Forums / Setup & design / Building a first site: the missing links

Building a first site: the missing links

Next topic

Author	Message
Jozef Baum	Monday 20 July 2009 3:57:03 pm What I have done until now: - studied the technical manual - installation, and installed eZ Publish. - studied the technical manual - concepts and basics, templates. I have copied each page to a private site, translated the Norwegian English into British English, and restructured the text in order to make them more understandable (moreover, who is that guy of eZ Systems who wrote the chapters refering to "eZ publish" instead of to "eZ Publish"? Certainly someone who didn't attend the marketing course during his education.) On some places, I have changed the text, as I found out it was definitely inacurate. Now I tried to setup a first website. The A4 PDF version of the technical manual comprises 1880 pages, and it would even be more if the reference was completed. But not one page about how to implement all that information to setup a website with eZ Publish. When something exists on the web, than Google knows about it. Unfortunately, the only place where I could find some information about setting up a site with eZ Publish seems to be the article at http://ez.no/ezpublish/documentation/building_an_ez_publish_site/. So I tried to implement it. Some images, like the background image, are no longer available. Why were they discarded, as the article is still valuable? Delete the entire article, or leave it, but why just delete some files that are required by the article? Implementing the article, I got a front end where the user has to login. Fortunately, I knew the solution to this problem: edit the anonymous user, and grant the user module limited access to the login, setting it to "any". But now, I am struck. on this page: http://ez.no/ezpublish/documentation/building_an_ez_publish_site/the_welcome_page/creating_and_using_a_custom_template I can't perform this step, because the system still seems to know only 2 site accesses: plain_site and plain_site_admin, but not tscm and tscm_admin. So I cannot create an override template for /node/view/full for tscm. Perhaps someone can help me here. But more important: please, people of the eZ Publish crew, why do you leave newcomers to eZ Publish with such an important missing link to setup a website with eZ Publish? It wouldn't take you much time to publish an example about setting up a website with eZ Publish, provided the guy who wants to do it has taken the pain to study the concepts and basics and the templates in the technical manual. In the current situation, I feel eZ Systems is not honnest with eZ Publish. Besides very expensive commercial contracts, eZ Systems claims eZ Publish to be an open source software. But in reality, what eZ Systems is doing, is gving away eZ Publish for free, while making it impossible to use the system without an expensive training, or at least without acquiring some expensive books, which, if not yet, will be outdated soon. This is definitely not the spirit of open source software. Open source software should be documented in a way that everyone can learn and use it without the need of paid resources. So I am awaiting the response of eZ Systems. If I would have to buy books about eZ Publish in order to learn it, I will abandon eZ Publish, not because of the money involved, but because this is definitely not the spirit of free software,
Dave Smith	Tuesday 21 July 2009 5:05:47 am I'm no expert. There, that's out of the way. When you installed eZ you called your siteaccesses plain_site and plain_site_admin, but the document you are following called them tscm and tscm_admin. Simply substitute plain_site for tscm and plain_site_admin for tscm_admin. I agree that the docs are a bit rough, and the document you are following is quite dated, but stick with it. The software is powerful and flexible. If you think this is tough, try picking up TYPO3 from the docs on their web site......
Gaetano Giunta	Tuesday 21 July 2009 5:40:12 am "If I would have to buy books about eZ Publish in order to learn it, I will abandon eZ Publish, not because of the money involved, but because this is definitely not the spirit of free software," In my own personal opinion, regardless of what the 'spirit' of free software might be, the reality is: quality of documentation varies. And I've never read anywhere that buyn/reading books is outside the scope of free software, anyway. I have come across projects that have excellent documentation, and projects that have none, or, even worse, only outdated and wrong information. As you have found out by yourself, eZ Publish has quite a lot of documentation already. Surely not the best, most accurate or more complete, but we are trying to improve it. Producing high quality documentation is a full time job, and as such is costly. In the real true spirit of open source you are welcome to contribute back your improvements! Principal Consultant International Business Member of the Community Project Board
