Quote from: redtoad at Mar 05, 2011, 10:35 PM
I think what we have seen is that people with lower and average code skills (which hey, for us design types many times may be us) can use WP and don’t feel stupid when faced with a project, they can ask questions and aren’t alone in their ignorance. It’s hard to ask stupid questions in public. I know. At the same time, they might feel overwhelmed by MODx. I know when he asked me questions, he talked in terms of themes and plugins and when I answered in terms of divs and classes and scripts and then tried to show him how those were used in MODx in the templates and snippets and chunks, he got quiet. MODx is powerful, but the learning curve doesn’t come just from the fact that people have to learn the software, a lot of times, people also have to learn code.
As a designer, I have often thought people should have a license to own Photoshop. I think similar thoughts about WP.
Red,
Very interesting thoughts, thanks. I’m seeing a lot of the same phenomena. The designers I work with, while incredible at making nice designs, are completely at a loss, not only in PHP, but don’t even know CSS at all, which I find very surprising. [Of course, this keeps me employed.] Sure, this is a byproduct of nice WYSIWYG tools that generate all the code for you. But if I were a designer per se, I would at least want to know CSS in case there’s something that Dreamweaver generates that doesn’t work or looks bad. But I see forum posts where people who do write CSS don’t even want to calculate pixel widths, which is not exactly advanced math, so they’re not going to be signing up for anything that requires any PHP code, I’m pretty sure.
[That being said, obviously there are designers who are killer CSS writers, and even adept at PHP. But I don’t run into them in my work.]
This is why I’ve looked at Revo with a critical eye even though I like it - it’s moving more towards code, not away, IMO. While that’s certainly one valid approach, I’m sure that many designers will balk at it, and clients, too. I could be wrong, but I don’t think many designers are in on the building of Revo, mainly just programmers. That’s what it looks like to me.
I see posts here and on WP forums where designers keep asking why there isn’t something that will seamless connect [Insert WYSIWYG design tool here] to MODx or WP. The other day I saw a commercial programs that purported to do this for WP via Dreamweaver. But the basic reason why it isn’t done is: it’s difficult. And if you ask a PHP coder that question, he/she will say, because there’s no need for it.