[pmwiki-users] User level for this forum? a cry for help (was Blogging support?)

mike moller mike.moller at gmail.com
Thu Aug 17 00:43:57 CDT 2006


Hi IchBin
I can relate to your frustrations but I think we "PmWiki newbies" and "early
users" have to be aware that this forum seems to mainly cater to  the
interests of Systems Administrators for PmWikis, with many of the active
participants having a great deal of experience of filling those sorts of
roles.

The product itself is great and the support be the principal author is
excellent (thank you PM for your committment) couple that with the
contributions of other recipe authors and we have a really top notch support
community.

Having said that there is a real gap for newcomers, especially if they are
having to climb a mixed learning curve of PmWiki, PHP and maybe a web server
as well. We all experience difficulties with the "how do I do ...?" type
questions when all that is needed is really a pretty trivial piece of basis
usage info. One really glaring problem is the absence of a few pages of
technical overview docs to relate the pieces of the jigsaw to each other at
a pretty elementary level. eg
a) the flow from pmwiki.php through the other distributed scripts?
b) how do the .tmpl files get into the act?
c) where do .css files fit in?
d) how do all the above come together to generate a page of html?
e) what are the opportunities for personalised mods/extensions?
f) how do these hang together with the standard distro bits?
g) the roles and limitations of config.php?
h) custom markups?
i) how to define variables and pass their values among the php scripts?
j) how to expose and test those same variables within wiki page markups?

Okay guy's it's all pretty basic tech user guide stuff, it won't require
much volume to get the needed info across to technically literate newbies,
but it sure wastes an enormous amount of time and creates
confusions/frustrations.

Unfortunately the people who need this stuff haven't got the knowledge (yet
:-) to write it. For instance anything I might try to put together on the
basis of my present knowledge would likely be mistaken, confused and
incomplete.  ( strikeout likely and read certainly :-)

There's a real need here guy's - how about a short sharp project for those
with the knowledge to contribute a few "primer" level documents?

Sound to me like IchBin is crying out for some of it and I know I could do
with it
-- 
Mike Moller
Lallybroch Alpacas
New Zealand
www.lallybroch.co.nz





On 8/17/06, IchBin <weconsul at ptd.net> wrote: ... Even though I do not have
any recipe to contribute to this wiki. It

> seems that this newsgroup is all about. I thought that this group was
> for users and not just developers of recipes for PmWiki. I am really
> happy that Blogging will be included for PmWiki.  I am not sure what to
> do about the simple questions, I have had in the past, about the current
> recipes that are now apart of PmWiki now. I seem to be somewhat
> discouraged by no response by my questions on current recipes. Unlike
> other newsgroups like Java and PHP where I always have some one to
> respond to a question.
>


--
> Thanks in Advance...
> IchBin, Pocono Lake, Pa, USA              http://weconsultants.phpnet.us
> 'If there is one, Knowledge is the "Fountain of Youth"'
> -William E. Taylor,  Regular Guy (1952-)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> pmwiki-users mailing list
> pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com
> http://host.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
>
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