[WIP] Wish for first level communication

Feature Requests / Improvements
8

Thank you so much for this very well-worded & thoughtful wish, @sebastianberger :slight_smile:

100% spot on. The level of communication & a consistent approach to it has been very much lacking lately.

We are committed to getting back to our roots and communicating more often & openly. Like in the good old days :slight_smile:

I hope the Bricks 1.7.1 FB post (Bricks Community | Facebook) can help start the conversation on how to best serve the community with much-needed non-code updates.

And that yesterday’s “Sneak peek” FB post (Bricks Community | Facebook) about the upcoming menu builder can provide an idea of how such a communication can look going forward. Although I am very much in favor of a forum-first approach.

The 1.8-beta + video post is something we’ll share here on the forum and only share a quick post + forum link on FB. Maybe also sending out an email as well.

Still figuring out how to come up with a concrete communication strategy.

Thank you so much for keeping us accountable!

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9

I am not on Facebook and do not intend to. But I miss all these great announcements, could you please post them here in the forum too? I think this forum is much more preferable than Facebook, I thinks there are more Bricksters who are not on FB and this would be a great place to hold it all together, also in terms of searching solutions . I also think for some people an email would be great, but don’t make it to hard for yourself to put it on all channels. Keep the discussion centralized.

Thanks for all the great work!

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10

so facebook is the new communication channel, and we get all news there? not happy, cause not using. :confused:

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11

@grafikundso Facebook is NOT the new communication channel. It is the channel that we have been mainly using SO FAR. It’s not a personal preference of mine. It is simply because it’s the channel that allows us to reach & engage with most users. Way more than here in the forum.

I am quoting myself here as you seem to have missed this part in my last message:

“I am very much in favor of a forum-first approach.”

We currently are in the process of finding the communication channels & strategies to reach more of our users effectively.

Personally, I prefer the forum too. Also because it’s public and we are not at the mercy of Facebook. Which behaves weirdly sometimes.

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12

Hi Thomas,

I am voting for newsletters … this way all if us, who do not have facebook and forum open all day, would be directly informed immediately and personally…

Best Regards
Michael

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13

why not trying some kind of automation or at least just make an official forum post with same infos as on facebook? or forum post with all infos and facebook with a link and only partial infos (would mean more work, so wouldnt recommend)

i think copy paste from forum + keeping forum as main channel would be a good way. i am no fan of keeping most infos on a channel (fb, twitter, whatever) not owning myself. means, always keep the main content on channels i own. like a forum :slight_smile:

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16

I don’t use Facebook, and probably never will. Love Bricks, but am missing out on stuff because of FB postings. Newsletters, short vids on new announcements (with longer explainer videos to follow), etc. would be great! Thanks, Thomas.

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17

Pretty much agree with the overall opinions expressed in this thread. Not on fb or any social media for that matter and think it’s crucial to have one “news central” which is accesible without any kinda account.

The best way (in my opinion) I’ve seen others do is to have some sort of a blog on the site where everything gets published (news, announcements, sneek peaks, etc). From there everything is pretty much automated. Latest posts get sent out via Newsletter once a month for people who like mail and articles are posted on whichever other platforms on which users are most active, in this case fb.

In an earlier post a mobile menu builder sneek peak was mentioned. I’d love to see that but won’t create an fb account for that haha. Those types of posts though show what kinda stuff is currently under development which I believe is important news to share.

I know it’s under progress on the board but given that the original date of creation on the board is so far back, I have no way of knowing whether it will come in a week, a month or a year.
I’m of course not asking for any dates or specifics since those are hard to plan and promise. But, seeing it Pop up as a sneak peek at least gives me an idea on how far along it is and builds my anticipation for it / makes it clear that it’ll likely come within whatever time frame.

I’m the last person that wants to be like “are we there yet” every couple days haha so just an ocasional surprise sneak peak or whatever it may be, accesible to everybody, would be wonderful :slight_smile:

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18

I vote for forum and newsletter

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19

Thomas, don’t feel you have erred. You are an excellent developer with two great products. We live in an age of being unable to tolerate waiting for something. Yes, communication is important and always appreciated.

With you, it’s quality and your team.

Thank you for Bricks!

Ros

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20

Slightly related… I noticed the Announcements section of the forum has not been updated since the 1.8 beta announcement, nothing for the final 1.8, nor 1.8.1 or 1.8.2. Maybe it was determined not to use it anymore but I had thought the Announcements section of the forum was going to be used with each release plus any other communication to Bricks’ users (at least to mirror the Facebook updates). Hopefully we’ll see those being posted again. :slight_smile:

21

It may just be me but I’m feeling like there’s been a lack of communication/transparency again the past few months with the 1.8.x series. While the beta period for 1.8.0 was a big one since it included a major new feature which needed much testing and refinement, since that version I’ve seen a few concerning items which I believe could be avoided or at least better handled with better communication.

  • Since 1.8.0 in particular it seems there has been a number of bugs which seem high-impacting or at least should have been easily avoidable with automated test harnesses. I wrote a forum post on this over a month ago FYI: An observed increase of uncaught (sometimes high-impact) defects, a request and offer to expand test cases for future releases

  • I also haven’t seen too much movement with respect to improvements with the feature request process, other than perhaps a slight improvement in the time from feature request to published idea for voting: [WIP] Concerns around the Ideation process. How are new requests handled in the Idea Board tool for Bricks Builder?

