I myself had some problems when setting up Neos the first time and some of the issues occurred due to the fact that the demo package is shipped together with the Neos base distribution. I would suggest to remove the demo package from the base distribution and offer a way to have a demo distribution or to download the site package from the sites module in the backend.
BTW, I am not sure if this topic belongs to the core category, so please move it if you think it is wrongly placed
Maybe we could get a tendency about what the Neos team and other users think about it:
Do you think the Neos base distribution should be shipped without the demo package?
Yes, change and ship a Neos base distribution without the demo site package
No, leave as it is and ship the Neos base distribution including the demo site package
I am uncertain if shipping without a demo site really helps new users. It’s a good way to show the system and see how things are done. From my experience the problems mainly occur because having the demo site package active while creating a custom site package has all kinds of unexpected side-effects because most configuration (settings and node types) are global. Especially with the multi-lingual setup (content dimensions) this also affects a newly built site and causes problems when removing the dimensions etc.
So my idea would be to deactivate the demo site (or show a notice) when a site package is created. This way you can start with a usable system and can build your own site without interference.
Another idea would be to have the demo site and a boilerplate site package that is very lightweight but a good starting point for custom sites (without additional node types, content dimensions, etc.).
So I’m not sure if it’s either “yes” or “no” for this question.
I totally agree with you about the side effects about global NodeTypes, content dimensions, etc. . To learn and to dig into the features of the Neos the demo package is awesome. But once you’ve reached the point where you say: “Hey cool, let’s start a new website from what I’ve learned so far” the side effects kick in and (can) throw you back a little bit, nagging on the motivation and costing (quite some) time to figure out. I would have loved a clean way to start a new website, but I had to learn the hard way
To me it seems quite obvious, a demo package should be for demonstration purpose only and should not interfere with starting a new project / side. If deactivating the package would resolve the side effects (which I doubt since the mentioned global configuration seems to be a conceptual feature of Neos / Flow) it would be fine for me. If not, Imo it should not be included in the base distribution.
I don’t know what the long term ideas are about integrating existing site packages. If that is left to the integrator via composer or if a neos administrator could install new site packages via setup. Anyway, having a clean start package to setup your first website would be a great help for any newbie.
A boilerplate package to start with could be indeed interesting, but do you think it is really necessary? Yesterday I just installed a beta2 version removing the demo package before entering the setup and I was happy with creating a new site without the demo package in the background, though there was disturbing warning "No site packages were available … " which seems to be a little bit odd, because just below I have a form to create a new site package
For me it would be totally fine to fix the warning message and have the user create a new site package (instead of using an existing boiler plate package). If site package management should be resolved by composer I think it would be even nicer (UX wise) to hide the upper part of this step on the setup since there is no initial package available.
Of course you could also swap the approach: remove the possibility to create an empty site package in the setup and ship the base distribution with a boiler plate package, so a new site always gets created by importing it from an existing site package
I see some valid points in here, maybe having a development distribution (with all the build / dev tools we use for Neos development), a demo distribution and just a completely clean and lean distribution makes sense.
Keep in mind that before it was only the demo site being installed, but recently also packages like Seo and frontendlogin were added to the base distribution ‘increasing’ the risk of causing problems.
Yes, I like the idea to create a kickstart / boilerplate distribution with less dependencies to start your own site. We just have to communicate that distribution in favor of the demo, so people don’t use the demo distribution anyway in the future.
+1 for the solution of a deactivated demo package or showing an information when creating a new site package that the demo package should be deactivated.
if there is a way to have the demo package deactivated from the start this would be a very good solution, but imo just giving a hint to deactivate it before creating a new site is (maybe) another barrier that should not be there. More like an opt-in option to activate then an opt-out option to not use it
That sounds great and I think this is the best solution. Deactivating the demo package per default would create a barrier for everyone who wants to give Neos a first try. So having an automated deactivation sounds great.
I will try this myself so I know what I write about and then I happily provide a faq entry or documentation about it. @sebastian Where to you want to have the initial text posted?
I’ve created a new site on a blank beta2 system, but I can not confirm that the demo package gets deactivated. Any idea what changes could still be unmerged?
the change was https://review.typo3.org/#/c/38054/ – but it has not been ported to the 2.0 branch as far as I can see. Possibly because it was tagged “master” only (as when the change was created, the 2.0 branch did not exist yet).
So, we should backport this to 2.0. Agreed, @kdambekalns?
Backported & merged. Thanks for noticing. Checked if there were other changes targeted for 2.0, but only in master and didn’t find any. There is some translation stuff, but that’s a different story.
