Idea Title
Extbase Documentation Overhaul: Modern Best Practices for TYPO3 v14
What is my idea about?
What is the problem you are solving?
Extbase is the core framework for building custom TYPO3 extensions, but its official documentation is outdated, inconsistent, and not aligned with the modernization efforts introduced in TYPO3 v14. This creates a high entry barrier for new developers, leads to confusion due to contradictory examples, and increases onboarding time and development complexity for agencies.
The lack of clear, modern best practices results in fragmented extension quality, repeated mistakes, and an unnecessary support burden across the community. By overhauling the Extbase documentation, we solve these issues and provide a reliable, up-to-date foundation for extension development in TYPO3 v14.
What must be achieve by 30th of April 2026?
By 30 April 2026, the following goals should be achieved:
A fully updated and restructured Extbase documentation section on docs.typo3.org, aligned with TYPO3 v14 concepts, APIs, and best practices.
Clear and opinionated best-practice recommendations for designing and developing Extbase-based extensions, reducing ambiguity and outdated patterns.
A modernized tutorial and example extension demonstrating recommended v14 development workflows (repositories, TCA, dependency injection, routing, persistence).
Improved conceptual explanations (MVC, Domain Model, DDD in TYPO3, configuration layers) with diagrams and consistent terminology.
Migration guidance for upgrading Extbase extensions to v14, including deprecated features and recommended replacements.
A simplified developer onboarding path for extension development, with improved structure, navigation, and internal linking.
Quality-reviewed documentation (technical review + editorial review) ready for long-term use in training, certification, and agency onboarding.
These goals ensure a meaningful, high-impact improvement of the Extbase developer experience within the 2026 timeframe.
What is the potential impact of your idea for the overall goal?
Updating the Extbase documentation has a broad and long-lasting impact on TYPO3’s developer ecosystem. Clear, modern, and consistent documentation lowers the entry barrier for new contributors, improves onboarding speed for agencies, and reduces the complexity of building and maintaining custom extensions. This directly supports TYPO3’s strategic goals of standardization, simplification, and improved developer experience.
For the community, the benefits are significant:
Higher-quality extensions built on unified, modern best practices
Reduced support load in Slack, Stack Overflow, and GitHub
Faster onboarding of developers, especially in agencies and public-sector teams
More consistent training, certification, and teaching materials
Better long-term maintainability of TYPO3 projects through clearer patterns and migration guidance
Increased satisfaction and confidence among developers using TYPO3 for the first time
Overall, this initiative strengthens TYPO3’s competitiveness and sustainability by making the platform easier to learn, easier to adopt, and easier to build upon.
What skills are needed to work on the idea?
Strong TYPO3 Extbase expertise (Domain Models, Repositories, Persistence, MVC, TCA, Routing, DI)
Hands-on experience developing TYPO3 extensions (v12–v14), ideally using modern patterns
Ability to write clear and accurate technical documentation in reStructuredText (reST)
Familiarity with TYPO3’s documentation workflow, including phpDocumentor/Guides as the rendering toolchain
Editorial and information-architecture skills (structuring chapters, defining learning paths, simplifying explanations)
Ability to create and maintain example code that follows TYPO3 v14 best practices
Collaboration and review skills, working closely with the Documentation Team and subject-matter experts
Optional: experience creating diagrams and conceptual illustrations
Your Mentor from the team would be
@linawolf
How does your Idea align with the strategic goals for TYPO3 v14.
-
Lowering the Entry Barrier
A modern, clear Extbase documentation set makes it significantly easier for new developers to learn TYPO3, reducing frustration and accelerating their onboarding. This is explicitly mentioned as a key objective for TYPO3 v14. -
Reducing Complexity Through Standardization
Modernizing the Extbase documentation allows TYPO3 to promote one consistent, recommended way to build extensions. This directly contributes to TYPO3’s goal of simplifying development workflows and reducing ambiguity. -
Improving Developer Experience
Up-to-date examples, clarified concepts, and opinionated best practices create a smoother and more predictable development experience. This also reduces the long-term support burden across community channels. -
Supporting Agency and Customer Success
Agencies benefit from faster training of new developers and fewer extension-related issues. Clear guidance leads to better extension quality, increased maintainability, and more successful TYPO3 projects overall. -
Strengthening TYPO3’s Position in the Market
Clear, modern developer documentation improves TYPO3’s attractiveness to new adopters, especially in the public sector and SME environments where onboarding efficiency and long-term maintainability are key priorities.
Overall, this initiative delivers a core requirement of the TYPO3 v14 roadmap:
modern, opinionated, high-quality documentation that empowers developers and reduces complexity across the entire ecosystem.
Budget for this idea?
10000 Euro
My Name
Lina Wolf
Notice:
If you are already planning to implement this idea, feel free to reply in the thread or send an email to bcc@typo3.org.
If this idea is selected by the members of the TYPO3 Association, you will receive the mentioned budget after successful implementation.