Who are you? 7 simple questions

[jenstornell]

This forum feels like a family nowdays. Many people use it every day. It made me curious. Hopefully you will have the time for some simple questions.

1. What are your skills?
   Design, security, content writing or something else?

2. What do you work with?
   Client work? Sites for yourself or something else?

3. What did you seek?
   What did you look for when you finally ended up using Kirby for it?

4. Where did you find Kirby?
   Was it a friend, Google or something else?

5. What is so good about Kirby?
   What makes you stay? What does Kirby have that other CMSes are missing?

6. What other stuff do you use?
   WordPress, frameworks like Laravel, Grunt or something else? Anything goes.

7. How many licenses have you bought?
   Your sites + customers (no need for an exact number). Skip this question if it’s too private.

[jenstornell]

I can start so you have something to read…

1. I see myself as 50% web designer and 50% web developer. I can WordPress and Photoshop as well as PHP, CSS, JS, jQuery and HTML. I made a plugin in WordPress called WP Page Numbers with 50 000+ active installations (even it I have not worked with it for years).

2. I recently worked 50% for a company, where I was some kind of system developer. Now I work 100% with affiliate. That means I write about products, rank them up in Google and get profit from that. I don’t like customers that much because they often have really bad ideas of how things should work.

3. I was looking for a flat database CMS. Then I find Kirby and other CMSes with no database. I picked Kirby because simple syntax and most important, templates in pure PHP, not some fancy template language.

4. I found Kirby in Google but it was some blog posts that convinced me. I was a little bit afraid of it because there was no team behind it, just one guy. Big risk I felt.

5. Speed, do more with less code, routes, multilanguage and custom fields build in, snippets, markdown, patterns, the forum. It’s so much.

6. I have like 20 low quality sites in WordPress. I use Gulp for tasks and Sublime Text for code writing. I also use Photoshop CS2 for design. It’s horrible to work with, but I think the new Photoshop is too expensive and I can’t use Sketch on a PC.

7. I have 4 licenses but I only use 2 of them yet. Only 1 of them so far has paid itself but that one have paid all of them so it’s fine.

[Constantin]

(Sorry I can see my first response was very poor, so I complete)

1. No particular skills - I love design. I discovered webdesign and website building less than 3 years ago, so a consider myself as a beginner.

2. Today I work only as Freelance for little projects.

3. I was absolutly looking for a flat file system.

4. Kirby was one the first cms I found on web search. Because Kirby afraid me a lot, i tried many other flat cms before, But no one seemed as serious.

5. I can’t explain exactly why, but Kirby makes me feel in security and trust with a CMS. Documentation is super helpful (even if for someone like me there are too many things to learn and remember). I love the way kirby community and forum works and are available for help through prompt and concis response.

6. I use adobe Brackets for code writting. Pleease as css post-processor, PSCS6 for images and SerifDraw Plus8 for SVG. Will begin to learn soon how to use Gulp as Workflow and make things more productive and easy (hope so).

7. 5 or 6 and hope buying much more

Et voilà

[lukasbestle]

1. I am mostly (70 %) a backend developer and system administrator, but also 30 % designer.
2. For clients mostly. And for Kirby.
3. Four years ago when I was 14, I was looking into CMSs and was experimenting with MODX Revolution. I saw a tweet about Kirby and the whole concept felt so natural and awesome.
4. See 3.
5. The great API, a focused development concept (Kirby doesn’t include every single feature someone wants and stays focused), good code, flexible to extend
6. Kirby is the only CMS I use since I discovered it. Other than that, I use Sublime Text, Sketch, iTerm and Tower. For building mostly npm.

