Although I stopped playing with Plone (you can guess why), I am still interested in the platform and find myself checking in on this community every now and then. My interest is hard to quantify because I'm not naturally technically minded, but I have always been fascinated with software platforms that allow people to interact, whether they be a CMS, forum, commenting, chat, etc.
The only reason I responded to this thread is because I run a very small Discourse motorcycle forum mainly for close friends, and I thought I'd share my thoughts with @Peter-Trier since he is a fellow motorcyclist.
My post was laced with my own frustration. Looking back now, I can see how the tone of my post could be interpreted as harsh -- that was not my intention.
I didn't know I was making such a comparison. I dunno, maybe my technical ignorance is getting in the way, but I understood Peter's original request to be for a forum, not a commenting system. I did not mean rub you the wrong way. In fact, it was your Youtube video that resonated most with me and gave me a bit of hope that maybe Plone was changing.
###Warning: I am about to ramble my way off the rails!
[quote="tkimnguyen, post:18, topic:3619"]
We'd certainly welcome your help making a documentation pull request!
[/quote]I don't know what a "pull request" is. If it means technical how-to writing, then I doubt I could help since I don't understand the material. Oddly enough, a while back, before I committed to Discourse for my forum, I was testing other "modern" forum platforms (NodeBB, Flarum, etc.). As usual for someone like me, I ran into all sorts of problems trying to get it installed (whether locally or remote) in order to test the software.
Here's the thing: I wasn't alone.
Many others shared my frustrations, and 90% of the time it was the installation that caused the most problems for (potential) adopters, and was the single biggest reason why most people left. I was so excited after I finally got Flarum installed that I actually did write a how-to. I wrote it for "me" just in case I nuked my installation I would have a resource to go back to. I don't know if that is what you refer to as a pull request.
Look, I know I'm rambling here, and I apologise to Peter for taking his thread off track. But, the fact of the matter is 99% of you have no clue, or have completely forgotten, or don't care (and that's ok, too) what it's like to be "me" -- the end-user.
You ever hear of the following saying?
written by lawyers for lawyers
Well, it applies to many things in life. I'm going to assume the vision for Plone developers is to get it in the hands of more people.
Here's my suggestion for increasing the adoption rate of Plone
Find yourselves 20 volunteer "end-user" guinea pigs like myself and task them with installing Plone. I'm talking about 20 non-developer Regular Joes that maybe have their own Wordpress blog (or similar) or a Wix site, etc. Spend 2 days in a hotel conference room with them, but observing only -- no help given. Note where people are getting stuck. Where are they going for solutions? Has anyone managed to install Plone locally? Remotely? What are they Googling? Is it things like:
Ubuntu xxx library missing
What is chmod
chmod vs chown
start pagefile on system start
Apache directory not accessible
Mod re-write
Now, I understand the above list isn't specific to Plone. I only listed it to convey how important it is to make your software easy to install -- for the masses, not for yourselves. A one-click install of Plone on Digitalocean would've been a dream for me, and would eliminate 90% of your battles! It's also the single biggest reason why I chose Discourse to power my forum.
When a new user goes from a "I can't fix missing python dependencies" scenario to a "How do I resize my logo" scenario, which scenario do you think has a better chance of keeping him a Plone user?
Take this feedback as you will, and apologies in advance for the rant and thread derailment.