Now that Umbraco Cloud is running a 2 week free trial, they are also allowing free viewing for all the relative video's on umbraco.tv. It's fairly obvious that this is being promoted strongly. Following along with these videos I was able to create and skin a basic site quite quickly. Without them I guess it would have been a long haul.
I'm thinking that if the subscription charge for the remaining videos was removed it would encourage far more of us to actually use Umbraco Cloud. Putting it simply if you don't know how to build a site using Umbraco then you are not likely to want to host a site using Umbraco Cloud.
I literally started using Umbraco roughly about a month or so ago and the learning curve has been pretty steep. I researched CMS platforms extensively before deciding to go with Umbraco. I haven't seen anything like their "back office" in any other CMS platforms ... for clients/end-users it's outstanding.
I've had access to umbraco.tv's videos including their paid option. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to build anything "correctly" or efficiently on the umbraco plaftorm. The price isn't too bad to get access to their premium content, and so far it't been worth it.
Even then, in my opinion, there needs to be more documentation-training materials to attract a larger group of developers. Right now, outside of the our.umbraco.org forum, it's just a bunch of wiki docs and random posts on stack exchange. It's really hard to find information to troubleshoot problems, or find any real working examples to learn from.
There aren't any recent books for Umbraco either. I think the last book anyone has written on the platform is seriously out of date ... around more than 5 years ago I think.
However, I did see an interesting post made by another user here in the forum that recommended this ... "After you install Umbraco, you can install the addon called "Bookshelf" from within the Umbraco backoffice. This addons ships with a book to get you started with Umbraco. I believe it's the most detailed and up to date work out there. You'll find a lot of useful information in it."
Hosting is kind of tricky too ... not too many options out there to choose from, but this type of solution is great for companies with their own equipment-servers.
Hopefully we'll see more content created to help onboard new users and developers soon.
BTW, I'm in the middle of fixing the headers in the markdown. The GitHub algorithm changed so that it no longer renders the headers as they've been written. Will hopefully submit a pull request for that shortly.
Also, I'm toying around with the idea of writing an Umbraco book. No solid plans yet, but if that does evolve into something over the next year, I will surely announce it here: https://twitter.com/MrMarsRed
Regarding the original question, I believe the price point makes Umbraco TV a no brainer. They have to financially support the business somehow, and doing it while at the same time improving their (video) documentation makes a lot of sense to me.
Nicholas you're right about Bookshelf, I downloaded the book last night. I should point out that Bookshelf doesn't work on the latest version of Umbraco yet.
I really hope you do decide to pursue the writing of a book on Umbraco it would be so helpful to many of us. But this leads to an argument regarding your next point. Why would you spend the time and money on writing a book if you didn't feel that it would be successful? You would be speculating to accumulate.
I haven't researched this but I am suggesting that if umbraco.tv were free to us all then it would encourage the use of Umbraco dramatically. That in turn would lead to an upturn in the use of the Umbraco Cloud service. Umbraco Cloud is an excellent package. Its relatively easy to use, even for a beginner and the pricing is, I believe, very competitive. So yes, there may be some speculation about the success but I really don't feel its a 'no brainer'.
Why would you spend the time and money on writing a book if you didn't feel that it would be successful?
I don't recall indicating I anticipated that it'd be unsuccessful. Success, by the way, would depend on the metric being measured (e.g., does it help to legitimize Umbraco, does it help people who learn better by reading than by watching, does it consolidate scattered information sources, and so on).
You would be speculating to accumulate.
Not sure what that means.
there may be some speculation about the success but I really don't feel its a 'no brainer'.
Indeed, the impact of a pricing change isn't clear. BTW, my "no brainer" comment was in regard to the value provided to individuals paying for Umbraco TV. On the other hand, I have no idea of whether or not that value is apparent to potential Umbraco users/developers. It was to me when I started learning Umbraco 7 years ago, but then I had a major company footing the bill, and there are a great variety of situations that would not match my experience.
Thanks Brett, I too hold Umbraco in high regard but feel that it lacking when it comes to the learning process. I also like the fact that the learning curve is steep because I like a challenge but so much info is missing.
I feel that the videos should be revised each time there is a new release so that they coincide with the latest version. They should also be documented so that users can follow along.
If this issue was addressed then, in my opinion, Umbraco could be a real contender in the CMS world!
Thanks for the input on 'Bookshelf' I will definitely take a look at this.
Agreed ... difficult is ok with me too. I'm used to figuring things out on my own. I hate having to bring issues into the forum, but sometimes there isn't a choice.
The one thing that has been a life-saver for me has been Umbraco's active, friendly and responsive developer forum. They have been a huge help and have introduced me to packages that have been game-changers for me.
I don't have much more to contribute, but I absolutely agree that the state of the documentation at the moment is a pain point.
