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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...Why cant we keep the documentation up-to-date?Why cant we keep the documentation up-to-date?
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9/19/2008 11:39 AM
 

check out user manual for UDT, which has been updated for the latest versions accordingly, thanks to team member Brett Conlan. I know, that other teams (Documents, Gallery, ...) are working on documentations as well, but this is a time consuming task and there will always be at least a time gap. There are other teams, which has more difficulties providing proper manuals, especially the one man shows, and not all developers are good in writing. So, if you want to contribute a documentation, please contact the team lead and offer your help, most of us will be glad


Cheers from Germany,
Sebastian Leupold

dnnWerk - The DotNetNuke Experts   German Spoken DotNetNuke User Group

Speed up your DNN Websites with TurboDNN
 
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9/19/2008 1:22 PM
 

In general, Open Source projects have poor documentation.

While often guided by a corporate entity (as with DNN), Open Source projects rely on the volunteer efforts of the community.  Unfortunately, while there are often many volunteers for "coding", there are rarely volunteers for writing documentation - as lets face it - its not "sexy".

Lorraine has done an excellent job on writing User Documentation - it is essentially her "full-time" job, so she should be able to charge for a PDF or printed copy.  The online version of the same content she provides to the community gratis on this site.

As others have mentioned there is a project underway to consolidate both User and developer help documentation.  Details are being worked out as we speak.

Many projects have Wiki's and encourage volunteers to contribute but if you visit most of the Wikis you will find that most of the pages have no content, as no-one has stepped up to contribute.


Charles Nurse
Chief Architect
Evoq Content Team Lead,
DNN Corp.

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9/19/2008 2:41 PM
 

My experience setting up my first DNN site was bad and a large part of that was because of poor Skinning documentation.  I can't believe DNN hasn't updated this yet considering how important it is.  It's a monumental failure IMHO.

The reason i think it's so important is that's where you get user buy-in.  If you want to get people using DNN (so you can sell stuff to them) make it easy to get it looking the way they want.  Many people aren't going to use much more than the HTML and Forum modules, but every one of them will want to customize the look.  If they can't do that easily, they'll quickly move on to something else.  I very nearly did.

I don't think it's needs to be so "hands on", either.  You could probably trim down most of the skinning guide to 3-4 pages of general information, and then list all the Tokens/Controls with a very brief description/syntax.  That way you only need to update the Token/Control list.  Developers will keep lists updated.  It's when you make them write paragraphs they find other things to do.

 

 
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9/19/2008 4:41 PM
 

Charles Nurse wrote
 

The online version of the same content she provides to the community gratis on this site.

So that's the end of this discussion right? For example her documentation of the Survey module is up to date.

Also, I wrote the last Module Developer's Guide... last year. This year the reason I don't plan to write another one is because you have numerous books coming out on Module Development. I am simply not going to spend months updating the current guide because some people don't want to pay any money. If they don't want to read the numerous free information online then they are simply asking too much.

The original .PDF's were needed back when you had no other way of getting the information. Things have changed. Actually DNN has a lot of up-to-date documentation online. And we have plans to put more official documentation online.



Michael Washington
http://ADefWebserver.com
www.ADefHelpDesk.com
A Free Open Source DotNetNuke Help Desk Module
 
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9/19/2008 4:45 PM
 

Where can I buy  (book or pdf or online) correct information of how nav skinobject works??

By the way online help are never accurate :)

 

 
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