Modx Venting Area

Quote from: bugsmi0 at May 18, 2006, 03:02 AM

>>>>sprays the room with fresh flower sense too much adv ego smell

Sprays the room with garlic to repulse the help vampire
LOL

I think advanced users are not the only one with the ego there
Also, that’s really something you’ll have trouble convincing people that we are, ego trip thirsty geeks !

And last but not least, listen to Jeff, words of wisdom

hmmm, difficult stuff here.

I can see how anybody coming to ModX from some other system beyond etomite and just stare at the screen with a headache.
Yes, modx is great, it’s good and it does have a slew of terminology which is documented in guru geek speak which just at times is hard to read.

Think about it from a fresh stand point. This is a pretty advanced system that is easy to use (sometimes too easy due to it’s flexibility with it’s 101 ways to do the same thing!)

Just last night I grew frustrated trying to play with the dropmenu snippet. Almost through my laptop out the window since I found at least 6 different ways to do what I want but none with samples or demos.

steps:
1.) search the forums
2.) read through a few threads (which one to choose )
3.) find a few links to sites that show what you basically want
4.) look at the kindly provided code
5.) try it out ... ugh ... that’s not right
6.) search the forums a bit more
7.) ahhh, that’s the ticket
8.) go make a TV to do it
9.) what the frig is a TV It’s sure not a SONY
10.) look up the documentation
11.) errr ... that’s how it is basically done
12.) ughhhh, no demo data to hack
13.) go back to hacking away using different posts
14.) looks like it works and have learned a few thigns along the way ...

Well, that is what I went through last night.

Now, it’s not like that I can’t program basic stuff, nor is there a problem with hacking things.

I’d definitely say that it does take a bit of time to learn the basics beyond the simple add a page in the admin menu.


Definitely, ModX is awesome !!!
Moreover, this awesomeness is going to cause stress and those that are trying to relearn/rethink old methods are going to need that added friendly touch.

Cheers!

nd the big thing I’m still having trouble grasping ... how those crazy @binding features should be used.

Don’t feel bad, I’m still struggling with that one. Every time I think I’ve got @INHERIT wrestled to the mat, it doesn’t work and it’s back to the documentation!

ughhhhhhh, you too ?

Ok, we are going to need some demo thingys

Demo thingies in a lot of areas would be a BIG help. Sometimes seeing those six ways to do one thing helps you put together the ONE way that’ll work for what you’re trying to do.

I’m one of the folks who’s been struggling here, though I’ve come a long way. Sometimes the forum search function is totally useless not because it doesn’t work but because I have NO CLUE how to phrase the search query to actually get the results I need-- in many cases I get NO returns and an instruction to get either more specific or less so! So in a couple instances after multiple fruitless searches I’ve asked the question-- and been told to use search to find the answer (though usually most times also a link to a helpful posting.) I think this might be even MORE frustrating to someone whose first language is not English. Remember that article by Jeffrey Veen about CMS problems? JARGON is the biggest issue in terms of the learning curve on all of them, especially since every system has its own special jargon. I’m to the point where I’m finally learning the ModX jargon. It took awhile, and I’m a fairly bright person. I can understand the frustration level here, but yes, I can also understand that those who answer the question over and over and over might be feeling some frustration too.

I’m in the peculiar position of seeing both sides of this issue.

One of the things that attracted me to this ap and this community was the incredibly helpful individuals who do offer their time to folks like me, in contrast to the offputting attitude I got at one certain forum whose CMS name begins with an E, another shopping cart ap whose name begins with a Z. I ask everyone who’s joined in this discussion to step back from it and try to understand how the other person feels so that we never ever ever see the disrespect that is always evident on those two forums. A few posts here on both sides of this issue have gotten dangerously close to that disrespectful attitude, and I’m surprised and dismayed to see that here.

I’m in the process of building out a couple sites and I’m documenting how I’m doing that, so maybe that documentation would be helpful to someone else. When I’ve got things further along I’ll post what I did in simple baby steps. Maybe it might help save the sanity of the devs while answering some of the questions of noobs who haven’t quite gotten to the point I’m at in this journey, give y’all something else to point at.

I might mention too that forum posts are all well and good but having to read ten multi-page posts to find ONE SENTENCE that tells you what you need to do can have major negative impact on the searcher’s attitude and frustration level.

I’m wondering if maybe this ap is to the point where to keep everyone in a positive attitude it’s time to start building up the documentation in a way that’s more helpful for noob users. I, for one, would be happy to help with that effort. I know it’s a balancing act trying to figure out where time is best spent, and I know that the major push is for the new release. Maybe as soon as it comes out we, as a community, need to look at revamping the documentation with a lot more demos so that the collective sanity of the community is preserved.

The developer have to stay focused on developing, and there is a lot of changes (very positive I might add) coming.

This gets back to what our target market is at this point. MODx, in it’s current form, is written by developers/techies/advanced users for developers/techies/advanced users.

Does that mean it’s going to frustrate the living daylights out of some folks? Absolutely. Does it mean we’ll likely alienate some people? Most likely.

But that’s a tradeoff we have to make at this juncture for the long term benefit of the project. In the short while it’s been around, it’s already wildly exceeded our expectations for awareness and "mindshare" and has given us a huge validation of our ideas.

This focus on advanced users honestly probably honestly won’t change after the next release either. We’re probably 6-12 months away from really being able to build solid docs and tutorials and demos for non-technical/noob users. Again, if it’s not putting food on the plates of the dev/core team who donate their time and frequently real dollars ...

This would be a GREAT opportunity for the community at large to step up and contribute though! Starbuck did a great job of such an initiative with his http://modxhost.com site for example... Thanks for that!