[simon2017]

1. I see my Self as a Guy who Love to Work Whit Content Managment Systems or Forum Softwares Like Kirby and Vanillaforums

2. I am a student

3. i was Looking For a Better CMS because i’m not so a Fan From MySQL, so i was Looking for a Flat File System, and now i have Found Kirby, and i’m Rly Proud to use it

4. i Found it on a list Whit Many Flat File Systems

5. i dont know who i can start, Kirby its Just a Fantastic CMS and i Love to Work whit it, it makes me Rly Happy to use The Perfect Kirby For my Site

6. i’m Working at this Moment Whit Kirby Of coure and whit Vanillaforums Vanilla is a Open Source Forum Software. you can download it or Buy a Hosting, Put The Prices are Rly Expensive
   

   

7. For my site i’m using one license and this is the Personal License

[Malvese]

1. I’m a designer, in the broadest sense of the word. I also do front end stuff, mainly non-programming (html, css, or “theming” as some call it).
   I can code, but I wouldn’t call myself a developer, it’s a real job. I can fiddle with PHP, JS and a few others but couldn’t do much by myself from scratch. Fortunately there are these giants with convenient shoulders.

2. I’m a freelancer, I do client work.

3. I was looking for a flat file CMS because for me DBs are a hassle to work with and deploy. I wanted a simple CMS for my client’s simple needs.

4. Can’t remember, probably on a “flat/static/site/CMS/generators” list.

5. Kirby just made sense to me. I know Drupal very well, and Kirby packs many many things Drupal does in a light and easy package.
   Everything we build in Kirby is aimed at editors and end-users, and I like it. There’s no such thing as “site-building” by clicking around, you have to build the site through code (PHP, HTML, YAML… files) so the Panel is not polluted with dashboards, theme and plugins config. Grav doesn’t get this, it’s basically “flat-file Wordpress” and everything is mixed up in their Admin.

6. I’ve been using Drupal for about ten years. Nowadays I don’t build Drupal sites anymore, but I still have a good expertise and do theming for big client Drupal sites.
   Some software I use for web stuff: Atom, Tower, iTerm2, Adobe CC (even though I don’t really like it anymore), Sketch (I want to love it but it’s still so buggy I can only like it), ImageOptim.
   I don’t rely on any single framework, generator or pre/post processor, I like to keep it simple and use what’s really needed.

7. I’ve bought 5 pro licenses so far, with more to come this year if things go as I wish.

[jbeyerstedt]

1. I´m more of a developer, that a designer. The language I learned coding is C or C++, but I do PHP, since I began building my website with kirby.
2. I´m a student doing my own website and work for clients as a freelancer. Mostly small websites.
3. My first Website was all static, hand written HTML (and CSS). The I searched for a CMS, with markdown text editing, a backend, which is doing well on mobile and something, which does not stand in my way writing my templates. Wordpress was quite evil for me, because it´s too bloated. Also, I like GIT and pure files, wich I can edit however I want. I wanted an easy way to move, backup and archive my content. So kirby was my first choice, because it had everything I wanted, and I never wanted to leave since then.
4. I found kirby by searching for different CMS.
5. The only other CMS I developed a website in was joomla, and I was awful, because the CMS stood in my way several times. It added headers and things I haven´t added.
   So kirby is perfectly fine, because it helps you, but does not dictate you how to do stuff. Everything (also the panel) behaves just as you told kirby to do. It lives in the background doing awesome things and serves you.
6. For any of my projects I use GIT. I code in Brackets, my websites are on uberspace and mostly rely on bootstrap. I have no special deployment tool, but I´m currently trying git deploy (git hooks) at one customer. Otherwise I´m quite happy with servers, where I can ssh to and do my things in the bash.
7. I have a personal (kirby 1) and professional license for my own sites and bought 5 professional kirby 2 licenses for my customers.

[texnixe]

1. I’m maybe more of a designer than a developer with a growing hang towards development. I’m also a Technical Writer.

2. I do client work.

3. Apart from a background with static sites, I used Wordpress and Joomla as CMS but I did not like the overhead of these systems. So I went looking for an alternative and found Kirby. I never looked back.

