[TYPO3-doc] Re: [TYPO3-dev] Announcing TYPO3 4.0.1

[Matthew Manderson]

Peter

All good ideas.

My view is this. 

TYPO3 is ridiculously easy to use to get a basic site up and running in
minutes. I am talking the sort of basic site we see made by first time
TYPO3 users. A menu and pages.

Newbies to TYPO3 nearly all come from a similar background, HTML and CSS and
they can get that easy no problem.

What they can't get is the TYPO3 way. This really takes time.

So looking back at the older documents you mentioned, and they are the ones
I learnt with, they still confused the heck out of me because they didn't
actually teach what I wanted to learn. Which was, just give me the raw
simple nuts and bolts of a basic website using terminology like HTML and
CSS I already know rather than needing to learn the new methods on day one.

When I found the golive(2002) doc that helped a lot but I had already read
3-4 major documents and still things had not fallen into place enough to be
able to efficiently create a simple website as fast as I know today how to.

Most newbies complain it takes them upwards of a week to get their first
TYPO3 website up and running. This is just crazy in my view. It must
distract so many from adopting TYPO3.

Michael has already confirmed he does not plan to add even a hello world
template to TYPO3 downloads. How many people still get stuck at that stage!

I understand unspoken or not that a part of the TYPO3 community has become a
little tired of helping newbies, The same old questions, The same old
request for more freebie help and documents. Isn't there enough
documentation already! In my view these are fair views and I empathise, but
it shows that existing documentation or access to existing documentation
still has weaknesses adding barriers to newbies.

TYPO3 will continue to move towards the mainstream and has the potential to
be 'the' software of choice for most website management rather like Apache.
Everyone in TYPO3 started as a newbie and more should be encouraged.

So my idea for this document is a very short accurate and up to date get
your feet wet and walk away with a working website in just 5 minutes kind
of document which really does not exist yet. Getting Started(2004) comes
close and so does MTB1(2003) but still too cumbersome and out of date.

Your offer of helping to source the existing documents is appreciated thank
you. I had in mind to discuss the overview of this document first to see if
others also recognise the importance of it, then to draft it and then you
amongst others would be able to contribute suitable links to other
resources that would add more depth on the specific topics.

4 peoples views is still not enough!

Matthew