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Ease of Use is a Joke
For all it's talk about ease of use and 'community' it baffles me why YACS has no user manual or user forum. This, in my opinion, turns it into a geek toy.
No documentaion/No User Forum
For all it's talk about ease of use and 'community' it baffles me why YACS has no user manual,user forum, or finally, even help files. This, in my opinion, turns it into a geek toy. Once you install it, you're on your own if you don't know php or understand scripts. Scripts are talked about here as if every user knows what they are and how to write them. I see no place to go on this site where simple questions can be answered.
And I've tried all the other cmses. YACS is by far, the least helpful for the newbie and this is a shame because YACS appears to be the far more sophisticated application with the most potential.
And why no user forum? This to me makes no sense at all.
For all it's talk about ease of use and 'community' it baffles me why YACS has no user manual,user forum, or finally, even help files. This, in my opinion, turns it into a geek toy. Once you install it, you're on your own if you don't know php or understand scripts. Scripts are talked about here as if every user knows what they are and how to write them. I see no place to go on this site where simple questions can be answered.
And I've tried all the other cmses. YACS is by far, the least helpful for the newbie and this is a shame because YACS appears to be the far more sophisticated application with the most potential.
And why no user forum? This to me makes no sense at all.
Bernard from nearby-an-airport Associate, 6940 posts |
Hold on, hold on... Requiring and flaming may be your way of achieving things. IMHO they are more efficient methods to move forward and, finally, to achieve some results. Also, you have to know that I am accepting criticism only from actual contributors to the open community. Are you one of them?  "No documentaion" - This server has a Syndication section that, even if no complete, is on its way... Also, user interactions are supported by explicit messages where applicable. Lastly, the documentation extracted from code is available on-line. "No User Forum" - The dazibao section is our user forum. Click at the tab to enter it. "geek toy" - Is "geek toy" an adequate attribute to a system my own mother can use with almost no training on Internet technologies nor on YACS? This being said, it is true that YACS has been created to provide better code to the open community. This is why the focus is on PHP, etc. at the moment. At the same time I am trying to streamline a lot of operations that, on other CMSes, are quite difficult to deal with. IMHO we should achieve a system so simple to use that documentation could be limited to a bare minimum. "other cmses" - Please feel free to list some CMSes I should look at to improve YACS. "most potential" - I agree  Thank you for your interest into YACS. |
| Garee 11 posts |
" Hold on, hold on... It just ticks me off when after investing the time in install the application, I find all the talk about "documentation" and "community" to be untrue. This application is fatally flawed because it has no documentation -- and it has no documentation, the links you give below are not to documentation. Furthermore, you explanation as to why I can't past a 15 page article doesn't make sense. I don't want to break up this article into many different articles. And what about the 150 page article I want to post? As to the other cms-- I've tried them all and every single one of them had far more documentation than your app does. However, your's is the most polished by far. Which is why, I suppose, I'm so angry. I showed it to a client. He got excited about it. Now I'll have to go to him and tell him it can't be done. I wouldn't dare try this app now. Set up a proper forum; it'll take you five minutes. Your answers to my questions are more defensive than informative. You're killing all chances of this app from gaining widespread success by not providing the basic tools people need. |
| Bernard from nearby-an-airport Associate, 6940 posts |
" Furthermore, you explanation as to why I can't past a 15 page article doesn't make sense. I don't want to break up this article into many different articles. And what about the 150 page article I want to post? " Have you ever evaluated the time requested to transfer 64,000 bytes across a low-speed Internet link? The suggestion about the split was just about improving response times. Moreover, YACS has special codes to link several articles together and to make them appear as a single set of related pages. I recognize that this is an almost undocumented feature at the moment... |
| Eoin 23 posts |
Easy does it there Garee, you wouldn't want to be mistaken for a flamer and a troll. Clicking on the "Help" link (/yacs/help.php) will give you a page with some help and links to further information, including the code documentation. For the 15 (or 150 even) page document you want to upload, I'd suggest you either follow the advice of Bernard, or indicate which open source CMS does it more to your liking. If there's enough interest, people involved in YACS might try to copy that functionality then. For what its worth, I think you should go with the many-articles-linked approach suggested above or if its really important that all pages remain together as one (say for easy printing) you could save the document as a Word or PDF document and attach it to an article with a Table of Contents and Introduction to your document. Regarding user forums, I guess "Dazibao" could be a little clearer... I was puzzled too. 
