Created by ben van 't ende
In Week 13 we wrap up the preceding three weeks with Inspiring Conference, CMS Garden, Docker for TYPO3, how to clear cache, the combined sprint in the Harz and more news.
Week ending March 29

Inspiring Conference

The Inspiring Conference took place for the fourth time already on March 27 and 28. The conference was fully sold out with 270 people attending. The american style keynote by organiser Stephan Willkommer was focused on e-commerce and Neos as the ideal combination. The Inspiring Conference is pretty technical by nature, but one of the truly outstanding presentations was about the future of content management by Rasmus Skoldjan and Daniel Hinderink. Rasmus Skoldjan is involved in the TYPO3 project for quite some years and has been acting as brand manager until recently when he shifted his full attention to Neos. Daniel Hinderink is one of the original founders of the TYPO3 Association, though not involved in the T3A anymore. Rasmus and Daniel presented their ideas on the future of content management according to Neos at the first day of the Inspiring Conference. The presentation covered the market, strategy, what it means for Neos and steps ahead. Neos is like a mixdeck for different types of content Neos should in the future ask three different questions:
  • Where does your content come from?
  • Where does your content go?
  • What variants of the content do you need?
Like Stephan mentioned storytelling in his opening keynote related to e-commerce the future of content management also lies in the human realm with storytelling to 'sell' content. Luckily blogging seems to really have taken of lately and we have many reports on Inspiring Conference as TYPO3blogger Peter Kraume sums up in <link http: typo3blogger.de retrospect-on-the-inspiring-conference-2015>his very detailed and well written article on Inspiring Conference.

Presentations Inspiring Conference 2015

Inspiringnote by Robert Lemke & Stefan Willkommer
<link http: www.slideshare.net robertlemke neos-past-present-future-keynoteinspiring-conference-2015>www.slideshare.net/robertlemke/neos-past-present-future-keynoteinspiring-conference-2015 - <link https: www.youtube.com>www.youtube.com/watch Embrace the Cloud by Henrik Møller Rasmussen
<link http: de.slideshare.net heinodk embrace-the-cloud-inspiring-conference-2015>de.slideshare.net/heinodk/embrace-the-cloud-inspiring-conference-2015 Codecoon – a technical Case Study by Fabian Stein & Michael Lihs
<link http: de.slideshare.net mimiknoll codecoon-a-technical-case-study>de.slideshare.net/mimiknoll/codecoon-a-technical-case-study Tasty Recipes for Every Day by Aske Ertmann
<link https: speakerdeck.com aertmann tasty-recipes-for-every-day-neos>speakerdeck.com/aertmann/tasty-recipes-for-every-day-neos Security 2.0 by Andreas Förthner & Bastian Waidelich
<link http: de.slideshare.net netlogix typo3-neos-and-flow-security-20>de.slideshare.net/netlogix/typo3-neos-and-flow-security-20 Assets in the Cloud by Robert Lemke
<link http: www.slideshare.net robertlemke neos-assets-in-the-cloud-inspiring-conference-2015>www.slideshare.net/robertlemke/neos-assets-in-the-cloud-inspiring-conference-2015 The future of Content Management (according to Neos) by Daniel Hinderink & Rasmus Skjoldan
<link http: de.slideshare.net danielhinderink1 future-cms-04>de.slideshare.net/DanielHinderink1/future-cms-04 - <link https: www.youtube.com>www.youtube.com/watch Test-Driven Domains by Sebastian Bergmann & Stefan Priebsch
<link https: thephp.cc dates inspiring-conference test-driven-domains>thephp.cc/dates/2015/03/inspiring-conference/test-driven-domains Sawubona! by Karsten Dambekalns
<link http: de.slideshare.net kfish sawubona-content-dimensions-with-neos>de.slideshare.net/kfish/sawubona-content-dimensions-with-neos Two Stack CMS by Arne Blankerts & Robert Lemke
<link https: thephp.cc dates inspiring-conference two-stack-cms>thephp.cc/dates/2015/03/inspiring-conference/two-stack-cms Searching in Neos with Elasticsearch by Sebastian Kurfürst
<link https: speakerdeck.com skurfuerst searching-in-neos-with-elasticsearch-inspiringcon-2015-in-kolbermoor>speakerdeck.com/skurfuerst/searching-in-neos-with-elasticsearch-inspiringcon-2015-in-kolbermoor Photos - <link https: www.dropbox.com sc k07l676mmqqzew5 aacitprn7fpaconvirms_7csa>www.dropbox.com/sc/k07l676mmqqzew5/AACitprn7fPacoNVIRmS_7CSa

