Great Product But not User Friendly

Monday 01 June 2009 3:10:17 pm

I've been tootling around these forums for months now and have asked for help on various topics and I either get no response or a super technical response which exceeds my knowledge.

I was just reading instructions on how to upgrade your EZ publish to the next version and I love how it says 'simply execute this command in your root folder'. Now if I was a novice user (and I am in a lot of ways) and came across this, I'd be asking the same thing I'm asking now. How do I execute this and what's a root folder?

I think the reason Ez Publish is not used more by the community at large is because a lot of the same mistakes are being made here as there are with many other open source projects and that's treating novice users like they should know exactly what you're talking about. Most people that come here are not familiar with root folder or executing commands or shell access so the technical documentation needs to be simplified to the smallest degree. The only reason I understand SOME of this is several years of dealing with an inferior CMS that's not half as powerful as EZ Publish so I had to pick up a few tricks. But I'm by no means an experienced developer and hate that some developers don't get this little fact.

Yes we get that you are all brilliant, and you ARE but we who are of lesser brilliance require some simplified, 1-2-3 instructions, like we're 5 year olds. EZ Publish is hands down THE best open source CMS I've ever seen, but the fact that we (us just starting out types) have so many issues with EZpublish and no where to really find answers most of the time, really hampers the growth of the EZ community. The reason why so many small little sites pop up using Joomla (and Joomla doesn't hold a candle to EZ as far as I'm concerned) is because they keep it simplified. The answers we do find are sometimes so complicated in desciption you're not sure what you should be doing. This irritates me to no end because I love EZ pubs power, but some of you Devs out there are going to have simply this a little more so that we all can get a grasp of some of these things and how they really work. We all do have the luxary of a dev team or even a good solid PhP dev friend to ask for help nor can we afford to pay for support.

Sorry just had to add my two cents on the matter, because it's frustrating to have something so powerful and have no way to figure out how to use it and no one helping you either.

C

Tuesday 02 June 2009 2:19:54 am

eZ Publish learning curve is high at the beginning (and really you never stop learning new things) and the eZ way of doing things isn't really the "easy" way...

It's true that joomla and similar ones are really easy to install, update, etc but they also make it so easy that you never learn new things (and of course not so flexible than ez publish).

For learning eZ Publish follow Kracker recommendations and like other opensource products the community forum is a good way to get the questions answered.

<i>"...it's frustrating to have something so powerful and have no way to figure out how to use it and no one helping you either."</i>

I can say you that in all these years using eZ Publish I've been frustrating a lot of times, but when I solve it my own or with help from ez community I'm the happiest man in the world :) and all my frustrating issues have been solved in all these years...

If you posted your questions in the forum and nobody answered I'm really sorry, because this isn't usual but happens ;)

Next time if you have any questions, check forum, check ezpedia, etc and if you don't find an answer post it in the forum, and if it's not answered you can even PM me and I will try to help you ;)

eZ Partner in Madrid (Spain)
Web: http://www.atela.net/