TYPO3 Talk Jochen Weiland - Past & Future of TYPO3

I'm the owner of a web agency located near Stuttgart in Germany.

In the mid 90s, when the Internet started to become popular, I created my first web pages, writing raw HTML with a text editor.  In 2002 a magazine published an article about "CMS are the future of web sites". Since commercial systems where far to expensive, I tried several Open Source CMS and TYPO3 caught my attention. I tried to install it on my hosting account and failed - there was very little documentation available at that time. I tried again, and finally got it to work. I then wrote a tutorial on how to install TYPO3 at one of the large hosting companies in Germany. This was my first contribution (although not through coding) to Open Source software. 

Our goal is to make TYPO3 easier to use and to lower the entry barrier for new users. In addition to tips and tricks on our website we have published over 450 free video tutorials.

In most cases, when we develop TYPO3 extensions for our customers, we publish them on the TYPO3 Extension Repository or on Github. This allows others not only to use, but also to contribute to the code. This way our customers benefit from new features added by others.  

Since our company is built on TYPO3 we feel very lucky with the success of TYPO3.

In the past years there have been a lot of technical improvements to TYPO3. Many of them happened “under the hood”, so they are not immediately visible to the editor. In the future we need to make sure to balance development so that we do not forget about the user experience for editors. Every new major version of TYPO3 should bring new features that editors love, so that they are anxious to get their site upgraded. 

The market share varies a lot by country. According to cmscrawler.com there is a 14% market share in Austria, 11% in Germany and even 43% in Rwanda. In terms of marketing we should have more visibility for which projects TYPO3 has been chosen and why. 
Many of the larger companies that have decided to use TYPO3 made a thorough investigation about the CMS market and looked at different options. In those cases where they decided to use TYPO3, they had very good reasons. 

Other users might just follow the masses and use what everyone else is using. On the first look, most CMS appear similar, as a tool to create websites. But once you think deeply about your goals and requirements, you find big differences between them. 

Let’s just take one example: your company might need a new website, perhaps 100 pages of content and one language. You have one editor for this. Any CMS could probably handle this. 

But think 3-5 years into the future: your company might be very successful and has grown significantly. You may have 1,000 pages of content in three languages and 5 editors. For TYPO3 this is very easy to handle. Multi-languages have been built in from the start and not added on later. The page tree can handle thousands of pages in a way that users are familiar with, since they are organized similar to Windows Explorer. Rights management for editors down to the individual form field lets you assign fine granular access rights for editors.  
If you have chosen a simple CMS in the beginning you might need to switch and do the website over again. But TYPO3 has all the features for growing projects built-in. 

There are a number of huge TYPO3 installations with 50,000+ pages, hundreds of websites and domains in one installation managed by 1,000 editors. 

TYPO3 needs an easier start and onboarding process. Some users have the perception that TYPO3 is difficult to use and implement. 

Making TYPO3 easier to understand and try out, like an up-to-date Quick Start Guide.

People need to understand OpenSource beyond “it’s free software”. Using OpenSource has many benefits that some people don’t consider. You are not locked to one vendor, each agency with programming skills can add features, fix bugs and improve the software. 

TYPO3 deserves more visibility in the market, especially outside of Europe. There should be more case studies, white papers, websites and presentations that communicate the benefits. Simply: more and better marketing.  

Since many years there was the idea for a TYPO3 Market Place. The initial plan was, that this would be provided by the TYPO3 Association. However, the introduction was delayed for a long time and so I am happy, that Nitsan took the initiative of offering a solution. I like the idea of such a platform and I would like to see more support of this project by the official TYPO3 bodies.

A market place can be a central hub for bringing programmers, customers and agencies together. Products, services and manpower can be offered and found by those who need it. Challenges are the quality of the services being offered and an easy way to do business. Challenges like taxes, invoicing, payment, support and communication must be solved.

Some agencies don’t live up to the TYPO3 slogan “Inspiring people to share”. They don’t share their knowledge, extensions or advice. They just use OpenSource in one - the wrong - way: they benefit from the work of others and not give back to the community or the project. 

My personal hero is Kasper Skårhøj, the inventor of TYPO3. Although he is not actively working on the project since many years, it was his vision that makes it stand out. Many of the concepts that he introduced over 20 years ago are still valid.

Other people that come into mind (in no particular order) are Christian Kuhn, Benni Mack, Oliver Hader, Susanne Moog, Olivier Dobberkau and Mathias Schreiber.

Help for TYPO3 is often just a Google search away. You should join the TYPO3 slack channel, attend user group meetings or go to stackoverflow.com. 
Our agency published some 450 free video tutorials, you can find them on YouTube, Vimeo or our website. They are narrated in German, but nowadays the video platforms provide translated captions for almost any language.

Share your enthusiasm for TYPO3!

We could use more translations of some documentation.

Yes, there is always room for more contributors. There are also many areas where non-programmers can contribute to TYPO3, be it with documentation, translation, graphics, training etc.  

I like to travel and eat good food. Also I’m an advocate of life-long learning and spend many hours learning new things.