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| Garee 11 posts |
" Easy does it there Garee, you wouldn't want to be mistaken for a flamer and a troll. Clicking on the "Help" link (/yacs/help.php) will give you a page with some help and links to further information, including the code documentation. Yeah, I know I'm coming across as a jerk, but if I didn't really like YACS, I wouldn't be complaining so loudly. The limit on the size of articles is a mistake. Everybody has high-speed connections here in the states and even if we didn't placing a 64000 character barrier is something no other cms does. Where does it come from? It seems nutty. Why place such a restrict in the application? This is what I don't understand. As far as referring me to the documentation you do, I've seen those documents and they're worthless. This is a brillant application. You people don't realize what you have. It beats all the nukes, mambo, blogger, everything, but you're killing it before it even has a chance to compete because you haven't given the public a complete package. A proper forum would have helped tremendously. At the rate the current query system works, it'll be next month before I get a work-around. And repeating to me the reason for the 64000 character limit doesn't help. I could care less about the reason for it. Just get rid of it. Blogger doesn't have a 64000 character limit. I've post my 300 page manuscript on blogger with no problem -- and that's on their own server! Let me worry about the bandwidth. That should not be your concern. You have crippled this application with the 64000 barrier. Furthermore, what exactly is 64000 characters anyway? How many pages does that represent? Where does the figure come from? Finally, this product is really not ready for the public. It's beautiful, elegant, the DeLoren of bloggers/cms, but it's just not ready for the public and won't be ready until it has proper documentation. garee |
| Bernard from nearby-an-airport Associate, 6940 posts |
Here comes the time to make things a little bit clearer. Regarding the maximum page size: I recognize that 64,000 characters mey be not enough is some cases, even if it appears as a fair amount of bytes. After all, we have to prepare the Internet of tomorrow, for which the bandwidth would not be an issue anymore  next question is: which limit would you like to set now? 640,000 bytes? 1M bytes? Tell me, and I will adjust the database schema accordingly.Regarding the dazibao: this word has been selected because it has a special meaning of freedom - at least for Chinese people. I liked the idea of a forum in which liberty would be something. Well. I have not been so successful up to now, and will probably switch back to the usual 'Forum' label. A word is almost useless if you are alone to use it... Sorry for Chinese people... |
| Bernard from nearby-an-airport Associate, 6940 posts |
" Yeah, I know I'm coming across as a jerk, but if I didn't really like YACS, I wouldn't be complaining so loudly. " Once again, I really appreciate your feed-back, even if it badly *hurted* me because of the countless white nights of work... " Finally, this product is really not ready for the public. It's beautiful, elegant, the DeLoren of bloggers/cms, but it's just not ready for the public and won't be ready until it has proper documentation. " Ok, let focus on that. Can you give some reference pointers to similar pages I could use as a starting point for YACS documentation? Among the numerous CMS that you have tested, which one has the most appealing user documentation? And would you be ready to contribute on this topic as well? |
| Garee 11 posts |
Regarding other cms with documentation... http://nucleuscms.org/documentation/skins.html This is the nucleus group and there documentation is pretty solid. The main idea here, though, is that this thing can't be done alone, which is the reason why I say a proper forum is absolutely necessary. also a listing of sites using YACS is essential garee |
| Garee 11 posts |
"next question is: which limit would you like to set now? 640,000 bytes? 1M bytes? Tell me, and I will adjust the database schema accordingly" That's easy: no limit. If it's on my server, why do you want to impose a limit? garee |
| Bernard from nearby-an-airport Associate, 6940 posts |
Regarding the limit (again): The database schema has been updated to accept up to 16Mbytes content. The edit script (articles/edit.php) has been adjusted to make the user confirm that he really wants to break the 64,000 bytes limit. You will get a warning, but this won't stop you anymore. Now all this has to be included into the next release, maybe next week... |
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