eZ Publish gurus in California?

Saturday 10 January 2004 11:28:41 am

THE PROBLEM:

As a newbie who just managed to install eZP3.3 and start modifying things with great care, starting from a corporate sample site, I must confess that I feel trapped by the traditional "Bite and Switch Private Open Source Trap" :)

In other words, I understand that the system for "free" is great, but paying $129/hour for support is a rip-off, ***even in Kalifornia***

I understand that the developers have no motivation to improve self-supportability (i.e., manuals, how-to tutorials, participation in the forums) because it goes against their own "job security". Unfortunately, that understanding also makes me believe that this problem will tend to get worse, as opposed to better.

SEARCHING FOR A SOLUTION:

Trying to avoid the trivial solution (drop eZP), I am looking for an eZ Publish guru in California (So.Cal would be better, LA area would be FANTASTIC) who could:
* Train on eZP 3.3
* Provide simple first line support
* Collaborate in site changes and development of new ones
* Collaborate in the creation and publishing of a knowledge base on eZp that is USEABLE by the "typical newbie on eZP", not a source fo continuous frustration
* Do all of the above at reasonable prices (I do not know any support specialists who make $1,000/day)

EVENTUALLY...
...I would like to consider creating a small group devoted to creating alternatives for eZp users, where eZp users can call in, get support and collaborate ***for a reasonable fee***

If you are interested, please contact me at [email protected]

Cheers
ck

Monday 12 January 2004 7:35:50 am

James, thanks for the message!

I did run the tutorial, but still there remain tons of misterious behaviors to be explained, such as "the cache that refuses to die". Some of those behaviors are finally understood by trial and error, but the learning curve becomes unnecessarily steep.

>p.s. if you pay for me to relocate to sunny California
> from cold, cloudy England I'll happily help you with
> EzPublish

:) If I had money to do that, I am sure I wouldn't be worrying about these matters, but I'll keep it in mind

Tuesday 13 January 2004 9:18:43 am

Balazs, thanks for your response. You say:

> It's not about job security, it's about time. It takes a
> lot of time to develop a product like eZ publish and it
> takes time to document it. However, we're getting
> there...

Regardless of the reason, documentation for a system such as eZp 3.3 is (IMHO) as important as the code itself. In twenty years managing software products, I have seen more products fail because of poor supporting infrastructure than inferior quality of code.

I believe the challenge is not necessarily for eZ Systems: you guys have a company to run, and it's based on selling your services. It should be the users themselves who conduct a project like this. That's precisely why I was looking for a seed group of people to start working on it.

Where eZ systems could help drastically would be in providing the ontology for the manuals (hey, since I am asking I would love to see it surfaced as topic maps). Once the ontology is defined, the outline for the manual is almost automatic. And from there on it's a matter of a small group of people, who HAS ACCESS to those that REALLY know about the code.

It was my intent to start "feeling in the dark" to see if such a group could coalesce. I am a newbie in eZp, but that won't be for long :) Just a handful of gurus and we are in the race...

I agree with you that we are not too far. I took the liberty of collecting all your documents, putting them in a couple of files, creating a table of contents and index, and feeding it to a desktop knowledge base, and found that if anything, some times there is TOO MUCH information about a given issue, often contradictory. But the resulting document lacks organization, and thus the user suffers by having to access it just by searching (just like your site). It's impossible to sit down by the fire, coffee/whatever in hand, and LEARN about a given subject.

My invitation to you is to kick off the project. From the warm and supportive answers I have found in the community (even to my very stupid questions), I am sure there will emerge a core group of dedicated and knowledgeable people to fill in the skeleton.

Cheers
ck