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I have to make
some remarks about the current project status and weak points.
The testers are doing a very good job in reporting bugs,
many thanks to tashunka01 and trex1512. I have also to
(gladly!) witness the partecipation of franky2004 and lecterror,
which helped with mod_lang and com_sitemap. Now that the
project is (mildly) booted (see our downloads statistics http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/detail.php?group_id=166901&
u...
), I would like to express my concern here on the mailing list
about the current weak points of the project that I could
individuate, hoping that you will contribute with discussion and
possibly help in solving them:
* the main sites are
out of date, so everybody clicking a Drake CMS official site link
from within the CMS thinks: "What? Version 0.2.4? I have 0.3.2
already and the website is at 0.2.4!" And they get a bad feeling.
I know because I get it too! I have contacted Lance Lape (the
administrator of them) and we might be solving the issues very
soon.
* the documentation is very small, see the wiki
http://wiki.drakecms.org/ , I have done what I could but we
need more tutorials to help new users in getting started. User
tashunka01 is writing an Italian manual which I am previewing
these days; unfortunately he cannot write it in English so the
eventual translation might be done after its release.
* the developers documentation is even smaller, so we cannot
successfully /herd cats/ (gather developers), and this is even
worse than not having users' documentation. Currently some
developers documentation is on the same wiki.
* we
have no nice templates, and this does not help in marketing.
Actually we would have to finish the CSS modelling and create
some nice tool for converting other CMSes templates; user jcauble
is working on this.
Sorry for such a long list of
complaints, please speak freely (if you have something to say!)
P.Engee
Re:The project status
16 February 2007 00:57
Anonymous
Agree with it all...
We are at the hard point of not
having a working product that can be marketed to everyone as a
useable product now...still in Beta etc....until we get to the
first full release nothing much will change...
Templates is the big thing...there are soooo many for
mambo/joomla even the old Limbo that attarcted people....
Converting old Limbo/Mmbo/Joomla templates needs to be
done as quickly as possible...unfortunately somoine who knows
what they are doing is needed...certainly to retaion security and
compliance...is there anyone who produces templates who would be
willinmg to make some simple new ones?
and Drake needs
to be pushed as the best flat file CMS there is...it is by the
way...it is fast and simple as soon as all those who use "free"
web space get onto it it will blossom.
Updates on the
DrakeCMS.org and Drakeforge.net site etc...I have tried to post
news items from the User Menu but we do not have the correct
permissions, maybe Lance can allow at least that and make you or
another couple of users publisher/editor rights
Its
come to far to let it slowly die... aka trex1512
legolas558
Re:The project status
16 February 2007 08:31
Anonymous
P.Engee wrote: Quote:
Agree with it all...
We are at the hard
point of not having a working product that can be marketed to
everyone as a useable product now...still in Beta etc....until we
get to the first full release nothing much will
change...
Yes, that's true, my concern is just about
marketing: maybe some more noise can be made?
Quote:
Templates is the big
thing...there are soooo many for mambo/joomla even the old Limbo
that attarcted people....
Converting old
Limbo/Mmbo/Joomla templates needs to be done as quickly as
possible...unfortunately somoine who knows what they are doing is
needed...certainly to retaion security and compliance...is there
anyone who produces templates who would be willinmg to make some
simple new ones?
We have Joshua Cable! We do not
miss the knowledge of the old templates but the knowledge of our
current CSS templates, that's why I need Joshua
Cable back in the team as he designed that. Otherwise I'd have to
study his work but I already have enough (= too many) areas to
care about in this project!
Quote:
and Drake needs
to be pushed as the best flat file CMS there is...it is by the
way...it is fast and simple as soon as all those who use "free"
web space get onto it it will blossom.
Wow, if
it's really as you say we're doing a great work here
Quote:
Updates on the
DrakeCMS.org and Drakeforge.net site etc...I have tried to post
news items from the User Menu but we do not have the correct
permissions, maybe Lance can allow at least that and make you or
another couple of users publisher/editor rights
I have
asked for that, I am already crossing my fingers
Quote:
Its come to far to
let it slowly die...
And, really, it looks good &
fast! I won't trash such a good thing!
andieb
Re:The project status
18 February 2007 15:51
Anonymous
Hi,
I think that both Drake and Gladius both show
great promise. Over the months prior to finding Drake, I looked
at all the flat file CMS's I could find and, for me at least,
this is the one that seemed to be the best for my needs, even
though it was in an early stage when I found it.
