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Member

random0xff - 4/14/2009 8:18:13 AM

Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Documentation for developers should be technical with deep explanations. It should not be marketing:

"Both approaches are fully supported and they provide the same level of flexibility and extensibility. We recommend that you use the portal engine model, but if you're a hard-core .NET developer and do not trust portal engines, you may want to use ASPX templates."

It is not a matter of trust, and I'm not hardcore.

Also, documentation should add actual value, not just repeat what is on the screen:

Select all objects - selects all objects
Select only new objects - selects only objects which are new

Lastly, documentation should be factual:

With Kentico CMS you can...
focus on the client's business needs instead of core infrastructure

Truth is, with Kentico CMS you focus ONLY on the core infrastructure for the better part of a development traject, because it is completely opaque how the system works! Page templates, web part containers, web parts, web templates, transformations... time is occupied 100% trying to understand infrastructure, not one page is made in this time (simply because: where do I put the page? No answer from documentation...)

Conclusion: documentation needs a lot of work for $999

Kentico Support

kentico_jurajo - 4/14/2009 2:05:09 PM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Hi,

We will try to improve our documentation and we are adding new articles with every version. Some of the description are general because there is no other option. Or, also, we can write to each check box a separate article, but who will read that...
Moreover, you can find many information in our Knowledge base, Forums, FAQs and Blogs section.

To be honest, if you are new in any software, you need to take time for some experiments to understand how it works despite of the documentation.

Best Regards,
Juraj Ondrus


Member	random0xff - 4/15/2009 4:39:10 AM RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate Or, also, we can write to each check box a separate article, but who will read that... I will ;-) It's better to have only the documentation that is actually adding value. I miss (or can't find) information about what happens when you change things or do an install, sort of "behind the scenes" information.


Kentico Support	kentico_jurajo - 4/15/2009 5:04:01 AM RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate Hi again, We will change the description you have mentioned and few others. But this is only a little part of the documentation, so I do not think that whole documentation is not good. You cannot judge the whole documentation according to one or two articles. Best Regards, Juraj Ondrus

Member

random0xff - 4/22/2009 2:17:41 AM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

True, sorry for that.

But the first impression counts, and I was overwhelmed by the CMS and the amount of options. At that point in time (as a beginner) the documentation was not a lot of help. After I have learned some things (that are not documented) I now begin to understand *some* things better and the documentation makes more sense. So for me, it didn't help getting started, I actually learned more by using Reflector to see what Kentico actually does.

Kentico Support

kentico_radekm - 4/22/2009 9:52:31 AM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Hello,

when I started with our documentation, I must also learn some things from different sources (things of more general nature) :) It is not possible to cover all details in our docs, they would have two times more pages. We are trying to find the optimal level of details, but I understand it is individual for every reader. I am glad that you now understand some things better. Thank you for your post, it is very useful feedback for us.

Best Regards,
Radek Macalik

Member

Elijah - 4/29/2009 9:33:12 AM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

I have found that the core documentation is very useful. The only time I run into a wall is when I want to do some custom programming task that is specific to my situation.

In those cases, I'll open the API documentation and browse the classes and methods. Since the CMS API is built using the provider model and the programming practice is quite consistent across modules and assemblies, it's usually pretty easy to figure out what class to work with.

If that doesn't work, Kentico support has been great for pointing me in the right direction.

For certain properties such as caching dependency keys and such, it would be nice to have a little extra information, such as some example values or common scenarios. For example, I have a repeater that selects documents on a list page. What kind of caching dependencies would I need to enter in order to have that repeater data un-cached each time a document in the list changes? That's just something recent that I ran into.

There was a blog post about caching recently and I did learn a lot from it, but since that property is right there in the documentation, I think it would be very useful to have some detail about how the feature works right there with it.

Thanks for taking the time to receive our feedback!

Kentico Support

kentico_zdenekc - 5/6/2009 4:16:11 PM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Hi Elijah,

thank you for your feedback.
We are continuously trying to enhance not only the documentation, but also to build up more "rich" and helpful knowledge base. We hope that in the future, many useful articles and FAQs will complete the "base" documentation.

Regarding your question on caching dependencies, could you please describe your aims in more details? I mean mostly what caching level do you want to use, how often is the content updated (document changes)...

Regards,
Zdenek C.


Member	Elijah - 5/18/2009 8:59:36 PM RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate I think it would be most helpful to include some examples of what values you could use in the Cache Dependencies box and what effect it would have.


