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

[Simon Lord]

Secret is out Tony, should we kill Rob?

On Friday, February 21, 2003, at 09:36 PM, Rob Griffiths wrote:

> 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.
>
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>
>
Sincerely,
Simon