Learning curve

Saturday 28 May 2011 4:10:42 pm

It is frustrating to see how slow is the learning curve of eZ Publish. I am trying in my free time to build a website for the last 6 months now and still no success. In pure PHP I have built it in 3 months (I am just trying to achieve the same results with eZ).

The funny thing is that I learned most of the CMS systems out there on the fly so far, with this big exception. And yes, I've read the documentation. If the name is speaking about the complexity of this CMS, maybe it should have been Zeta, in honor of the Riemann Zeta function. It can converge eventually, but only for some.

If the documentation would have been friendlier with developers, I bet that a lot of them would have recommended eZ Publish. And yes, I have several reasons for learning this CMS:

• it has an impressive portfolio
• it is so hard to learn that the clients will be forced to call me for any customization as it will will be hard to find someone else
• it really seems to be robust and very friendly to publishers

But still, this is getting ridiculous for me. An active community will never be formed by professionals because after 8 hours of work a day at the computer you can't possibly expect them to stay in front of the monitor anymore. But enthusiastic developers that will help the community grow have to face this lack of documentation.

Tomorrow I will have to go in the code to understand how to develop complex datatypes... That if I ever want to finish this project. But it is getting really frustrating...

Sunday 29 May 2011 7:16:11 am

Thank you for your answer.

Yes, I should probably get online on IRC and ask there my questions. That will get me going, the only problem is that others with the same questions just like mine won't have access to the answers like they would if I ask on the forums.

Thank you for the link, I already read it and tried to follow it. It gives an intro to datatypes, explains some concepts and basics. But if he only would have created a really small datatype (some hello world in datatype realm), given the source codes, it would have been a lot better. Of course, the information as it is is very good, but incomplete. It would help someone understand the complexity of datatypes, shows some directions for what to do next, but that is it.

What I like in a tutorial is to read, copy/paste and check the results. Then make my modifications, read again to understand where I am doing wrong and recheck the results. And so on until I finally build a code that suits my needs. But I do need a place to start and, to be honest, I had no idea even where the built in modules/datatypes were located (that until learning the Coding standards). Maybe a tutorial like file structure in eZ Publish would be nice, as there are a lot to learn.

Monday 20 June 2011 3:54:49 am

Hello Sao!

Well, the learning curve is tough when you work alone, but I have devised a beginner's guide just to get you started. Feel free to check it out at escapestudio.net. You have a bunch of examples there and you can build small websites from scratch using it. I didn't come to the more advanced parts yet, but it's worth checking it out. Maybe it will clarify some points.

Best regards,

Tomislav