Now that the majority has voted for marketing / public awareness being the most important area in which webgui has to improve I would like to initiate discussion on how to achieve this.

The following three points have come to my mind:

We need more local users groups. I am planning to found a new group for the Rhine-Neckar region in Germany. Maybe others will follow.

Writing articles in popular magazines is a good way of increasing awareness. We, i.e. people from the community, should offer more articles to respective magazines. See my thread on publishing in the German linux magazine.

In my opinion, missing online documentation is still a weak point. Therefore, I have opened a thread suggesting to buy documentation from plainblack.

Bernd

--
Administrator of a non-profit community portal for free-climbers around Magdeburg/Germany. Check out http://www.klettern-md.de.

--- (Edited on 06.09.2008 10:10 [GMT+0200] by bernd) ---

Speaking as someone new and getting started (in both webgui and web development of any kind)...

The demo for a day thing is what has so far sold me.  I was able to test a lot of the functionality.  Since my end users will be very non-technical, we were very impressed with the ease of use and the WYSIWYG model of creating content.

That said, if I were creating the site for myself, I'd probably have used another CMS just because... well, they're pretty easy to fire up.  I've slapped together an Etomite site from nothing in a couple of hours.  Same with a PHPBB based site.

Don't get me wrong, I'm hoping to learn my way around webGui just because it's so slick when it's running, hence why I'm still here, and I'm quite happy with the community involvement to answer my questions thus far.  I might even buy a book if we make a go of this.  But the ability to have something up and running really quick without having to ask questions and wait for a response would totally cement someone in.

I can try to detail my gripes with the documentation.

First, increase the font size on this site and in the wiki.  Just a point or two.  The tiny text on this site gets hard to read as I go through all the steps.  The font as I write this post looks ideal, actually.  (I use both Opera and Firefox as my browsers, so can't speak for how it looks in IE.)

Second, make sure there are no typo's in commands, and maybe use a different font or just separate the commands you want someone to enter.  ("Preformatted" paragraph/font style might be ideal, given it's use in displaying code in other venues.)  A visual indicator like that makes me think "okay, I need to type this in".  It's sort of done right now with the indent, but this convention is broken in places.

Third, put a link to the platform specific notes at the top, mentioning that it might be a good idea to read ahead of time, in case the error in question pops up.  Maybe flesh out the differences between distros a bit too, (for example, when do I use sudo?  Is it assumed that root is needed everywhere?  Etc.)

Fourth, the wiki appears to have user comments and "I did this and that" kind of bits.  Comments are not a bad thing, but come up with a convention so that it doesn't just look like an instruction.  Keep it clear.  Something like this.

(I did this and that.  -  SteveD)

Keeps it clear, ya know?

Fifth, seperate long error messages from instructions.  For example:

If you continue to get the following error, "make[1]: Entering directory `/data/wrebuild/source/perl-5.8.8/x2p' \n You haven't done a "make depend" yet!", remove the .depending directory as follows:
    rm source/perl-5.8.8/x2p/.depending

Would be much more readable as:

If you continue to get the following error:

make[1]: Entering directory `/data/wrebuild/source/perl-5.8.8/x2p' \n You haven't done a "make depend" yet!"

remove the .depending directory as follows:
    rm source/perl-5.8.8/x2p/.depending 

(Except, here, instead of the bold, use the preformatted format available in the wiki.  Also, the spacing is kind of fubarred in the forum here.  It doesn't need the double spacing.)

Finally, the best advice I can give is to think of a really good manual or textbook you've read and try to emulate the style and tone it was written in.  :)

--- (Edited on 9/11/2008 4:32 pm [GMT-0700] by SteveD) ---

Hi Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to write and share your impressions of using WebGUI. We're glad to have you as part of the community. I think that everyone recognizes the wiki documentation is not ideal. We're doing the best possible as a volunteer community.

The suggestion for comments you made is good but needs to be more controlled like the way MySQL documentation is done with an official entry then user comments. Unfortunately, the current implementation of the wiki does not support comments yet. There is an RFE to add this ability (please add karma to it if you support this feature).

In the meantime, I think the best thing you can do is continue to ask questions in the forums so that others can find the answer more easily and to add your experiences and knowledge to the wiki as you gain understanding of installing WRE.

Like the core developers, I've installed the WRE so many times I know of most of the pitfalls. Still some environments pose new and undocumented challenges which have never been seen. I suspect the 2nd time you install the WRE will be much faster. Also, try jumping on the IRC channel if you're looking for live help. Most of the core devs hang out there and can offer immediate assistance.

Good luck,
William

----
Knowmad Technologies
http://www.knowmad.com

--- (Edited on 9/12/2008 8:58 am [GMT-0400] by knowmad) ---

--- (Edited on 9/15/2008 1:45 pm [GMT-0500] by bernd) ---

Kristi:

Plain Black tries to publish articles in magazines and professional journals from time to time.

Is there a record of published WebGUI articles somewhere on the page? If not could we have one under "Learn" or create a link from there to the existing place?

We've been tossing around the idea of rewarding community members who get articles published. Once the article is published, the author would receive a karma reward. Is this something that you/the community would be interested in? We'd consider a similar arrangement for those who speak about WebGUI at conferences or other venues, provided they can prove the talk took place.

Probably wouldn't motivate me. For professionals, giving a talk on WebGUI or writing an article is already rewarding by itself (thinking of WebGUI hosting companies and developers). So you are either a writer (or presenter) or not. But maybe you could announce conferences plainblack is not going to but where it would be nice to have a talk. Maybe someone can pitch in.

--
Administrator of a non-profit community portal for free-climbers around Magdeburg/Germany. Check out http://www.klettern-md.de.

--- (Edited on 15.09.2008 20:59 [GMT+0200] by bernd) ---