4. I found Kirby when searching for a flat file CMS. I looked into several alternatives and Kirby convinced me, also because I could test it for free before buying a license.

5. As I said above, having the chance to test a system to see if it fits your needs, was a very important selling point. The multi-lang feature was another reason. Also, the learning curve is low, the API great, the concept convincing, the developer open and approachable, the community nice, and so many more reasons.

6. Kirby has been “my” CMS since I first tried it. Other tools include Adobe CC, Sublime, Git, the shell and a list of others.

[aoimedia]

1. What are your skills?
   Primarily front-end but improving my back-end capabilities. I come from a print/publishing/graphic design background and I’m a long-time Adobe/Quark user. Now happy to ditch these larger (and in my opinion bloated) leviathans for leaner and much more tightly focused apps such as Bohemian Sketch and Affinity Designer.

2. What do you work with?
   Mainly freelance client work, and Kirby will beat at the heart of our new personal website.

3. What did you seek?
   …something lean, fast, dynamic (and exciting?) but without the database overheads.

4. Where did you find Kirby?
   A single tweet guided me here.

5. What is so good about Kirby?
   Kirby is the first CMS I’ve worked with that doesn’t force a single way of working on to the user. Kirby is highly customisable and positively flies from a performance point of view. For me Kirby is to content management systems what Sketch is to front-end design… lean, fast and focused. Do more with less. This is the future.

6. What other stuff do you use?
   WordPress, Joomla, Ghost, Anchor, Sass, Git, Tower, Kaleidoscope, MAMP, CodeKit, Coda, BBEdit (yes, I’m ‘old school’), iA Writer, Sketch, Affinity Designer/Photo. Apple MacBook Pro and Microsoft Surface (best and worst of both worlds!)

7. How many licenses have you bought?
   For the moment just one (for our soon to launch personal redesign) but I see more coming soon.

[ralfgoeke]

What are your skills?

Anything I need for building small to medium sized websites for small companies. I’m specialized in pretty “boring” business sites, nothing fancy. So it’s mainly a mix of HTML/CSS/JS/PHP and a bit graphic stuff. I’d say my biggest strength is my experience, since I’m in this industry since the year 2002.

What do you work with?

About 60% for my own clients and 40% freelancing for agencies (frontend only).

I’ve been building lots of private stuff back in the flash days and have been pretty active on flashforum.de. (Went by the screenname Chino there). But I’m too old now for spending my evenings and nights in front of the screen. So I don’t contribute to OSS, at least not with code. I make sure some of the bucks I earn make it back to the community, though.

What did you seek?

I tried a new CMS every now and then. Not anymore, since kirby is the first one which really is fun to work with. And that’s the most important thing to me!

Where did you find Kirby?

Guess it was on Twitter

What is so good about Kirby?

As I said, it’s fun to work with. And I it’s absolutely flexible and gets better with every release. And, to me that’s important as well: I can pay for it. I virtually hate using free stuff, because I feel guilty for not being able to give back.

What other stuff do you use?
Just recently I switched from sublime to atom for coding. I use Affinity Photo and Sketch for the artsy stuff. And some Apps I can’t live without: Alfred, Tower, VirtualHostX to name a few.

How many licenses have you bought?
I bought 30 licenses so far, 25 of them are currently in use.

[bastianallgeier]

I thought about answering this myself. But it doesn’t make much sense I guess. I love your answers though. Thanks for being honest and kind and inspiring! You all seriously rock

[jakobploens]

What are your skills?
Started with coding websites back in 7th grade in school, I always wondered how to do things pretty. So I took my first steps in Adobe programs, bought my first MacBook, did a lot of graphic/concept/development for our school and some “client” work for neighbors and stuff, started an internship as designer in a small agency in Stuttgart, ended up there doing freelancing work as developer, started studying design in Cologne, co-founded a start-up for functional fitness accessories, had a lot to do with financing and law stuff, developed the whole e-commerce-system based on Kirby (almost finished it with v1, rewrote everything after v2 release), left the start-up, and finally just founded a small agency for design and code based in wonderful Cologne. So my skills are just somewhere between front-end/back-end developer, designer, concepter, founder, student, and heavy coffee and beer drinker.