I've
enjoyed testing it and have been impressed with the speed its
stabilised.
The lack of documentation is a bit of an
issue which will get bigger as the project develops. Developing
it will be a task almost as big as writing the software. Like all
big projects, it might be better to break it down into smaller
bits which should be less daunting to complete. Given, we're
still in the beta phase it may be best to concentrate on the
developer/technical side of the documentation.
Documentation should be useful, so what bits of documentation
would be most helpful to the developers to help them
complete/stabilise Drake?
Andy
legolas558
Re:The project status
18 February 2007 16:31
Anonymous
Hi Andy,
thank you for your briefing, I agree with you
that developers' documentation should come first on this stage.
In the beginning I had started putting development documentation
in the wiki, however that's now out of date or nearly. The wiki
als contains user documentation, do you think we should separate
the two documentations? In such case I would use the wiki only
for users' documentation and a separate platform for the
developers' documentation.
So, if you wish to help
with documentation (I hope so! ), please give
a look to the Category: Devel on the wiki
to see what already we have. The next most important keyword
to document Drake CMS for developers is: source code
documentation. Yes, I mean the double ref ## comments inside the
code that are parsed by doxygen and describe what each part of
the code/data does. Useless to say, our online doxygen
documentation is really out of date (Lance ), however we
should continue source code documentation to help developers in
its editing.
Please tell me your opinions/ideas about
this.
Thanks
andieb
Re:The project status
18 February 2007 22:06
Anonymous
Hi,
Quote:
The wiki als contains user documentation, do you think we
should separate the two documentations?
I
think there may be a benefit to a greater visible separation
between the user and developer documentation than there is now.
There are hundreds of CMS's out there and anyone
doing like I did and trying them all is likely to pass us by if
Drake looks hard to install and use. If we have some very visible
concise, clear instructions on how to install, manage and use
Drake, with maybe a brief overview of how it all works then I
think they will be much more likely to try it and once they do,
we have them
Actually, it might be a good thing to
eventually include a list of things Drake is good for and not so
good for. Even if someone evaluates Drake and finds it does not
meet their current needs, it may meet some future need and
anything we can do to keep something positive in their minds
about us the better.
Once they are using Drake then
they can read the deeper documentation as and when they need
too.
Is a wiki the best platform for the
documentation? Its good for community supplied things like
how-to's, hints and tips, comments about the rest of the
documentation etc but the core documentation might be better in
some other format like DocBook. That way it can be transformed
into whatever output format the user feels comfortable using. I
am only thinking aloud here, so I may be talking rubbish.
Quote:
The next most
important keyword to document Drake CMS for developers is: source
code documentation. Yes, I mean the double ref ## comments inside
the code that are parsed by doxygen and describe what each part
of the code/data does. Useless to say, our online doxygen
documentation is really out of date (Lance ), however we should
continue source code documentation to help developers in its
editing.
Indeed, I think we should use tools
like doxygen to generate as much of the documentation as
possible. The less work we have to do to keep the documentation
up to date the more chance we have of keeping it up to date.
Quote:
So, if you wish
to help with documentation (I hope so! ), please give a look to
the Category: Devel on the wiki to see what already we
have.
Ok I'll have a
go at some documentation.
Andy
legolas558
Re:The project status
18 February 2007 23:58
Anonymous
andieb wrote: Quote:
Hi,
Quote:
The wiki als contains user documentation, do
you think we should separate the two documentations?
I think there may be a benefit to a greater
visible separation between the user and developer documentation
than there is now.
Agreed. So we should soon
make the separation, any suggestion welcome. Quote:
There are
hundreds of CMS's out there and anyone doing like I did and
trying them all is likely to pass us by if Drake looks hard to
install and use. If we have some very visible concise, clear
instructions on how to install, manage and use Drake, with maybe
a brief overview of how it all works then I think they will be
much more likely to try it and once they do, we have them
Uhm...if improvements can be made to the installation script,
please tell me! There is already an Installation tutorial in
the wiki, maybe we need to rewrite it? Or better, maybe we should
distribute it in the official release? Quote:
Actually, it
might be a good thing to eventually include a list of things
Drake is good for and not so good for. Even if someone evaluates
Drake and finds it does not meet their current needs, it may meet
some future need and anything we can do to keep something
positive in their minds about us the better.
