[TYPO3-UG US] Education of Users

[Equivity]

Over the last year of so I have been continually looking for a CMS that will allow for easy administration, simple template design
flexibility, and offer such add on's as shopping carts/ecommerce. This has lead me to research mambo/joomla, ez publish, sundreamer
and drupal just to name a few. My business is webdesign for the < $2,000 so I wanted to find a system which will allow minimal
software investment, and the best flexibility.
 
I continually have kept coming back to typo, and since it was added into fantastico for auto-installation I felt it was time to
really try to commit to using it. After the installation, I tried to work through the GoLive Template that Dimitri pointed out to
me, but could not get that installed to where the template showed up. I them was directed to the Modern Template tutorials, and I
worked on that, difficult as it was since the online documentation seemed to leave some necessary steps out. In any event I managed
to get 3/4 of the way through that. And then someone on the forums mentioned the video library (which I did not know about) and so I
downloaded all those, and the videos under getting started really helped me to wrap my brain around how typo works. Congrats on
that!
 
But towards the end it seemed to jump ahead and leave out information, that would be vital to fully understanding things -
especially when it comes to design, and template work. Which is really what I needed. So I spent time going through the Modern
Template videos, and again, I can into the same thing. 
 
I also remembered briefly reviewing the MediaTech's flash tutorial on creating a template with fireworks - BRAVO! Finally a tutorial
I really could relate to, since I do all my designing in photoshop I could easily understand the slices, etc.. I then went on to
reviewing their tutorial on Menus/CSS and finally the installation of the template. And for someone familiar with typo3 templates it
would seem to be an easy thing. However, the flash is to quick, there is no explanation of why and how these things are done. The
part with the setup.txt entry is where it was all downhill from there. So again I was left wanting... Wanting more details,
simplified, step-by-step instructions and yet it was not there.
 
Of all the reviews and people I have read and spoken to about typo they all say the same thing - great product - huge/long learning
curve. And those are people that are much more knowledgeable on programming then me. 
 
There seems to be a huge user community. There are extensions that can do damn near anything. Yet for the newbie to try and get
active and up to speed with the product it is a long tedious process. One that most would abandon and move to something else like
mambo or drupal. But yet I still think that Typo is the right solution for me and my design company to use and offer to clients.
 
I apologize for the long post I just wanted to express from a newbie's point of view the things I was struggling with. Many times
those that have been with something for a while forget what it was like in the beginning. I see discussion on vertical markets, and
case studies. Yet what is the typo3.us planning for educating the everyday user on how to manage, and use typo? Since it is auto
installed using things like Fantastico the number of users could increase greatly and introduce typo to a world of users that it
might not have been able to reached before. A world that is far less knowledgeable than me. 
 
I understand that most on this list have consulting services for the 5-10-20-30k+ markets, and that is great! I still feel that
education and training of typo is the most critical. Otherwise you are just designing a site to sell and promote all the consulting
services - which is nothing wrong if that is what you want to do. But I hope that the first order of business would be to educate
the everyday users on how to install/setup and start using typo. How to integrate typo into your existing site, or replace your site
using typo. How to integrate your design into typo, how to customize the look of typo, etc, etc....
 
These are just the random thoughts and rambling I have had over the last couple of weeks when trying to work on typo. Thanks for you
time and patience as you read through this.
 
 
 
Sincerely,
Chris
 <mailto:sales at equivity.com>