CMS Garden

CMS Garden was not able to participate in <link http: www.cebit.de home>CeBIT this year. It is a huge amount of money to participate with a booth and the group was not able to raise that through sponsoring this year, but there are quite a number of other events, however CMS Garden is participating in and that are not so costly to attend. TYPO3 and CMS Garden were represented however by <link https: www.typovision.de>Typovision that graciously provided a spot for CMS Garden in their booth. CMS Garden was present at <link http: www.internetworld-messe.de eng>Internet World in Munich on March 24 - 25, 2015. Guido Haase (<link http: www.iteha.de>ITeHA) represented TYPO3 during these two days together with Sandra Maria Hofmann (<link http: www.marit.ag>Marit AG), Sebastian Böttger and Sabine Mayr (<link https: www.typovision.de>Typovision) and Stefan Busemann (<link https: www.in2code.de>in2code). Guido Haase reports on CMS Garden at Internet World: Although the CMS Garden is an umbrella association of 12 Open Source CMS (Contao, CONTENIDO, djangoCMS, Drupal, Joomla!, OpenCms, Papaya, Plone, REDAXO, ScientificCMS, TYPO3, WordPress) only about half of them were present in the CMS Garden this year. We, the TYPO3 team showed TYPO3 CMS 6.2.11, 7.1 and TYPO3 NEOS 1.2 in live sessions. Mostly we've been asked questions like this:
  • TYPO3 NEOS is the new product. What's going on with the 'old' one (i.e. TYPO3 CMS)?
    A [Mathias Schreiber]: Well, after a short period of gathering focus and strength in the time Benni Mack, the Team and me came up with a mission statement for the years to come - Embrace & Innovate.
    Since then we have undertaken huge steps, bigger than anything done before in the entire project.
    We streamlined processes, made taking decisions easier and most importantly of all: unblocked and motivated the team.
    The feedback we have gotten from the outside gives us confidence that we are on the right track with that.
    Apart from the the concept of a Product Owner as a central contact both technically and business-wise has been picked up very positively by the community - showing that the relevance of TYPO3 CMS did not really decay over the last years.

  • Will TYPO3 CMS be continued anymore or will it be switched off when TYPO3 NEOS has come to age?
    A [Benni Mack]: TYPO3 CMS will continue to be developed for as long as there are people using it, and the development has been as strong as ever in the last year. The next LTS version 7, to be released in fall 2015, will focus on a more intuitive user experience and also help integrators getting sites up and running faster.

  • Which one could/would you recommend for new projects, depending on dedicated customer needs?
    A [Benni Mack]: Neos is surely still in a development phase where bigger projects with complex site structures and user management should depend on TYPO3 CMS. The label enterprise CMS needs to tackle larger projects in a stable and long-term manner. For content-only sites and/or integration with an existing FLOW application, Neos might be a better fit.

  • Will there be a migration path from TYPO3 CMS based systems to TYPO3 NEOS based systems in future?
    A [Karsten Dambekalns]: Karsten points  to the <link https: neos.typo3.org learn>FAQ on the Neos website that mentions:
    We need to distinguish between content import and template/extension import.
    Template/Extension import is not possible, and will never be. However, if you use Extbase and Fluid in TYPO3 CMS already, it will be easier for you to port this code to Neos.
    Content import is currently not possible.
    However, while we do not have content import ready as of today, we are already experimenting with different approaches of a content migration process and think that pages and the standard TYPO3 CMS content elements like Text or Image will be importable in the future. Additionally, we’ll make sure that the conversion process is extensible, so you can adjust it if you use special FCEs or the like.
    Martin Helmich (Mittwald AG) presented a tool at Inspiring Conference to bring TYPO3 legacy code into Flow: <link http: de.slideshare.net mhelmich inspiringcon15-bringing-typo3-legacy-applications-into-the-flow>de.slideshare.net/mhelmich/inspiringcon15-bringing-typo3-legacy-applications-into-the-flow
    ...and there is <link https: github.com ttreeagency contentrepositoryimporter>github.com/ttreeagency/ContentRepositoryImporter, which at least can serve as a base for importing content.

