Ecosystem Changes

We are speaking to many disparate audiences with one site at concrete5.org. Adding the enterprise.concrete5.com site has been very helpful, and was a no brainer we should have done a long time ago. Enterprise CMS solutions are licensed in the low-mid 6 figure range, so it just doesnt make sense to put any of the tools were working on for large clients into our marketplace at concrete5.org. Same goes with the support SLAs that are important.

A similar problem exists for consumers vs designers & developers at concrete5.org. If Im a small business comparing concrete5 to the DIY web builder market it just doesnt make as much sense at concrete5.org as it could. Sure theres an instant setup link buried at the top of the page, but that is just a demo that we cant easily upsell into a hosting account.

To clear it all up:

1. Redesign concrete5.org to feel more like a developer/designer community (bit cleaner design with a tad less whimsy). Improve the features around finding a community member and posting a job, but keep all that free. Focus more on documentation, including general cleanup and improved API documentation.
   
2. Launch concrete5.com to be one click install of concrete5 for free at Yoursite.concrete5.com. Much like wordpress, offer free hosting on a cloud server with ads for ever. Want to lose the ads? Click a built in promo to one of our hosting customers and have your site packed up and moved automatically (see business changes).
   
3. Make concrete5.org, .com, and the app itself work with Facebook and Twitter authentication. Also make 1-click installs at concrete5.com automatically connected to concrete5.org project pages without you having to do anything. Getting a site on concrete5.com would automatically make or use a user account on concrete5.org. Theres just far too many logins required for people to understand today. Under the hood we kind of need it to work that way, but theres no reason we cant take some of the pain out of setting things up for the majority of new folks.
   
4. Were debating just making concrete5.org a new site. With the new Conversations model weve got some real issues with our forums here (which are a one off). Were also starting to think that some of the legacy content in this site is going to be irrelevant with 5.7. Cleaning house is always appealing, and building a new site we can test in a sane way sounds nice too. Theres certainly no perfect answer here, but were entertaining any option at this point.