Okay, Ryan, I understand that emphasis. With that in mind I’m going to make a couple suggestions here, I hope other people make more suggestions, with the intent of implementing the best ones.

Y’all who are complaining about answering the same questions over and over and over-- isn’t that called FAQ? Maybe there needs to be a forum area OR documentation area that is called just that with the question followed by links to the various forum posts with the various how-to answers to that specific question (and with ModX I know that there always seems to be more than one way to do any single thing.) Maybe, if in the forum, as a subsection under "General" or maybe as its own toplevel, with a sticky in "General" telling people to look in FAQ first. To make it even more helpful there should be some sort of summary description as to what USES the question’s answer can be put to, since in my experience that’s where search fails me every time I experience frustration with it.

You’re right about modxhost.com being quite wonderful but it doesn’t go far enough by any means, and yes, I understand it’s a work in progress. I’d be happy to add what I’m accumulating to that effort, which is where it would make the most sense. Please let me know how I’d go about submitting an article to that effort, or to the general modx documentation.

I’ve almost completed one template to give back to the community, working on the installation instructions for it now. I intend to put in the post description how it is set up and what sort of problems it might solve for someone seeking to customize their own template, whether they re-use the whole thing, or simply look at how I did it so they can make their own custom template work. Some of the templates have this sort of description (Susan’s are the most helpful, IMHO) but many do not. This might go a long way toward helping Noobs figure out how to do whatever, since so much functionality is in the template. This should be kept in mind if we ever have a "formal" template repository too.

Also, the tips and tricks section of the forum is somewhat chaotic, to put it mildly. I suggest that some further breakdowns and categorization might be helpful there.

I know a lot of snippets and mods are "unofficial" but mention of them, as unofficial, with links in the repository might also save some questions, since that’s always the first place most of us go to look for specific functionality. After all, didn’t ModX start life that way?

The FAQ: http://modxcms.com/faq
The FAQ contains references already to the most frequently asked questions. Most people ignore it though.

Maintaining a FAQ isn’t exactly a trivial or non-time-consuming task, hence the catch-22. We’ve asked a couple of times for folks to take up the initiative of creating a FAQ (asked of the ones complaining about the lack of one), but so far no takers. It involves a lot of processing the forums and documentation.

Contributing by submitting articles
Just create one! Assuming it’s accurate, we’ll figure out a place for it.

re: Official vs. Unofficial
I don’t really make a distinction in my mind. Technically, anything that’s not distributed with the core is unofficial; if it gets distributed it’s official. However, unless there’s a hack involved to the core code, there’s no reason not to try and see if a snippet or any other thing works for your situation. There’s some REALLY fine code pieces that haven’t been distributed with the core, some of which will be in the future.

In that case stuff like this should be on the Snippet/chunk/module/etc. Repository--

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,3031.0.html

As far as the FAQ goes, I’d be happy to volunteer BUT I’m not the one who knows what questions get asked over and over and over again, so I’d need help with that from those who do know which questions are frequently asked. It will probably take some time to develop, but I’d certainly be willing to put a couple few hours a week into it, providing those who are tired of these questions can email me and tell me what should be included.

It’s all very well encouraging the community to write stuff themselves, but this just spreads the information about all over the place. It does not really look good for a content management system if the documentation content is not managed well!

Although the original poster seems to be constantly vilified for sucking help-blood, he has a point. There are times when MODx seems like the solution to every problem, and there are also times when counter-intuitive labels and operations drive one mad with rage - largely at the amount of time wasted assuming something sensible, and the lack of clear information in some areas.

Further, it would also be helpful if the forums were moderated more - I don’t mean editing posts, but moving threads that are in the wrong place, unstickying outdated information, and retitling threads where appropriate. Just moving out of Tips & Tricks the requests for tips would be useful. And deciding whether snippets go in "Downloads" or "Modules, Plugins & Snippets" would be helpful.

As for the FAQ, it is under About rather than Documentation, and it is mostly aimed at people deciding whether to give MODx a whirl. (It also suggests that MODx people spend a lot of time answering newbie questions on the forums. If that’s not something MODx wants to perpetuate, it is probably worth removing that reference, even if it was meant as a joke.)

I would suggest that we need separate Developers’ FAQ and a Designers’ FAQ pages, even if these just point people in the direction of the answer on this forum, or to part of the existing documentation. In compiling these, it would be helpful to know what pages are most looked at, or what is most searched for.

Also, there is the recent thread which solicited newbie Qs:
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,4642.0.html

rthrash - you make a big big leap. You say that MODx will alienate and frustate people, and then you say that MODx is aimed at advanced users. You seem to infer that the advanced users won’t be alienated or frustrated. I really do think that advanced users are MORE likely to be frustrated, because they will have experience in other better-documented frameworks and environments and are less likely to blame their own inadequacies.

FWIW, I think that the documentation would benefit from a different template, and also that pages would benefit from a clear separation of benefits and usage. As an example, look at http://modxcms.com/adding-snippets.html - half this page is taken up with promoting how useful snippets are, in that they let you create an automatic menu system. The page is a fine article, but poor documentation.

Incidentally, I am putting my time where my mouth is and I will be focusing efforts on a "now do this" checklist article for new installers, bringing to their attention the many little changes that need to be made such as updating the "official" snippets. My aim with that will be to stop the initial stages being quite so infuriating.

@Kickass - you didn’t really get an answer to your question of "where do I submit documentation?". I’m going to post my article on this forum in Tips & Tricks (as it is the primary place we can contribute stuff) and if people want to repeat it elsewhere then they will be free to. I suggest that’s your best course of action too.

EDIT: Oh, and as for "The developer have to stay focused on developing" - there seem to be users on here with a "Documentation Team" badge. Surely they should be focused on documentation?