Kentico Support	kentico_jurajo - 5/21/2009 5:15:35 AM RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate Hi Elijah, I have submitted your requirement. I think it would be available soon in one of the new versions of documentation. Thank you! Best Regards, Juraj Ondrus

Member

eyesea69-gmail - 6/14/2009 5:14:15 PM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

I will read it. Also your search function in DevNet is pretty useless. Returns pages and pages of the exact same results no matter what I type in the search box.
I'm on my 4th Kentico site, we are about to purchase our 3rd license and I am still strugging with issues that I feel should be simple. But so many things in configuration are not explained. One example;Nested controls ID - what nested controls? Nested where, for what purpose?
I have championed Kentico to my clients because I believe in its potential, but it is starting to cost me money in literally days of time spent figuring out simple things like how to use a javascript on the page.
Perhaps I'm dense, I've only been doing this ten years and sold dozens of websites. I think I should be able to figure this out.

Kentico Support

kentico_jurajo - 6/15/2009 8:28:10 AM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Hi,

The search functionality will be improved in the upcoming version 4.1 - we have integrated the Lucene.Net engine which is very powerful tool.

Regarding the "nested controls" - this is also used in general in .Net, for example for repeaters and datalists. You can have e.g. nested repeater in another repeater. Parent control is displaying for example first level structure and the nested control is displaying the second level items (Nested repeaters).

Regarding the Javascript - which approach you are using? If you are using ASPX templates you can place the code directly to the page template code file. If you are using portal engine templates, on the Design tab you can switch to the layout.

I hope it will help. I understand you - the CMS is now pretty big with many features and configurations and it might be confusing sometimes and also, to be honest there are also some bugs. We are trying to improve the product and the documentation as well. Thank you for your suggestions.

Best Regarts,
Juraj Ondrus


Member	andy-procaresoftware - 6/16/2009 2:11:41 PM RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate Greetings, can you please elaborate (maybe in another post) on the search function? We're having some difficulty on finding any documentation or tips on improving the search tool.


Member	andy-procaresoftware - 6/16/2009 2:25:09 PM RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate Okay - no need to post, we found the "ExtendedForumSearchDialog" web part. For what it's worth as least now we have something in the forum regarding the search function.

Member

ctaleck IPAGlobal - 5/20/2009 1:55:59 PM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

I thought I would throw in my thoughts on this now "hot topic"...

At first, I was also a bit overwhelmed by Kentico CMS and the documentation did very little to help out at the beginning stages. I am not an advanced ASP.NET programmer but the documentation does assume at least a moderate level of ASP.NET knowledge. Examples, when there is one, do assume a lot from the user.

However, Kentico CMS is brilliantly put together so that even a beginner programmer can sense the organization and power behind it. There are a wealth of features to go through and learn.

Also, I'm am continually amazed at how flexible it truly is. If you don't like the way it performs or it lacks a feature, there is nothing to stop you (except your own lack of ASP.NET knowledge) to add it in and customize it yourself.

So in the end, I think a beginner is mostly overwhelmed not from the lack of documentation, but from the great amount of power in the system that takes time to learn and understand (even with great documentation).

Member

yalin.kececi-schools.utah - 6/2/2009 5:13:05 PM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Kentico documentation is frustrating for me as well.

For example...

Stylesheet display name - Name used for CSS Stylesheet

Stylesheet code name - CSS Stylesheet name used in code

Stylesheet text - The content of the CSS Stylesheet

OR

Module display name - Friendly name displayed to the editors.

Module code name - Code name used by developers.

Show in tools menu - Indicates if this module is displayed in the Tools menu in CMS Desk.

This is how most the documentation seems to me, which is NOT documenting and is NOT helpful. It's like saying Very Complex Control: This is a very complex control, just so you know. is documenting. Where are examples, gotchas, how-to articles, even tutorials?

It may provide powerful tools, yes, but instead of the users trying to figure out how to best leverage these powers, some examples and best-practices need to be documented so that we don't spend hours and hours of de-constructing the CMS, while in that time we could write anew.

Kentico Support

kentico_jurajo - 6/15/2009 8:35:44 AM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Hi,

Thank you for your post. Could you please post here another examples please? You are right in the six examples you have posted, but do you have any suggestions what else should be written in this particular case? The labels for the fields are already descriptive (I think) and the description can describe it only little more.

If you have any examples where you do not understand what to set or what it is doing, please let us know, we will try to explain it and show you it on some example.

However, we are also trying to build knowledge base section where we are describing most common requests and troubles you may encounter.