  • When can we expect NEOS extensions for dedicated customer purposes will become available?
    A [Robert Lemke]: The concept of extensions is a bit different in Neos than the one you might know from TYPO3 CMS. First of all, many projects based on Neos don’t need specific extensions because many features can be implemented through TypoScript in combination with the Neos Content Repository. But of course there are extensions, too – we call them “packages”. A package can contain everything, be it Neos plugins, new content types, TypoScript or even new features for TypoScript itself. I’d estimate that there are a few hundred packages based on Neos and many of them can be found via packagist.org. The Neos team has plans for providing a Neos / Flow package repository on the project website and also started working on a simple implementation. Right now though this project has stalled because we need to invest the resources we have into the current major releases of Neos and Flow.

  • There are about 6.000 Extensions listed for TYPO3 CMS. But, only about 100+ are running within TYPO3 CMS 6.2. This numbers makes me confusing. Why do you remark 6.000 extensions although just 100+ are currently working the actual CMS release? What will happen with other 5.900 in future? Why aren't they updated/adapted to TYPO3 CMS 6.2 and 7.x?
    A [Thomas Löffler]: Currently there are 1,043 (16-04-2015) extensions in the TYPO3 extension repository which are running for the current supported TYPO3 LTS versions 6.2 and 7.x. It's right that we have all together over 6,000 extensions, but most of them unfortunately aren't supported by their extension owners any more. The decision to "outdate" extensions was a move to improve the experience of Integrators by offering only the extensions which will run on your system. We didn't delete the extensions, just marked them as outdated. With setting a filter option in the TER search on typo3.org your search results will contain all outdated extensions as well. Everyone is welcome to update an outdated extension to run on a current TYPO3 version and ask the extension owner to upload it to TER or to transfer the extension key.

  • Why has the support for TYPO3 CMS 4.5 been extended and why do I have to pay a service fee for it now? Where can I order this paid support?
    A [Mathias Schreiber]]: In Short: by popular demand.
    So the TYPO3 Association approached us because it has been, in return, approached by its members.
    Obviously there is a demand in the market for a solution. The posed problem seems to be that upgrading a website from 4.5 to 6.2 takes more time than some people anticipated.
    So the main question is why do we need to charge a fee for that?
    It’s important to understand that the security team simply does not have the manpower to keep 3 fully-fledged versions maintained in their spare time.
    Especially since the codebase has gone through massive changes from the 4 branch to the 6 branch.
    So we somehow need to make sure that the security team can actually put their other paid work aside in order to manage the additional version.
    Apart from the whole security topic, it is important to understand that the support also takes care of browser incompatibilities of future browsers - so the amount of work spreads out over the boundaries of the security team.
    We compiled a list of FAQs here as well as a form to order here.
    <link http: typo3.org support>typo3.org/support/45-lts-support-plans/

  • How long will this charged kind of service for TYPO3 CMS 4.5 be available in future?
    A [Benni Mack]: The extended support is available for one more year, expiring in April 2016.

  • Is this the first step for TYPO3 products leaving the Open Source idea moving on the way to paid products? Are there any commercial ideas behind it?
    A [Olivier Dobberkau]:
    The main idea of open source is that you can create value around code. If you closely look at the GPL you will find that this license gives you no guarantee of whatever kind. In our case the CMS Team gave for a certain time a guarantee on the product at no cost.
    To answer your the question: TYPO3 CMS will remain GPL. The support for the 4.5 LTS will become a paid service. No other plans for the moment.
    In respect to the second question: We all want our products to be used in a commercial thus maybe also enterprise environment. Some companies have a very strict policy on how software can be used and security is one of their main concern. Analyzing market usage of TYPO3 CMS 4.5 and the requests from many members of the community lead to the presented solution. We also did not want to risk to leave people here alone and with this risking the good reputation of the TYPO3 products.