Who do you work with?
Other students due to studying, clients (agencies, NGOs, small to med-sized businesses, start-ups) for paying my invoices, own things as far as I have some spare time. Nothing public yet, but many things on the list.

What did you seek?
After using both a self-developed CMS as well as Wordpress, I searched for an alternative, without knowing what to search for.

Where did you find Kirby?
Guess it was a retweet, can’t remember properly. But it was still the beta of v1, we had to write an email to Bastian to get access. Just looked it up, my mail was written on 20th December 2011, shortly before the official release of v1 – looking back, it might have been one of the best pre-christmas-gifts.

What is so good about Kirby?
Have a look at this forum post: Biggest Advantage of Kirby

What other stuff do you use?
On my mac, I recently switched from Sublime Text to Atom. Previously I never used git, but with changing my editor, I thought I can also change some other things, started using git and GitHub (also because students get a free micro account: https://education.github.com/pack); and after using CodeKit for a couple of years (I also used CodeKits beta version – funny, the very first came out just shortly before I started using Kirby, November 2011), I also tried out gulp for the first time and sticked with it. No reason to look back yet!

I also ditched Photoshop for Mockups some time ago and use Sketch very much now. For documents, InDesign is still my favorite before anything else (Word and Pages just exist for opening clients’ documents). For writing (when doing concepts etc.) I use iA Writer, if not directly done in InDesign. Basically everything else is made with the basic Apple tools: Safari, Mail, Sticky notes, Terminal, stuff like that. Oh, and Numbers for all sort of, well, numbers!

For organizing myself, I tried out many different (Web)Apps, including Cushion, Timely, Wunderlist, Basecamp, Things, text files in iA Writer, self-written solutions… but I’m not happy with anything. So, if some of you know the killer project managing tool, please drop me a line

Oh, and hosting is done either on Uberspace for own things or on all-inkl.com for client things. Both are great!

How many licenses have you bought?
That one is tough – because I already did some websites where the clients directly bought the license. I think I bought five to ten licenses, most of all for Kirby 2. And maybe another five to ten where the client was buying the license. But this numbers are just guessed, I’d need to look-up this properly.

[flokosiol]

1. What are your skills?
   HTML, CSS, PHP (getting better and better), JS (still not good enough) and some design related stuff.

2. Who do you work with?
   I work at a web agency with some really interesting clients. Love it!

3. What did you seek?
   I was looking for a small CMS for smaller websites which is easy to maintain but still flexible enough. I think I found what I was looking for.

4. Where did you find Kirby?
   Shame on me – I can’t remember for sure … but I guess it was a tweet.

5. What is so good about Kirby?
   Speed. With Kirby my developing speed is much faster than before. The backend is fast (of course the frontend, too) and most of the time I don’t need to make use of my mouse – I love keyboard shortcuts!

6. What other stuff do you use?
   For bigger projects I still love the amazing flexibility of Drupal. It’s a great CMS (but sometimes hard to understand for beginners). I use Sublime Text, Sketch, Terminal, Sequel Pro (if mysql is needed), Git, Sass only to name a few …

7. How many licenses have you bought?
   Together with the licenses bought by our clients … some …

[distantnative]

What are your skills?
Sociology, Anthropolgy and International Relations. Mainly on globalisation. And traveling. Somehow I ended up with some web stuff to finance all of this. Somewhere between being weirded out by all of the new hypes and getting less lousy with HTML, CSS, JS and PHP.

Who do you work with?
Some clients. Lately a great agency (shout-out http://handtwolber.de). And well, a bit for Bastian on Kirby.