I totally
agree. I won't use Drake CMS for a task it was not designed to.
Drake CMS is yes a steel CMS but with limited features, we want
it to remain small, fast and easy. I would use Mambo or Joomla if
I need all their features, however if some of the most modern
features are needed we will also have them in Drake.
Quote:
Once they are
using Drake then they can read the deeper documentation as and
when they need too.
Is a wiki the best platform for
the documentation? Its good for community supplied things like
how-to's, hints and tips, comments about the rest of the
documentation etc but the core documentation might be better in
some other format like DocBook. That way it can be transformed
into whatever output format the user feels comfortable using. I
am only thinking aloud here, so I may be talking rubbish.
Not at all, I also think the wiki is not used so much...so if
we have alternatives...why not.
Quote:
Quote:
The next most
important keyword to document Drake CMS for developers is: source
code documentation. Yes, I mean the double ref ## comments inside
the code that are parsed by doxygen and describe what each part
of the code/data does. Useless to say, our online doxygen
documentation is really out of date (Lance ), however we should
continue source code documentation to help developers in its
editing.
Indeed, I think we should use tools
like doxygen to generate as much of the documentation as
possible. The less work we have to do to keep the documentation
up to date the more chance we have of keeping it up to date.
Quote:
So, if you wish
to help with documentation (I hope so! ), please give a look to
the Category: Devel on the wiki to see what already we
have.
Ok I'll have a
go at some documentation.
Andy
Very well,
thanks again! And please continue helping in the general
project management as we (by we I mean you too,
since you are in the Drake Team, you know) always need good
ideas!
andieb
Re:The project status
19 February 2007 20:22
Anonymous
Hi
Quote:
Uhm...if
improvements can be made to the installation script, please tell
me!
There is already an Installation tutorial in the
wiki, maybe we need to rewrite it? Or better, maybe we should
distribute it in the official release?
Actually, I do not think there is much we can do to improve the
installation script. Its quite easy as it is. Once we start
getting "production users" installing and running Drake we will
know just how easy it is and hopefully they will provide some
feedback to help us make it even easier.
I think the
way to help adoption will be to make sure people know its easy.
The perennial criticisms of FOSS are its hard to install and the
documentation is poor. If we can clearly tackle those criticisms
then we have a head start.
It might be useful to
distribute the tutorial, but not everyone will have Flash. So we
will still need the traditional INSTALL plain text file.
Quote:
however if some
of the most modern features are needed we will also have them in
Drake.
indeed, within reason we should be
able to provide pretty much any feature people want, either as
part of the main installation package or individually installable
modules/components/bots.
Quote:
Not at all, I also think the wiki is not used so
much...so if we have alternatives...why not.
I will do a bit of documentation in DocBook format and then we
can see how it looks.
Andy
legolas558
Re:The project status
19 February 2007 20:32
Anonymous
Quote:
Hi
...
Actually, I do not think there is much we can do
to improve the installation script. Its quite easy as it is. Once
we start getting "production users" installing and running Drake
we will know just how easy it is and hopefully they will provide
some feedback to help us make it even easier.
Indeed.
I really don't know what can be improved, maybe the final results
page (should be more clear) or the various errors situations.
But, as always, it looks to me a problem of documentation
Quote:
I think
the way to help adoption will be to make sure people know its
easy. The perennial criticisms of FOSS are its hard to install
and the documentation is poor. If we can clearly tackle those
criticisms then we have a head start.
It might be
useful to distribute the tutorial, but not everyone will have
Flash. So we will still need the traditional INSTALL plain text
file.
What about HTML?
Quote:
Quote:
Not at all, I also
think the wiki is not used so much...so if we have
alternatives...why not.
I will do a bit of
documentation in DocBook format and then we can see how it
looks.
Andy
Ok, I have never used it
(but I learn fast ) but if it proves to be the good tool for us,
let's use it! We might release HTML versions of our documentation
with the official release to get users started.
Do you
think we should abolish the wiki? And what about (future) user
contributions? The wiki would allow us to get them fastly.
), however we
should continue source code documentation to help developers in
its editing.
And please continue helping in the general
project management as we (by we I mean you too,
since you are in the Drake Team, you know) always need good
ideas!