  • There is very active post thread requesting and discussing Global (and specifically morphed into Dynamic) Components which Brick’s competitor Cwicly has recently implemented and “changed the game” sort-of, but the Bricks’ team has been noticeably absent from the discussion here: Global Components are needed in Bricks!

  • There has also been a number of cases in smaller areas where there are Facebook-only posts, or absence of important items in the Announcements area of the forums here, such as official 1.8.0 and later releases (last announcement was just for the 1.8 beta). There has also been no formal announcement of the “User Survey 2023” in the forum here, only in the Facebook group. I may have misunderstood but I thought there was going to be an improvement in utilizing the forums here for the official communication channel for these types of things while cross-posting in Facebook too?

While things were definitely better for a while after this thread’s discussion since April and May, things seemed to have slipped backwards again for the last couple of months. I’d love to see things improve again and get back to where they were and should generally always be for Bricks’ users. :slight_smile:

I definitely recognize that Bricks is a small business still and like any small business will have a number of growing pains, I just also really hope comments from users/customers are taken into consideration to keep the community vibrant and happy and to learn where the weak points are and how to improve. :slight_smile: With that said and on the same note… this is a quick reminder too for others to fill out the “User Survey 2023” at BRICKS User survey 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣3️⃣.

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22

I agree that communication has tapered off … again. When Thomas does communicate, it is delightful, but it is not frequent enough to steer the ship. I can only hope that their hiring will include more resources for increased communications (either by someone else, or taking on some of Thomas’ work so he can communicate more). In my survey response, I identified communications as my number 1 area for improvement. Sorry to tag you again, @thomas

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23

Hey Thomas & team,

I know this is an old topic, but I got the feeling that communication is again getting worse. I’m not speaking only for myself, but we are talking on Discord - Unofficial Bricks Builder server and there are users that reported a bug and all, but have not heard back since first e-mail communication. FYI, the topic I have in mind now is Builder Lag, but I bet it’s not the only one.

I know that you may be working on that and trying to solve it, but we don’t know that. We only see a bunch of “WAIT” and “WIP” in the forum, and that’s not giving us any hope. We don’t know why that topic is WAIT, what is missing? Another login information? Video? Another user report? Same goes for WIP, there are topics that are WIP and are older than 1 year - I’m sure you are not working 1 year or more on them :slight_smile:
Sure, some of them are already solved, just still in WIP (or WAIT), but how do we know? We don’t.

That said, I may miss some announcements about that, because I’m not active on FB and Discord is not channel you use, so If it’s not in the forum topic - I may very well miss it.

The point here is, there was a time when communication was very good for a while, but it went down again. Especially for bugs that are bigger and harder to find/fix, at lest that’s the feeling that I got and I’m sure I’m not only one.

I love Bricks and I would love to see a bit more communication again. It doesn’t need to be a lot and with many details, but

“we are working on that …this is what we discovered for now… we are not yet sure what is best way to implement it… + more if if needed”

would make all the difference. At least then we would know that something is happening.

To sum up, improving communication would be wonderful :slight_smile:

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24

Well, they might have quite many earth-shattering feelings, and full on working with what’s left behind after the security incident.

But, does that means no communication? Silence? Nope. @thomas gathered everyone’s love towards building WordPress sites again, and did a tremendous job. Silence, not communicating, causes no love. That goes for every living creature on earth.

I hope it makes sense, and soon we can hear something.

25

Thanks so much for bringing this up. Could you please share the links of the forum post that haven’t received the required communication? Then I can look at those as well and update them accordingly.

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26

This one: WIP: Simultaneous CSS Editing

Web agencies can’t work with Bricks Builder at the moment, it’s really need to be adressed in the next update please, everyone who is working with multiple users (not even on the same Bricks page) are losing hours and hours of work because Bricks can’t handle multi-users properly.

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27

Hey Thomas,

thank you for your response, I appreciate it!.

To be honest, the main thread was the one with Builder Lag, that I already mentioned before. But soon after I posted, we got a response there - so that is good :slight_smile: (Another thread about lag)

The other one, that got mentioned many times in Discord is simultaneous editing, for example this one. - and I know its still a bug, because it happened to me not long ago :slight_smile:

Those two are the ones that get mentioned the most. At least those two I know from top of my mind.

And again, thank you for your response Thomas!

EDIT: Ah, I see Adrien beat me for just few minutes. :slight_smile:

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28

Another vote for improving communications. I really enjoyed posts from the early days posts which were frequent and a bit chatty. It created the sense that Thomas was part of the community, and the community knew where the product was going.

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29

It’s true, Bricks feels close to us.

But honestly, I feel the opposite regarding responses/chat. I don’t understand how is it possible for Thomas or other top developers to keep up with all questions.

Bricks is growing every day. Imagine thousands of questions being asked.

It’s quite impressive what they do already.

I think their top priority should be to keep the tool working well and keep improving it.
It’s a flexible and sensible thing that borderline between growing and keeping everybody happy, I suppose.

They probably have a filtering way of picking the right questions to improve the tool and leave for later less decisive ones.

And probably there are some delicate phases (like the late security one) where they can’t answer so much. It’s a team of just a certain number off hands.

Maybe there are times where less new things give room for more replies.

Sometimes a tool can just be something that works very well the few, essential, things.

I think the team is phenomenal and try, always, to do their best.

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