[TYPO3-UG US] Education of Users

[Michelle Heizer]

Hi Chris,

We really appreciate your thoughts as a new user. I know it sounds like
we are more focused on the solutions and marketing portion of the
website right now, but we do understand the need for better
documentation and support and that is certainly a major goal of the
website. 

We do plan on having a support section for content editors and
developers. We have also planned a "Learning TYPO3" section with a
website built from the ground up in TYPO3. It will be a combination of
Flash and written tutorials.

My main concern with the TYPO3 documentation has always been that it is
built on basic examples, but doesn't discuss the core concepts. So when
developers dive into more complicated templates, they find themselves
lost. In other words, the documentation doesn't have enough "why you
need to be doing this or that." If developers learn the concepts of
TYPO3 instead, I think we could actually cut down on the TYPO3
documentation quite a bit. As it stands now, people seem to be relying
on just finding an example that will work in their template. We also
need to focus on "best practices" in TYPO3, even simple things like
storing all of your templates in one folder could save someone weeks of
work.

We do have a documentation group started, and it looks like they may be
helping the main TYPO3 documentation group as well. Hopefully, they will
be able to fix some of these problems. I still feel we need to have
documentation written from the ground up instead of rewriting current
documentation that is already outdated. As you mention, there are holes
and the only way to find them is to start from the beginning. We need to
make the documentation more modular so that we can update a small
portion when an upgrade happens, instead of rewriting the whole doc from
the beginning.

Also, I am very pleased to announce that Chris Paige is working on a
knowledgebase for our developer's section. He's organizing, categorizing
and rewriting some of the FAQs and HOWTOs from TYPO3.org and adding to
them as well. He's spent several hours on it the past few days and I
think this will be a useful resource in the future. A big thanks to
Chris!!

Regards,

Michelle

On Tue, 2005-11-08 at 15:34 -0500, Equivity wrote: 
> 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>