A Pivotx Bootcamp?

[danielschut]

Hi,

today I was battling my limited understanding of php, mySQL, html, css and thus all things pivotx AGAIN. This has become pretty frustrating so far: I do something new with pivotx I haven't tried before, the documentation makes it look very easy, but once I install something and then try it out, it comes out all wrong.

I fully understand that to be a pivotx-poweruser, I would need to put in weeks upon weeks, if not years upon years, of making stupid mistakes, asking stupid questions on the forum, thereby annoying everyone, and then doing something else to repeat the cycle.

But why not cut the crap? Why not cut the earliest, stupidest part of the learning curve? Why not save yourself, and me, the frustration of dealing with the type of n00bie-questions I have been asking for years now?

That's why I propose a pivotx-bootcamp. The pivotx-bootcamp would be a series of lectures and workshops held offline in front of an actual audience, and recorded for posteriority, given by experienced pivotx-users, to show beginning, slow-learning and not fully dedicated pivotx-users (I have a business to run and other stuff to learn which is more important to me) the basics of setting up and beginning with your own pivotx-install, and from thereon helps you install and use all the basic, useful and pretty extensions.

The result: Beginners getting up to speed in no-time, leading to an army of pivotx-evangelists. Pivotx will finally get the user-platform it deserves as suddenly affordable, easy and stable webdesign actually and really becomes available for the masses.

Who is with me?

[Harm10]

In essence this sounds like a good idea. But........... experienced users of PivotX are all over the world! So maybe a virtual bootcamp would be more feasible? Create some Youtube movies or so?
Another important thing to mention here is that most people are volunteers and have to do these things alongside their normal paid job.

And btw: you won't annoy everyone on the forum if you search it first (or read the documentation thoroughly). Questions are normally answered rather quickly over here and if everyone reads those questions and answers they won't make the same mistake..............

[danielschut]

Hi Harm10, I like the idea of a virtual bootcamp!

Maybe set up a youtube-channel with some basic chapters and then more. What should the topics be? Also, are there risks involved? I'm, not sure but I can imagine that showing all the details to some malicious person might not be such a good idea.

As to searching the forum: yes, doing that but maybe not enough. But I find I learn best via learning by doing, or watching someone else actually type things and click around. I'm learning Mathematica this way and it works like a charm! With pivotx, I'm thinking it would work because for many basic stuff, I just don;t know exactly where it is or what it does. Monkey see, monkey do then provides the easiest way of learning.

[hansfn]

Yes, someone should make some instructional videos. That is incredible helpful. (If I had more time, I would do it.)

[danielschut]

OK, so, what should be in those videos? Maybe if we start with a list of topics, we can then start to divide who makes screencasts.

My first stab at topics (from my beginner's perspective):

1. What is the dashboard and what does it do?
2. What is the 'Pages and Posts' (Pagina's en Berichten, not sure how it's translated into English) tab and what does it do?
3. What is the Media-tab (Dutch: Mediabeheer) and what does it do?
3a: What are you looking at when you're looking at 'media templates (the CSS and the templates)
3b: What are you looking at when you're looking at 'database files' (Dutch"Verken database bestanden')
3c: what are you looking at when you're looking at 'files (Dutch: verken bestanden)
4. Administration-tab
5. Extensions: what are the top five most useful ones, how do you install them and how do you use them?

Suggestions are welcome!

[Schop]

Screencasts sure look nice, but I always find it a lot easier to read an actual write-up, like in the docs, from this chapter and further: http://book.pivotx.net/page/1-4

I know some people, like Logfather and myself, have been looking into the docs before and made some changes and improvements. I agree there should be a lot more documentation, but like Harm already said, it's all work that people need to do in their spare time, and making good documentation is quite time consuming.

That said, I would be willing to create one or more screencasts, if we can determine for which items we really need a screencast, and which ones can just be plain documentation.

[streeff]

To get back to Daniel's question, online documentation is the way to go, but in Holland there might be enough PivotX users to organize a meeting sometime?