What did you seek?
I have this tendency to explore things and get stuck in them. That probably happened with web development. Since then I have been trying to get out, then dig deeper. Always striving for less of all this pain.

Where did you find Kirby?
Found it in version 1 for a project. But all team members couldn’t deal with it since its panel wasn’t as advanced as it is now. Re-discovered it with version 2 and fell in love.

What is so good about Kirby?
SO MUCH LESS PAIN. From its “natural-felt” methods to no-freakin-db. And just great people around it.

What other stuff do you use?
Not Wordpress anymore. Never. Which counts towards Kirby’s awesomeness - big time! For my workflow, I recently switched to Atom and like it a lot (I compensate the loadtime on opening with watching videos of kittens). Gulp, Tower for Git and MAMP. Sass and Coffee script. LaunchBar.

How many licenses have you bought?
I rather let clients buy them. But I will convince them to do so. Or threaten.

[1n3JgKl9pQ6cUMrW]

1. What are your skills?

60% front-end (laravel framework, foundation, bootstrap, jquery, angular, node, etc…) / 40% back-end (php mainly, some bits of .net / .asp when needed, though)

2. What do you work with?

I started with Alliare Homesite, in the '90’s of the previous century (yeah, I do create sites for almost 25 years now). But right now I design al my sites (about 250+ and counting) using Adobe Photoshop CS2 - the best suite for complex design

For coding I used PHP Designer, but switched to Rapid PHP last year… tried Brackets / Sublime / Atom… but they are way too slow (I created all my stuff on a pc I bought in 2006 - still going strong).

Besides websites, I also create apps (Visual Studio / Cordova), 3d Animations (3d Studio Max) for both television, cinema and web) - I design infographics (CorelDRAW) and 2d animations for both commercial- and non-commercial purposes (Adobe Flash, Sony Vegas Pro).

Well… I have a professional degree in design - so I even create offline projects… banners, posters, comic-books (for about 5 magazines in Europa), using Adobe Indesign / CorelDRAW (most art-work is created by hand… pen and paper).

3. What did you seek?

An alternative to WordPress… I like WordPress (safe, secure, fast, stable… when you know how to use it) but one customer didn’t like it… he insisted using an alternative CMS.

Most WP sites, I create in less than a week (concept, design, coding, content) - but my first Kirby site took more than a month (poor client; he payed me by hour…).

So my experience is; want a fast and affordable result? Use WordPress… want to create “real” websites with a “real” CMS? Use Kirby.

4. Where did you find Kirby?

Don’t know… some weird forum… forgot about it… remembered it a year (!) later and decided to use it as my main, alternative CMS for WordPress.

5. What is so good about Kirby?

It doesn’t do much out of the box… but you can create everything you want, by coding it yourself.

I see Kirby as a framework for “my own” CMS - not as a CMS by itself.

6. What other stuff do you use?

Photoshop, CorelDRAW, 3d Studio Max, Sound Forge, Vegas Pro, Indesign, Rapid PHP, WinSCP, Git(hub), Basecamp, Redmine.

7. How many licenses have you bought?

3 - but I did use the name of my clients

[Kate]

What are your skills?
I am a self taught woman. I am more of a designer and theme builder, but I don’t do this a main job. I am just learning more than just the intuitive stuff about PHP and JS.

What do you work with?
I make my living with communications, PR, events and in that context also with websites. Along that I work with music, sound, storytelling. I am just working on a project that combines both music and internet. Actually I tinker with many things - too many maybe - so that I always remain a dilettante in each of them.

What did you seek?
I was looking for something less bloated than WordPress, without a database, giving a solid framework for organizing content but providing much freedom for individualized pages.

Where did you find Kirby?
Goofing around.

What is so good about Kirby?
I love the simplicity and force of Kirby. Its understatement is very charming, and it does anything I want.

What other stuff do you use?
WordPress. Zurb Foundation as a framework. CodeKit. Coda. Espresso.