Good and up-to-date documentation can be hard to come by. Umbraco.tv is a great starting resource, The wiki on our. is okay if you are lucky enough to find what you're looking for. Though some stuff was still even out of date/dead links the last time I checked, too. Beyond this you've just got a bunch of community blog posts and some posts on StackOverflow.
Sometimes I've found this to be a pretty big let down and makes me hesitant to commit more time in the Umbraco ecosystem.
@Alistar We've made the fundamentals chapters free so everybody can get a good start.
We'd love to make umbraco.tv free, but contrary what some people may think it's actually incredibly hard to make a project like Umbraco sustainable, thus ensuring continous development. To make matters worse as Umbraco grows, it actually gets more expensive to run the project (more edge cases, more calls, more e-mails, etc) - of course revenue also grows but it's very few users who end up paying for anything from us and with b2b software the evaluation phase from people start asking questions to people invest in partnerships or support is quite long.
Paid products like umbraco.tv, Umbraco Forms and our support offerings ensure that we can actually have paid staff working on keeping the software up to date.
Documentation is an area which we really want to invest in and we're close at being able to afford a fulltime person on documentation. There's actually a lot of documentation written in the documentation area, but it's obviously not organised well. You'll see that we'll be launching initiatives to help us understand what people need for documentation and which parts of the current documentation that works or doesn't.
Umbraco Cloud is both the key to make it easier to get started with Umbraco and also the key to ensure that the Umbraco project can survive with the growth, which is why we're pushing it so much.
Niels, thank you for replying. Your points are all very understandable and I can see why you would feel reluctant to pursue the prospect of making umbraco.tv free. For me your last paragraph is the most valid. So lets take this point expand upon it just a little.
From a business owners point of view the learning the fundamentals is not enough. They need to know, not that they can get started but that they can finish a project from beginning to end. Give them umbraco.tv and updated documentation so that they can achieve this. Once their project is completed it will need to be hosted and what better way to host than Umbraco Cloud?
Maybe my math isn't so good but I can see that a relatively short subscription period using umbraco.tv loses out to the long term financial benefits of Cloud Hosting subscriptions.
I actually think that you have 'struck gold' when it comes to Umbraco Cloud its just needs its potential clients to finish their projects before they can host them.
As a minor issue, you are currently offering Umbraco Forms free with the Umbraco Cloud package. Wouldn't it make more sense to offer this on a 'free trial period' then make it an additional package which would bring in more revenue.
Should Umbraco.tv be made free for everyone?
Now that Umbraco Cloud is running a 2 week free trial, they are also allowing free viewing for all the relative video's on umbraco.tv. It's fairly obvious that this is being promoted strongly. Following along with these videos I was able to create and skin a basic site quite quickly. Without them I guess it would have been a long haul.
I'm thinking that if the subscription charge for the remaining videos was removed it would encourage far more of us to actually use Umbraco Cloud. Putting it simply if you don't know how to build a site using Umbraco then you are not likely to want to host a site using Umbraco Cloud.
Does anyone else have a view on this?
Hi Alistair,
I literally started using Umbraco roughly about a month or so ago and the learning curve has been pretty steep. I researched CMS platforms extensively before deciding to go with Umbraco. I haven't seen anything like their "back office" in any other CMS platforms ... for clients/end-users it's outstanding.
I've had access to umbraco.tv's videos including their paid option. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to build anything "correctly" or efficiently on the umbraco plaftorm. The price isn't too bad to get access to their premium content, and so far it't been worth it.
Even then, in my opinion, there needs to be more documentation-training materials to attract a larger group of developers. Right now, outside of the our.umbraco.org forum, it's just a bunch of wiki docs and random posts on stack exchange. It's really hard to find information to troubleshoot problems, or find any real working examples to learn from.
There aren't any recent books for Umbraco either. I think the last book anyone has written on the platform is seriously out of date ... around more than 5 years ago I think.
However, I did see an interesting post made by another user here in the forum that recommended this ... "After you install Umbraco, you can install the addon called "Bookshelf" from within the Umbraco backoffice. This addons ships with a book to get you started with Umbraco. I believe it's the most detailed and up to date work out there. You'll find a lot of useful information in it."
Hosting is kind of tricky too ... not too many options out there to choose from, but this type of solution is great for companies with their own equipment-servers.
Hopefully we'll see more content created to help onboard new users and developers soon.
FYI, there is no need to install Bookshelf. You can simply read the documentation here: https://github.com/kgiszewski/LearnUmbraco7
BTW, I'm in the middle of fixing the headers in the markdown. The GitHub algorithm changed so that it no longer renders the headers as they've been written. Will hopefully submit a pull request for that shortly.
Also, I'm toying around with the idea of writing an Umbraco book. No solid plans yet, but if that does evolve into something over the next year, I will surely announce it here: https://twitter.com/MrMarsRed
Regarding the original question, I believe the price point makes Umbraco TV a no brainer. They have to financially support the business somehow, and doing it while at the same time improving their (video) documentation makes a lot of sense to me.
