[TYPO3-doc] Tutorials structure: diving into TYPO3 CMS

[François Suter]

Hi all,

With Tim reviewing several of our tutorials, I was led to think about 
our current structure and especially about the learning path that we are 
presenting to beginners. It doesn't look good at all.

We used to have a suggestion of manuals to read and in what order on 
http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/, but this is now gone. 
Also starting from the typo3.org home page, one just finds a link to the 
download page, which itself contains no hint about the documentation at all.

The first step would be to improve that situation. The second step is to 
make the tutorials better structured and clearly showing the recommended 
sequence of learning.

So here's how it would look to me:

1) Getting Started: first steps in into TYPO3 CMS, getting to know the 
main areas of the BE. This currently requires a local installation 
(references are pointing to the Installation Guide), but we could 
suggest that people use http://introduction.cms.demo.typo3.org/typo3/.

2) Editors Tutorial: everything relating to editing pages and content 
should be located in that tutorial. Getting Started should just skim 
over the principles and point to the Editors Tutorials for more details.

People who are going to interact with TYPO3 CMS as simple editors can 
stop here. For those who are going to create websites, we continue with:

3) TypoScript in 45 minutes: to learn the fundamentals about what is TS 
and how it is used to drive a TYPO3 CMS site.

4) Templating Tutorial: make your first serious template from A to Z, 
using the most basic technique possible, i.e. markers/subparts and TS.

Essentially we already have all this, but the aims of each tutorial are 
not always clear, some have redundant content and the path from one to 
the next is often not mentioned.

Going beyond that we would actually need more templating tutorials, 
showing additional techniques like using Fluid templates, backend 
layouts, etc.

What do you think?

Cheers

-- 

Francois Suter

Work: Cobweb Development Sarl - http://www.cobweb.ch

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