  • What's the current version of TYPO3 FLOW? How and for which kind of applications can I use it standalone, i.e. without TYPO3 NEOS and FLOWs backport to Extbase?
    A [Bastian Waidelich]: The latest stable version of TYPO3 Flow is 2.3 as of April 17th.
    We're currently adding the finishing touches to the next major version, 3.0, which will be the base for TYPO3 Neos 2.0.What can it be used for standalone?
    Anything you can think of really.While Flow has not been optimized for "hello world" examples, it has proven itself especially when creating Web Applications for complex and growing domains.

    The upcoming version will provide even better tooling for those, consequently, adding full support for Cloud services, a revised Security Framework, HHVM support and many many more...

Beside these directly TYPO3 related questions there were a few questions about eCommerce-Extensions for TYPO3 CMS, mostly Magento. No wonder, because the Internet World is an eCommerce exhibition. There were three things  visitors missed respectively questions which couldn't be answered:
  • Most of the other CMS systems had brochures, small booklets, pins, buttons or ball pens as give-aways for their visitors. We just had the same two-sided DIN A4 NEOS sheet like last year and few orange collars for exhibition trailers. Some visitors remarked this (although very silent) as 'poor' for a leading CMS like TYPO3.
  • We had only less to poor TYPO3 NEOS knowledge. But, many visitors are especially interested in this new TYPO3 product.
  • The location of booth was not so ideal like last year. It was in a hallway near the wall where normally not so much people went along and it had only one open side. Last year the booth had a more centered position in the exhibition hall and has been implemented as corner-booth with two open sides. This location was definitely more frequently visited by people and additionally it had more open design (two open sides). This year we had a more "closed box" feeling.
These are three things to take into account for a next Internet World or other CMS Garden/TYPO3 events.

typo3.org

The T3O team <link https: forum.typo3.org index.php t>participated in the server admin sprint a few weeks ago where some decisions were made there that speeds up the much needed maintenance of typo3.org and gets the team back on track. The team is lead now by Thomas Löffler (<link https: spooner-web.de>Spooner Web) and Christian Zenker (<link http: aoe.com>AOE). A <link http: typo3.org events typo3-sprints typo3org-maintenance-code-sprint>next T3O sprint is targeted for April 16 - 19 at Universität Hohenheim, Schloß Hohenheim, Stuttgart.

User Experience Week 2015

In the deep forest where the fox and hare wish each other goodnight, T3UXW took place for the third time near Clausthal from March 21 -28. On the agenda: Themes for TYPO3 backend and optimization. Riona Küthe from <link http: jweiland.net> Jweiland.net reports on the week in the dark forests of the Harz. A total of 34 participants worked for a whole week to improve the user experience of TYPO3. Parallel and under the same roof a code sprint took place with 11 developers (Active Contributors) for TYPO3 CMS. This combination proved to be very helpful. The ideas of T3UXW participants could either be checked or implemented quickly like this. And what is the result of this week of intense work out? Based on the Themes extension several groups implemented various bootstrap templates. The outdated Government package will also be redeveloped in Themes. In addition to the Bootstrap based theme a Foundation basic theme will also be made available. A team has developed several ideas on how to facilitate easy entry into the TYPO3 project/community. Some solutions were presented at the closing ceremony on Friday evening. For the backend of TYPO3 CMS 7 some visual and functional improvements were developed, including a revised login screen and a dashboard. The extension "css_styled_content" will be replaced a new extension "frontend" with fluid templates for output. These templates allow for easy customization of content elements and the TypoScript code thus shrinks together a few lines. This project is well underway. It was a productive week. The atmosphere was very good and the attendants separated in the hope to see each other again at the next T3UXW to jointly tackle new tasks. Special thanks to the organizers Petra and Jo Hasenau. Their dedication ensures that the week remains in good memory.