How many licenses have you bought?
My own and more to come. Hope my clients (will) pay too.

PS: A good opportunity to say a big thank you for all the friendly help I got here!

[simon2017]

Its so interesting to read this all !

[11bits]

First of all, @jenstornell I think this is a good initiative to know each other better.

1. What are your skills?
   I am a web designer, in the broad sense of the term: front-end, UI, UX, SEO and web accessibility.

2. What do you work with?
   I work mainly for an agency, using WordPress. I use Kirby with my sites and I also make Kirby themes.

3. What did you seek?
   I was looking for a simple CMS, with no database.

4. Where did you find Kirby?
   In Google after compare it with other flat CMSes.

5. What is so good about Kirby?
   Kirby is a great CMS for front-end developers, with a little PHP knowledge, the documentation and the support of this forum, you can easily create amazing sites.

6. What other stuff do you use?
   I use Atom as code editor, Bootstrap, Less/Sass, Grunt, Git and I am starting to use Affinity Designer/Photo to replace Illustrator/Photoshop.

7. How many licenses have you bought?
   I have 2 licenses. And if all my customers have bought a license for their sites, as I recommend them, more than 50.

[jancbeck]

What are your skills?
Design, front-end development

What do you work with?
Freelance client work, a few private side projects for fun. Never used Kirby for a commercial project.

What did you seek?
I wanted to save my sites content in text files (markdown preferably) so I could access the data even 30 years later.

Where did you find Kirby?
I don’t remember

What is so good about Kirby?
I knew some PHP from WordPress templating and that was enough to easily start with Kirby. I like that it virtually has no requirements and runs on pretty much any webserver.

What other stuff do you use?
15” 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, Chrome, Sublime Text 3, iTerm2, Varying Vagrant Vagrants, Git, Mailbox, Dropscan, OutBank, Harvest, Codekit, Alfred, Dash, 1Password.
I wrote more about that last year on my Kirby-powered blog.

How many licenses have you bought?
1

[gillesvauvarin]

Hello, I’m new on this forum and in the Kirby community so this thread seems to be a good place to introduce myself

What are your skills?
I’m …
25% sys-admin (Linux, love Caddy Server > works well with Kirby, Ansible)
25% back-end dev (PHP, WordPress, Mysql/MariaDB) (Java, JEE, JSP, ASP long time ago …)
25% front-end dev, (Html, Css, JQuery)
25% designer (4 years as a freelance webdesigner and teacher)

What do you work with?
At the moment, I’m a sys-admin and WordPress dev for publics institution as a freelancer. I’m involved in Wordcamp organization and meetup in Geneva.
I teach WordPress in an univeristy and works on a side project call Confdays ( a Saas conference website builder build on WordPress).

What did you seek?
I used WordPress since 2008 for my own needs and for my customers project. WordPress is a great tool if you can control which plugin to work with and if you develop your own theme. It can be a nightmare (security, maintenance, update, backup, settings, performance …) if you let your customer activate dozen of plugins without verifications and let him choose a bad themeforest theme.
I like simplicity and for my personal blog, I was looking for another solution than WordPress. I have chosen Hugo, a flat file solution and I’m very happy. So I start thinking about a similar solution for my customers who want a simple website (corporate, landing page, blog, documentation > content website). Hugo hasn’t got any administrative area, you have to use command line. Then I have discovered Kirby, a very nice compromise between WordPress and Hugo.

Where did you find Kirby?
By Twitter and then I decided to read articles about Kirby.

What is so good about Kirby?

• No database > easy to deploy and backup
• Nice documentation
• The possibility to custom your own backend (This is where WordPress failed)
• Like the logic of Kirby
• Nice community with lot of interesting custom fields and plugins

What other stuff do you use?

• WordPress, Hugo
• Git with Gitkraken
• Brunch
• Hope to see Affinity available for Linux one day

How many licenses have you bought?
Any at the moment, still testing Kirby on my computer