Nicholas you're right about Bookshelf, I downloaded the book last night. I should point out that Bookshelf doesn't work on the latest version of Umbraco yet.
I really hope you do decide to pursue the writing of a book on Umbraco it would be so helpful to many of us. But this leads to an argument regarding your next point. Why would you spend the time and money on writing a book if you didn't feel that it would be successful? You would be speculating to accumulate.
I haven't researched this but I am suggesting that if umbraco.tv were free to us all then it would encourage the use of Umbraco dramatically. That in turn would lead to an upturn in the use of the Umbraco Cloud service. Umbraco Cloud is an excellent package. Its relatively easy to use, even for a beginner and the pricing is, I believe, very competitive. So yes, there may be some speculation about the success but I really don't feel its a 'no brainer'.
I don't recall indicating I anticipated that it'd be unsuccessful. Success, by the way, would depend on the metric being measured (e.g., does it help to legitimize Umbraco, does it help people who learn better by reading than by watching, does it consolidate scattered information sources, and so on).
Not sure what that means.
Indeed, the impact of a pricing change isn't clear. BTW, my "no brainer" comment was in regard to the value provided to individuals paying for Umbraco TV. On the other hand, I have no idea of whether or not that value is apparent to potential Umbraco users/developers. It was to me when I started learning Umbraco 7 years ago, but then I had a major company footing the bill, and there are a great variety of situations that would not match my experience.
Thanks Brett, I too hold Umbraco in high regard but feel that it lacking when it comes to the learning process. I also like the fact that the learning curve is steep because I like a challenge but so much info is missing.
I feel that the videos should be revised each time there is a new release so that they coincide with the latest version. They should also be documented so that users can follow along.
If this issue was addressed then, in my opinion, Umbraco could be a real contender in the CMS world!
Thanks for the input on 'Bookshelf' I will definitely take a look at this.
Agreed ... difficult is ok with me too. I'm used to figuring things out on my own. I hate having to bring issues into the forum, but sometimes there isn't a choice.
The one thing that has been a life-saver for me has been Umbraco's active, friendly and responsive developer forum. They have been a huge help and have introduced me to packages that have been game-changers for me.
I don't have much more to contribute, but I absolutely agree that the state of the documentation at the moment is a pain point.
Good and up-to-date documentation can be hard to come by. Umbraco.tv is a great starting resource, The wiki on our. is okay if you are lucky enough to find what you're looking for. Though some stuff was still even out of date/dead links the last time I checked, too. Beyond this you've just got a bunch of community blog posts and some posts on StackOverflow.
Sometimes I've found this to be a pretty big let down and makes me hesitant to commit more time in the Umbraco ecosystem.
@Alistar We've made the fundamentals chapters free so everybody can get a good start.
We'd love to make umbraco.tv free, but contrary what some people may think it's actually incredibly hard to make a project like Umbraco sustainable, thus ensuring continous development. To make matters worse as Umbraco grows, it actually gets more expensive to run the project (more edge cases, more calls, more e-mails, etc) - of course revenue also grows but it's very few users who end up paying for anything from us and with b2b software the evaluation phase from people start asking questions to people invest in partnerships or support is quite long.
Paid products like umbraco.tv, Umbraco Forms and our support offerings ensure that we can actually have paid staff working on keeping the software up to date.
Documentation is an area which we really want to invest in and we're close at being able to afford a fulltime person on documentation. There's actually a lot of documentation written in the documentation area, but it's obviously not organised well. You'll see that we'll be launching initiatives to help us understand what people need for documentation and which parts of the current documentation that works or doesn't.
Umbraco Cloud is both the key to make it easier to get started with Umbraco and also the key to ensure that the Umbraco project can survive with the growth, which is why we're pushing it so much.
Best, Niels...
Niels, thank you for replying. Your points are all very understandable and I can see why you would feel reluctant to pursue the prospect of making umbraco.tv free. For me your last paragraph is the most valid. So lets take this point expand upon it just a little.
From a business owners point of view the learning the fundamentals is not enough. They need to know, not that they can get started but that they can finish a project from beginning to end. Give them umbraco.tv and updated documentation so that they can achieve this. Once their project is completed it will need to be hosted and what better way to host than Umbraco Cloud?
Maybe my math isn't so good but I can see that a relatively short subscription period using umbraco.tv loses out to the long term financial benefits of Cloud Hosting subscriptions.
I actually think that you have 'struck gold' when it comes to Umbraco Cloud its just needs its potential clients to finish their projects before they can host them.
As a minor issue, you are currently offering Umbraco Forms free with the Umbraco Cloud package. Wouldn't it make more sense to offer this on a 'free trial period' then make it an additional package which would bring in more revenue.
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