TYPO3 CMS

New active contributor

Andy Fernandez showed up pretty much out of the blue in late 2014. Andy lives Heidelberg and works in Mannheim at <link http: aspedia.de>aspedia GmbH. He started out by providing well written patches in the area of Oracle DBAL and upon invite into Slack quickly turned out to be extremely capable, technically versatile and most of all: reliable. Since then he mostly stood out by rebuilding the recycler within a week and constantly reviewing core patches. At T3UXW15 the strategic crew of the CMS core team invited him into the ranks of the Active Contributors. We consider Andy a valuable addition to our team and are looking forward to his contributions in the future.

Events

Snowboard Tour to Canada?

According to sources T3BOARD15 was awesome! There are not as many attendants as in the first years, but the event is very much kicking and alive. The feedback the organisation got was clear. T3BOARD15 had like 50% first-timers and they loved it. The <link http: t3board15.typo3.org twitter-timeline>twitter time line gives some enthusiastic info and <link http: typo3blog.at personal t3board15>Josef Glatz's T3BOARD15 blog has pictures that are worth more than a thousand words. To improve the yearly T3BOARD event, the organisation asks for feedback. The next snowboard tour (T3BOARD16) will be the 15th Edition of the T3BOARD events! It is the oldest T3 Event and started by Kasper himself in 2002 in Bad Gastein! For next year the organisation wants to bring the Tour to Canada.Please provide your feedback in this <link http: survey.snowflake.ch>Google Survey T3BOARD15/T3BOARD16.

Miscellaneous

Docker Boilerplate

Last time we read about Michiel Roos' Vagrant box and this week it is Markus Blaschke of <link http: www.cron.eu _blank>cron IT who has developed a Docker Boilerplate for TYPO3. Markus explains what it is all about: Docker is a great tool for sandboxing the development of (web) applications. You put all of your services (Nginx, MySQL, PHP-FPM, Solr and other) in some Linux container and can easily build clusters of services without pain. You can easily build, start, delete and recreate your containers if something went wrong. Even customization for each project is possible (eg. specific PHP or MySQL version or a different toolset) - store the customized boilerplate beside your project. My Docker boilerplate is an example of the basic Docker recipes for the needed TYPO3 service containers including the Solr service. I'm working as DevOp with my CEOs Ernesto Baschny (release manager of TYPO3 6.2) and Remus Lazar at cron IT GmbH in Stuttgart. I'm creating websites with TYPO3 since 10 years and always tried to create a good web environment for developers. One year ago I created a basic Vagrant VM but it have a huge disk overhead if you want to customize the VM for each project. Some weeks ago I've got an introduction to Docker by Remus Lazar and he inspired me to use and customize the Docker containers. I've spent some nights and weekends to build a good and customizable Docker boilerplate for our needs - hopefully to impress my CEO Remus. I also wanted feedback and criticism from other DevOps so I've open sourced it and wanted to give something back to the TYPO3 community. <link https: github.com mblaschke typo3-docker-boilerplate>github.com/mblaschke/TYPO3-docker-boilerplate

Clear cache buttons

I always had a hard time understanding the 'clear cache' buttons in the backend of TYPO3 CMS and just press all. Now Markus Klein from <link http: reelworx.at>Reelworx explains in detail what button is for what. Of course there is also a 'One more thing ….' <link http: blog.reelworx.at detail typo3-cms-clear-cache-buttons-explained>blog.reelworx.at/detail/typo3-cms-clear-cache-buttons-explained/ This Week in TYPO3 is brought to you by <link https: www.maxserv.com>Maxserv. Of course you can also sponsor This Week in TYPO3 and have your name mentioned here as well. Please <link>contact me by mail for more details. Check out the events calendar for a user group meeting, code sprint or other event near you: typo3.org/events/. Do not hesitate to share you TYPO3 activities in 'This Week in TYPO3'. Just let me (@benvantende) know what you are up to.