[geeklog-devel] An observation as a semi-developer/user

[Rob Griffiths]

Greeting, GL Dev Team...

Something's been bugging me about www.geeklog.net for a while, but I 
couln't quite figure out what it was.  Tonight, though, I believe I've 
identified what the source of my bother was:  I do not think 
www.geeklog.net is sending a good message about the program to any 
casual browsers of the site -- that is, potential users of Geeklog.  
Most days, 90% of the content of the site is about bugs, glitches, 
install problems, basic questions, etc.

I would think a better use for the main site would be to restrict it to 
news of Geeklog, new hacks, official bug fixes from the Dev Team 
members only, PR announcing sites that have been Geeked, etc.  With the 
Forum 2.0 plug-in available, support questions would be better served 
in that environment, would they not?

It's almost like we've got this amazing car, but when we talk to people 
about it, all we tell them about is that it's sometimes hard to start, 
it may break down if it's not treated right, and to get the most out of 
it, you really need to RTFM.  Shouldn't we be publicizing what Geeklog 
 >can< do instead of focusing on what troubles people are having with it?

I took a quick look at the home pages for phpnuke, mambo, phpslash, 
phpwebsite, webgenerator-x, drupal, e107, LDU, and ovidentia (thanks to 
opensourcecms.com :-).  Of those, only one or two have any sort of 
troubleshooting stuff on their homepages at all (phpwebsite had some 
random support questions and postnuke had a section called "Support").  
The main focus of the pages is not help or questions, but rather, 
announcements and information.  Geeklog is the only CMS homepage that I 
visited that seemed to emphasize bugs and help directly on the 
homepage...

Not that anyone asked me, but ... ... I would think a "staticpage" 
homepage with a full center pane of info about Geeklog -- what it is, 
how it works, top 10 sites its installed on, newest "Geekings," a link 
for the support forum, a link to a sample site (opensourcecms.org), 
etc. would be a much better "selling" tool than the current collection 
of help requests and "failed to RTFM" bug reports.

<asbestos>
   Flame away....
</asbestos>

-rob.