[ic] Pee-Poor Documentation Rant

[Ed LaFrance]

At 02:55 PM 07/25/2002 -0400, you wrote:


>>I don't think the problem is the documentation, but the background that
>>people bring with them.  It's always easier to blame it on someone else.
>>
>>Perhaps a listing of background one should have vs what one can do:
>>
>>
>>Your experience                    What you can do
>>sysadmin, lots of *NIX and perl    anything you want
>>
>>... stuff in the middle
>>
>>what's telnet/ssh                  complain
>>
>>
>>Even if such a chart were purely anecdotal it would be useful to keep
>>people from getting in over their heads.  And fun to read too.  :-)
>>
>>BOFH sez maybe about line 10 of makecat should be:
>>
>>exit 1; # if you find this, comment it out and proceed.
>>
>>;^>
>
>Ouch! you're harsh!
>
>I suggested this awhile back, but I think my post was too
>long and nobody read it. Before people download interchange,
>they probably read the "case study for open source ecommerce"
>and of course they read the system requirements stats. Along with
>those, perhaps basic knowlege of linux, perl, apache, html, the
>database the user will implement on, as well as sendmail and
>DNS should be recommended. That's known as a good fair
>warning!
>
>Many people think this package is an install-and-use nobrainer,
>and approach it as such from a windows background. It would be
>good to give them a little heads up as to what they're getting into.
>RedHat presents Interchange as turnkey, when it's not. Well,
>it is. But not if you want to alter the catalog any. And if you're not
>selling hammers and paintbrushes, you'll probably want to change it.
>Ecommerce is full of people who can't tell perl from the knitting
>stitch their grandmother uses, but want to participate in the
>success of online business.

That is what consultants are for - and I am not stating that as an act of 
self-promotion. Interchange with the foundation demo offers a pretty 
reasonable cookie-cutter solution if you just need to sell widgets and want 
to get up and running quickly, but there are many alternatives that are 
even easier for entry-level ecommerce efforts - especially if you are 
planning to roll your own implementation.

If you are a competent Perl programmer with a solid background in ecommerce 
and cgi, and know your way around *nix webserver administration you can 
probably become reasonably proficient with Interchange in a few months. On 
the other hand, if you start like I did, expect to take a couple of years 
or more - I've been at it since 1998, and the docs were *much* better back 
then compared to now. And you know what? People ranted about how bad they 
were, constantly. Hmmmm.....

- Ed L.


>A google search for "interchange documentation" brings
>up plenty of information. I had no trouble finding documentation
>on RedHat's site, despite it being in the 'documentation' section ;->
>My problem has mainly been interpreting the Swahili they use
>to document ICTags, since I'm not a perl guru myself. Again,
>that's my problem, not Interchange's.
>
>blue skies,
>-Jess Van Tassell
>Virtual Horizons
>
>
>
>
>>--
>>
>>Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                               cfm@maine.com
>>MaineStreet Communications, Inc           208 Portland Road, Gray, ME  04039
>>1.207.657.5078                                         http://www.maine.com/
>>Content/site management, online commerce, internet integration, Debian linux
>>_______________________________________________
>>interchange-users mailing list
>>interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
>>http://www.icdevgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/interchange-users
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>interchange-users mailing list
>interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
>http://www.icdevgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/interchange-users

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