Best Regards,
Juraj Ondrus

Member

polarwarp-gmail - 6/23/2009 12:30:02 AM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

I tend to get a bit lost with all the documentation and sometimes forget which document is going to have the most useful information for what I'm trying to do - there seems to be a long list of documents might be good to give a short description of intended audience and brief rundown so that I know which to give to our business people vs me trying to figure out how to do something technical in the site. eg. sometimes its unclear whether I need to read the developers guide, or the controls or web parts documentation.

Would also be nice in the knowledge base section if we could add comments or something - if there's something we don't quite get.. or maybe some kind of variation - rather than having to create a disconnected forum post about it.

I do like having specific examples of stuff so please keep adding these :)

Member

brian.reese-chsfl - 6/23/2009 2:45:10 PM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

I know this is time consuming, but every option on every screen that ships with the product needs to be fully explained. I should not have to reply to requests, "I know the CMS does that but I'll need a day to play with it b/c the documentation is not clear."

I've had to re-write the documentation to fit our use of the system so my end users understand it. I've writen 150+ pages, maybe 30% of it is explained in the provided Kentico documentation, the rest, I had to write on my own. I've now spent as much time rolling out the CMS as I have writing the documentation so my end users can understand it and use it.

Kentico Support

kentico_jurajo - 6/26/2009 6:36:33 AM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Hi,

Thank you for your post on this topic. You can also use the green question marks in the upper right corner where the fields of the displayed form are described. But, some of the description is not very clear - we are aware of it and also, sometimes it is hard to explain in more words what it is for - e.g. "<something> display name" field - how would you describe it in few words?

Also, we would really appreciate any concrete suggestion pointed to exact article or documentation so we can see where are the problems and we can fix it. From most of the posts here it seems that we have to re-create the whole documentation.

Thank you for any other suggestion how to improve the documentation!

We are also plannig to create some brief guides for non technical users in the future.

Best regards,
Juraj Ondrus


Member	Yalın - 6/26/2009 10:24:57 AM RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate Are you willing to share your work with other Kentico users? That'd be very kind of you, let me know.

Member

polarwarp-gmail - 6/23/2009 7:19:01 PM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Is there any detailed documentation on using expressions in transformations or filter criteria for a webpart?

To get the logged in user I use:
SiteContext.CurrentUser or CurrentUser?

However if I'm on a member profile page - how do I get that member's user id - as opposed to the logged in member's user id?

I'm lacking how to do useful things and I'm not sure if I'm just not looking in the right document or there's no good guide for this sort of stuff?

Are these forums still monitored as much as they were a few months ago - I'm about to email a support request because of the posts I've made in the last few days I haven't gotten a single response. Whilst I know there's the expectation that its best to email support to get a response - it would be more helpful I would have thought to the Kentico community to be able to see other people's questions & answers.

Kentico Support

kentico_jurajo - 6/26/2009 6:55:30 AM

RE:Documentation is insufficient and inappropriate

Hi,

What expressions you mean exactly? Could you please describe what you want to achieve? Thank you.

If you want to get the CurrentUser of the user who is currently logged in, you need to use CMSContext class.

The SiteContext is used in the second scenario you are describing - if you want to get the user ID of other user. E.g. when you want to add someone as a friend, you need to know his/her ID and this can be retrieved by from the SiteContext.

Also, thank you for the suggestion for the documents separation. What would be your suggestion how to separate it? Thank you.

We are still checking the forums, but sometimes we are very busy with the e-mails and there is only little time left for forums. If you need to solve your issue quickly with guaranteed response and you have purchased Kentico CMS license, please send us message to our support address.

Best Regards,
Juraj Ondrus

Member

polarwarp-gmail - 6/30/2009 2:36:03 AM

Transformations

Hi,

Just say I'm PersonB and I'm looking at PersonA 's profile page. I want to see the most recent forum posts made by PersonA (by having some kind of repeater on the page).

What transformation would I use on the Where condition to ensure I get personA's posts?

I'm comfortable with the transformation for the logged in user (personB in this case).. but not how I'd get PersonA's stuff.

Sorry - if this documented in detail somewhere - have just seen the basic stuff whilst working through tutorials.

Thanks


Kentico Support	kentico_jurajo - 6/30/2009 7:58:32 AM RE:Transformations Hi, You can use the Forum Posts Viewer web part and in the WHERE condition you can try to use macro. According to the macro the posts will be filtered. The macro can be like this: {%sitecontext.currentuser.userid%} I hope it will help. Best Regards, Juraj Ondrus