Jozef Baum	Tuesday 21 July 2009 7:26:25 am @ Dave Smith: Thank you for your posting. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve my problem. Following the article, I have already renamed plain_site to tscm and plain_site_admin to tscm_admin at the beginning. I have fully adapted the site.ini.append.php files in the siteaccesses and in the site override. The design directory also has been renamed from plain_site to tscm, and the VarDir = var/tcsm (to make sure, I deleted var/plain_site, so the system has created var/tscm). The problem is that the system somewhere doesn't seem to be aware that plain_site has become tscm and plain_site_admin has become tscm_admin. In the article, there is a part "Creating the welcome page". The last point, "Creating and using a custom template", doesn't work. I follow all the points mentioned there, but the override gets simply not created. This is because in the New override dialog, I can only choose between plain_site and plain_site_admin, which no longer exist. So perhaps I would better start with creating the siteaccesses tscm and tscm_admin from scratch, instead of renaming plain_site and plain_site_admin? @ Gaetano: "Producing high quality documentation is a full time job, and as such is costly." How strange that other huge open source projects, who have no income from basic, silver, gold, and even platinium very expensive commercial licences, manage to write excellent documentation. Their managers, especially their marketeers, must come from another business school than those of eZ Systems. I was able to use such systems to their full extent without ever have had to ask one question in their communities, only with the documentation. So I must not be that stupid. After all what I have already done and mentioned in my previous posting, I don't think one can state that I am too lazy to try to find out by myself. I am now just missing some piece of the giant puzzle that eZ Publish is. I want to setup a new site. The siteaccesses and the site override are OK, and so is the design. My only question is: how do I go on now to create my first web page? It may be something very simple that I am just overlooking; can somebody please give me a hint into the right direction? Besides: why not just modify somewhat the article in the old documentation, which was about eZ Publish 3.5, so that it works for the current stable version (and at the same time, put the missing pictures again online)? "but we are trying to improve it." Trying doesn't help, please just do it. And I'm afraid that, now that I don't know how to go on with eZ Publish, if I have to wait until there is better documentation online, I will already have a long beard. "In the real true spirit of open source you are welcome to contribute back your improvements!" The chicken and egg problem. I am rewriting parts of the documentation, so I can better understand them. Rewriting them so they offer a better usability for everyone would take much more time. Yet, once I will have to spend less time in order to find out how eZ Publish works, if there is still no good documentation on this site, I will do so, as I don't want so many other people to have to spend so much time on learning eZ Publish. Isn't it sad that so many people start with eZ Publish, then abandon it, just because there is no one useable tutorial about getting started with it?
Jozef Baum	Tuesday 21 July 2009 7:57:51 am By the way: this is what I found in an article of October 4th <b>2004</b> at http://www.sitepoint.com/article/review-learning-ez-publish-3/ QUOTE Historically, documentation has <b>always</b> been eZ publish's weakest link, for the same reasons any software project team would cite. The consequence is that those fluent in PHP, with time to spare, must trawl the source code. For the rest, it means head scratching and hoping the community can lend a hand. Although eZ Publish's online documentation has improved dramatically since version 2.x, <b>thanks largely to community effort and contributions</b>, there are still gaps -- the material provided is somewhere between a FAQ and a reference manual; <b>the "big picture" is missing</b>. UNQUOTE
Andreas Kaiser	Tuesday 21 July 2009 9:01:38 am eZ Publish documentation was a pain, but it is getting better every day. I remember that http://ez.no/ezpublish/documentation/building_an_ez_publish_site/ tutorial, it has help a lot of developers in the community to get into eZ Publish... and even if that tutorial is a very old one... If you can wait there will be a new, not so expensive book, for getting into eZ Publih website creation written by a Partner: http://www.packtpub.com/ez-publish-4-enterprise-web-sites-step-by-step/book Of course all the books get outdated, but it's also true when you learn the basics since version 3.x the basics hasn't changed much... the best example is that that old tutorial is a good starting point for eZ Publish... If I can help in anything just ask... eZ Partner in Madrid (Spain) Web: http://www.atela.net/