Hi Gabitzu,

Manual is actually very wide and detailed compared with many other
open source projects that are almost like science to find out what the
"insiders" meant. Campsite people have been very willing to look at
the issues as far as I know but of course they may have other things
to do as well than help us with our troubles.

I do agree that EXAMPLES would bring enormous value for the manual and
actually I've been struggling with the same issue with our people and
news site (that is not ready after 9 months yet!).

Value of the forum people is very big, meaning as soon as we find an
answer for some trouble we have asked here, let's report it! When
searching by yourself an answer for some issue and you finally find
somebody dealing the same issue, it drives almost nuts anybody to see
a final solution "no worry, I figured it!".

As soon as I get the site running, I start looking our templates and
taking examples from there to the manual. It already helps to see a
solution with one function etc and then you may know to apply it for
others.

Also if you think job timetables it would be wiser to pay to Campsite
folks to help in order to avoid economical losses generated by being
late in your business. With our team I tried to get extra money and
actually people are very interested in that kind of option as well,
but only after Campsite proves to be running as it should in our
server... But I'll definitely try to organise a way to pay something
either by work or by money to Campsite folks. I think they deserve
some support and that helps everyone of us to go further.

As this above is said now, Gabitzu, could you send us the template
that you have modified and gives you some trouble?
Please remove or edit if there is anything personal in the template
that you do not wish everybody to see but leave all the essential
structure in it.

Sanna @ Generare

On 30.7.2009, at 13.31, "" wrote:

> Author: gabitzu
> Link: http://code.campware.org/phorum/read.php?8,7381,7383#msg-7383
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> i tried them before to ask the question.
>
> but unfortnatelly they are not fully functional
>
> those with fast news or fast track i have no ideea how to make them
> work.
>
> the only btemplate which works somehow is thatone with "the
> newspaper" title.
>
> so, there is somewhere a list with the most common tags and how to
> use them?
> with examples?.. the manual is great but is useless because it has
> no examples..
>
>
>
>
> --
> Sent from Campware Forums
> http://code.campware.org/phorum

Hello Gabi,

yessss, support is Campsite's BIG problem. I very much agree.

However, some of that is structural, and probably not intended or not
a signal of "we don't care".

Firstly, I believe that the majority of people currently giving
support are pure developers, geeks if you will. This creates trouble
per se, because devs, admins, designers and users speak very different
"languages", even if they all talk in English. Campsite needs ALSO
admins, designers and users giving support, because they will be able
to relate better to their equivalents seeking support. Especially
negative is the habit of devs to answer by saying "code this or that"
or "add this or that plugin". If I am just an admin or a user, I can't
do anything with such an answer, because I don't know how to follow
such an instruction!

Secondly, language and cultural stance may be another problem. I take
it quite a few of the devs are either from the former Eastern Block or
from Germany. Both parties usually lack a certain empathy with other
cultural spheres. I confess I was totally taken aback by first
reactions here and I know of another person still extremely angry
about her treatment here. While reading the forums I found a dozen or
more people suffering from the same problem. For most native English
speakers (regardless of origin) and also most latin language speakers
(French, Spanish, Italian etc.), a set amount of POLITENESS is a must
in communication. If someone says something in an impolite manner,
these people will believe the other is being *purposefully*
aggressive and insulting. They then scrap the software and move on to
one where people are friendlier and more polite to them.

Thirdly, yes indeed, if treated with what you consider an arrogant and
impolite manner, you have no intention whatsoever to bring yourself in
after being treated like that. Campsite is an astonishing piece of
coding, but without support for the opensource community (which means
support also needs to be open and free) and without several different
levels of support (for devs, for admins, for users respectively) it's
not going to be very successful on a larger scale.

Just have a look at the Drupal fork ProsePoint which is currently
sweeping through the market of online newspapers including some of the
most renowned commercial newspapers. It's capable of much less than
Campsite, it's the lesser software, but it has enormous success. The
main reason being the excellent support people get there, from the
devs, but also from the user group.

Most of the above problems can be remedied. E.g. I'd really set up a
full support forum, not just that Phorum software. It took me several
days to realize Mugur isn't answering his mails with a blank message
body, instead the code and attachments get only shown on the maillist.
Now, I'm on the internet since 1993, meaning that I'm neither a noob
nor do I lack knowledge where to look. But this setup entirely stumped
me. I'm too used by now to have a proper forum with everything
enabled.

Then, such a forum might support some information on each of those
giving support here, including some info on basic origin. That way
someone who else judges the behaviour by his own rules, may make some
leeway for people coming from a different cultural sphere and be less
likely to feel insulted. Such an atmosphere also might entice people
to contribute more.

Loads of basic questions are misunderstood because of this, and
indeed, examples are what we need, even if only simple examples.
Especially in those areas where Campsite works differently, compared
to other CMS. The manual is mainly written for coders/geeks and less
for admins, designers and users. That makes Campsite have an
unnecessarily steep learning curve.

That said, I'm working on basic setup still, while the abovementioned
friend already has a production site, using Drupal now. It needs not
be that way

Cheers,

Pippa

Hey Gabi,

Good luck with Props. I hope you manage to go online tonight.

For the record, I'd like to set the record straight regarding certain
issues you raise:

> the demo: http://campsite-demo.campware.org/
> is not showing too much..

The demo, as most online CMS demos, is primarily meant to show off the
backend. And it's showing all of it.

> there is a lot of ducumentation but it;s not quite usefull.

I believe Sanna has answered this already. We're not perfect (examples are
glaringly missing, but we're not horrible either)

> there are several very good implementations of campware.. the main
> issue is the knowledge is not quite public.

We have no means of making these people releasing their templates as public
domain. They've put hours of work in them, and it's up to them what they do
with their templates. One can nonetheless ask them directly or via the
list. But it's up to them whether they want to cooperate. Of course, once
we start our "Campsite Cookbook" we expect people to start contributing
sample template code to howtos.

> so, in this moment I am will say god bye to campware and I will use
> a good reliable application called props: http://props.sourceforge.net/
> the best reference, I really love is:
http://props.sourceforge.net/docs/tag_reference/index.php

It's great that you've find a good match for your needs. I am very pleased
to see that there are as many alternatives out there. But for the record,
and the full information on this list, I'd invite people to compare the tag
reference you quote and the reference we provide:

http://code.campware.org/manuals/campsite/3.3/index.php?id=62

> and there is a mailing list:)

We have a mailing list. I've been using it all along.

> Thanks for the links, than why i couldn't find a way to show an image?

That is a question only you can answer.

> Or why nobody answered at a simple question?

Mugur has replied to that question at least twice, on our mailing list
(thanks for pointing out the problem with the Phorum display of certain
e-mailed messages).

Again, all the best in your work with props. It seems like a very good
project.