Decreasing Time Required to Grasp eZ Publish

Author Message

Doug Brethower

Monday 01 February 2010 5:47:56 pm

First, thanks eZ for the continued belief in, and contributions to the open source community effort.

A follow up to, http://share.ez.no/forums/general/time-needed-to-grasp-ez-publish with a suggestion.

How about a 10 part doc-promo video series, geared toward complete newbies? Hosted within an eZ Publish container. My first attempt works well enough for me on my local machine to highlight eZ capabilities while teaching basic principles.

Been pondering tubing or podding these. But they need refined within a community setting of devs and newbies before release to the real world.

If eZ community could spare the bandwidth to develop a series along these lines, I am happy to send in some preliminary targets.

Then, only if proven helpful to newbies by newbies, the concept may be moved into general distribution channels like podcasting and youtube.

In my first rough implementation they are 204mb storage, 24 minutes to view them all. The best way to use them becomes more self-evident after a few times through the first few. Number 2 is linked online to clarify the concept.

Table of Contents:

1. eZ-Make-it-your-own 2:49
Starting from a new installl, make sitewide changes. Logo, site title, keywords for search engines. Mostly just to show how easy this is, fill out the form, click publish.

2. eZ-frontpage-your-own 1:03 Sample at http://webportalmaster.com/index.php/eng/eZ/Make-the-Front-Page-Your-Own
Change the default front page contents, from an admin login.

3. create-editor-user 1:33
Create an editorial level user, who may then login at the front page.

4. editor-changes-content 1:57
The newly created editor user, logs in at front page, uses a website toolbar to create changes in place, in real time. Power of eZ, cut out all intermediate steps and people in the web publishing cycle. Direct from author to web is a reality.

5. editor-creates-menu 2:11
It is not so much that an editor can create a menu, it is how the menu is created. Creating content, creates menus. Automation at work.

6. editor-creates-content 4:23
Create an Article and a Documentation Page in place, on the web site. Documentation pages auto-create their own table of contents. Automation wherever possible, the machine does the work!

7. search-and-urls 1:09
Building a table of search terms is - you guessed it - automated. eZ goes a step beyond that, with a place for admins to check what visitors to the site enter into the search box.

Also, if you have ever done much bookmarking, you have noticed links move or disappear. No big deal for personal bookmarks. A real big deal if your content relies upon a missing external link to make a point. Nothing screams unmaintained site like broken links. "Please report broken links", good luck with that one.

8. version-control-RSS 1:31
Change management quickly becomes a problem on heavily used sites with multiple editors and editions. The eZ implementation of "rolling back" sets a record for simplicity combined with power and detail. Also RSS is useful not just for web savvy visitors, but for watching site updates from multiple editors in nearly real time.

9. Content-Types-checkbook 4:59
As a long time database and sql guy, modeling the real world, particularly in a web context is the ultimate goal. So far, have not found anything eZ Publish cannot model, checkbook because that is simple for most to grasp.

10. eZ-4multimedia demo 1:45
Using advanced multimedia capabilities of eZ with eZ Flow. Videos for newbies.

Cheers

Doug Brethower
Apple Certified Technical Consultant, Southwest, MO USA
http://share.ez.no/directory/companies/lakedata.net

Robin Muilwijk

Tuesday 09 February 2010 3:23:15 am

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your effort and initiative, sound like a good idea. I'll make sure this get's the attention of the full eZ Share Community team. You should here back as soon as possible.

Regards Robin

Board member, eZ Publish Community Project Board - Member of the share.ez.no team - Key values: Openness and Innovation.

LinkedIn: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/robinmuilwijk // Twitter: http://twitter.com/i_robin // Skype: robin.muilwijk

Doug Brethower

Thursday 25 February 2010 12:02:11 pm

Jorge and howto's from 4.4 roadmap thread. IMHO the discussion logically fits better here, if it bears going further.

I did my own howtos as I went as I am too old to try to remember all this stuff.

http://webportalmaster.com/index.php/eng/eZ/HowTo

Point being how simple it is to layup howtos in eZ. The missing ingredients are direction, focus and TIME.

Doug Brethower
Apple Certified Technical Consultant, Southwest, MO USA
http://share.ez.no/directory/companies/lakedata.net

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