[TYPO3] Blogging and more

Wed Mar 1 21:58:06 CET 2006

Your comment 'all their websites' underscores exactly what I was talking
about.  I am going to guess that you maintain several websites.  I maintain
two, and one not very well.  I have a personal website that I put very
little time into and as a result it is very poor.  I also maintain my church
website.  I spend maybe 1-2 hours a week on that one.  This varies some
weeks I spend entire days on it, most weeks I spend no time on it.  Yes if I
where using typo3 continuously over a period of time I am sure I could learn
it and would find the effort well worth it.  I am in the position of working
with it from time to time.  I find I am just as likely to "break" something
as I am to improve it when I attempt to make changes to my sites.  As a
result I am not inclined to make changes.  I fix things that are broke
usually, but otherwise leave them alone.  The various ministry leaders at my
church are even more gun shy about typo3 than I am.  They are constantly
concerned that creating new content or changing existing content will break
something.  They are also frustrated by the various limitations that we have
encountered in the plug ins.
Again this is not intended to be a gripe session.  I am continually amazed
at what I can accomplish relatively easily with typo3.  Obviously many
people have put a great deal of work into creating the functionality of both
the core and the plug ins.  Still there seems to be a culture of "good
enough".  I find as I read this list that people are routinely told to
modify php files to accomplish this or that.  Setting in various files must
be coordinated and those files (i.e. the http.conf) may not be available to
some users.  All of these issues are resolvable with a little determination
and some technical savy.  Still, I find myself often thinking that I would
like to do X, Y or Z, but I don't have a free weekend coming up to spend on
figuring it out, so I just won't bother.
There is a fear of environments that do too much for you.  I am a programmer
by trade and the line people like to throw around is that in C++ easy things
are hard and hard things are hard, where as in Visual Basic easy things are
easy and hard things are impossible.  I don't think it has to be that kind
of trade off.  With some fore though I believe we can try for a system (CMS
in this case), in which easy things are easy and hard things are hard, but
easier than they would have been.  The fact that typo3 makes me think about
3 different sets of CSS entries, or that I have to build navigation by hand
by level, means that I need to think like a developer to get a simple site
up in Typo3.  This is OK for me as I happen to be a developer, but I know no
one else involved in my church leadership would have taken this on.  They
likely would have used Front Page or Publisher and that is too bad.
My question is does the typo3 community think this is OK.  It would not be a
bad thing to think this is OK.  To say that typo3 is a tool for web
developers is very reasonable, but that is not how typo3 was introduced to
me.  I guess what I see happening is that many people involved with typo3
are saying it is so easy to use that anyone can, or that usability is
important, but both the core and the plug ins are not getting easier to
use.  I don't believe that ease of use is something that can be bolted on
after the fact.  What I am trying to understand is does the community at
large think that typo3 is pretty usable as is and just needs some cleaning
up?

--
Tanks for your Support
Pat O'Hara
  _      _      _
/*\==  /*\==  /*\==
<ooo>  <ooo>  <ooo>

On 3/1/06, Allan Jacobsen <allan.jacobsen at tips.dk> wrote:
>
> Hi Patrick
>
> You have been answered on the blogging, so I will just address the
> usability.
> We (the mailinglist) get this  a couple of times a month, and yes TYPO3 is
> difficult to begin with, but the rewards a so big when you master it, that
> there are more and more people that use TYPO3 for all their websites because
> you can use TYPO3 for all your webpublishing needs.
> That being said, then if you look at the TYPO3 roadmap,
> http://typo3.org/development/roadmap/ usability is on the agenda for
> version 4.5, so things will improve if you are patient.
>
> Best regards/MVH
> Allan Jacobsen
> Infrastruktur, Dansk Tipstjeneste A/S
> Korsdalsvej 135, 2605 Brøndby
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: typo3-english-bounces at lists.netfielders.de [mailto:
> typo3-english-bounces at lists.netfielders.de] På vegne af Patrick O'Hara
> Sendt: 1. marts 2006 13:32
> Til: TYPO3 English
> Emne: [TYPO3] Blogging and more
>
> I have noticed that there is no direct support for blogging.  Is there
> anyone who is working on creating a blogging extension?  I am also
> wondering
> if there is an effort in place to create a more polished typo3
> package.  As
> a technology advocate I come into contact with many people who have used
> technology in a limited way.  The learning curve and work that needs to be
> accomplished to start using typo3 is daunting for someone with limited
> experience.  Is this intentional?
> I don't mean this as a slam.  It seems that much of the typo3 community is
> people creating sites professionally.  Obviously for this group typo3 is
> well suited and works fine.  Things that are a little unclear can be
> "figured out".  Minor limitations can be solved by modifying code.  It is
> a
> great platform if you happen to be a hacker.  It leaves a little to be
> desired in terms of polish however.  This brings me back to the question
> is
> this considered OK by the community?
>
> --
> Tanks for your Support
> Pat O'Hara
>   _      _      _
> /*\==  /*\==  /*\==
> <ooo>  <ooo>  <ooo>
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