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DaveG wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4AA5C6F8.6060509@solidgone.com" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
Mark Timothy Rooze wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I just unzipped the PmWiki 2.2.5 zip file, and it seems like the
cookbook folder is empty. Should it be? Or is something missing from
the download?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->It should be empty, or rather it used to contain only a .htacess file.
</pre>
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Rather than offering the traditional bare bones PmWiki, the 'market'
would probably support offering various "flavors" for new users to get
started that would include appropriate cookbooks and even some basic
setup pages to help bootstrap folks to their flavor. <br>
<br>
Pmwiki offers a great set of tools for managing web sites. However,
many webmasters probably find there's a huge (perhaps unncessary)
learning curve to getting started from the bare bones pmwiki offering.
There are no tool packages for common uses -- webmasters have to
figure this all out on their own thru trial and error fussing around
thru the cookbook files. <br>
<br>
Having put together a bit over 10 pmwiki sites for business,
associations, personal use, sports teams and farms, there seems to be a
core set of cookbooks and setup pages that could be offered to make
each basic set up a lot easier. <br>
<br>
For example, most every site (except personal sites) I've put together
would benefit from having a pmwiki "flavor" that unzips and boots up
with some startup pages that offer a reasonably spam resistant system
for email list signups, a blog, without showing the edit option, with a
simple webmaster password to get going. <br>
<br>
Pmwiki seems to grow a lot horizontally with new and improved cookbooks
that increasingly cater towards more and more experienced webmasters.
There is very limited vertical development to make things easier for
new enduser webmasters AND end-users. For example, WYSWYG editing of
basic text formating should be the standard -- it's offered for most
every online blog. Folks just aren't used to having to deal with text
formating codes -- it's antiquated... . <br>
<br>
However, I guess that's the price of 'free'. Relatively obvious
pathways to increase marketshare and improve enduser utility typically
sees limited development because marketshare (aka profits) doesn't play
into (or guide) the system's non-profit evolutary path and history.
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