P'unk Avenue Window

The Apostrophe Google Group has become pretty active lately. It has been so great to connect up with people around the world that are using Apostrophe to make sites for themselves or their clients. It feels great to be able to share something that we have labored long and hard on. It is especially exciting to know that we scratched our own itch and made something that works well for us and for our clients. It’s also exciting to see it helping with other peoples’ itches.

We love the passion that people have about Apostrophe. We have seen that in many forms including the suggestion of new features. What I want to make clear, though, is that Apostrophe does have a point of view embedded in all of the decisions that we make as we design and build it. If someone asks for a new feature, I always ask, “What problem are you trying to solve?” or “Can you describe a situation where the need for this feature came up?”

I think that surprises some people. They assume that our goal is to have the longest list of features of any web content management tool. In fact, that is not our goal. Our goal is to create a tool that is joyful to use while still being powerful.

The reason people fall in love with Apostrophe is because we have worked very hard to keep it simple and elegant. We are always going to ask the tough question of what problem does this solve. (Can it be solved with what is already built?)

We will never build a feature just because we wonder if it can be done. We are not in a feature race with anyone. We have found that sometimes people pick something based on a list of features, but our clients and users pick Apostrophe based on how they feel when they use it (think Tiffany’s, not Walmart). They feel empowered and excited. They have often mentioned the joyfulness of using Apostrophe. We have even heard people gasp and giggle when editing content for the first time.

All that said, we don’t want to be the solution for everyone, but we hope you enjoy using Apostrophe if it works for you.

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Note: I just finished reading Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 Signals, and it reminded me that I should be putting down more of our thoughts on Apostrophe. These decisions have been embedded in Apostrophe from the beginning, but we have not always been good about communicating them.

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