Post 5.0.3 update …
June 18th, 2007 by Richie
We are currently having review meetings to figure out how we could have done better. These are called the Retrospection meetings and unlike our other meetings these go on for hours. It is actually a free for all, no-holds-barred meeting. The intent is to bare the soul and see what comes out. There is no name calling (ok that happens some times) so that there is no personal assaults happening. Unless, we have a system which allows to have an open-ended and freedom of speech and thought , we will not progress and will endup in a cesspit of guilt and greed.
I will keep you posted on what came out of the meeting. It will be interesting anyway.
The forge is being looked into and we are in the process of porting the forge to a new setup but are having some technical issues to figure and are asking Fathi to help us out. Once that is through, yet another major hurdle will be addressed. Balduin has been for long stating that we are not addressing the projects in the forge and he is right. I guarantee once the forge is moved and we have a hold on it, we will put in a process to have a more-inclusive forge-mgmt in place. There are plenty of good things happening out there that we can make use of.
More to come …
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Okay. If everything you wrote in the post (above) is true, then let’s pursue that theme.
I just spent six hours performing my first vtiger install. It was terrible. It worked, at least I think it did; but what is to be gained is that your documentation/instructions are terrible.
My comments are not meant to be sarcastic. Rather they are objective and factual; and we are going to clean this mess up.
First off, if you are going to write in English, you are going to learn English grammatical structure, tense, verb usage, point-of-view, et al; or, just quit kidding yourself and wasting out time. Just write it in a language you know, and then have it translated by someone who truly can write English.
Second, stop writing for yourself. In other words, you and your other code writers are not the intended audience. You know the information. Those who the documents are written for are those who DO NOT possess the knowledge and insight you have. (Just as you probably don’t know much about the four visual processing centers of the brain, I wouldn’t write a manual on neural surgery of the occipital lobe, assuming you already have a background in surgical procedures, operating room procedures, or known neural pathways. So, quite writing from your perspective of knowing the logic, algorithms, and functions, and in words you use with each other. Quit assuming we, the unknowing readers, understand the little bits you have left out because they are common in your parlance. WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS THAT YOU LEFT OUT! What we do know is that without that schema and those bits, we are lost!!)
I’ll give you the last example:
On the Configuration FINISH page, it states at the top of the page, in red ink:
“We strongly suggest you to rename the install.php file.”
Followed by:
“We strongly suggest you to rename the install directory.”
Then there is a box of text, the contents informing us that 1- “Your install.php file has been renamed to 1231242342134242343.1234232424install.php.txt”
Followed by the next statement:
“Your install folder too has been renamed to 123235234.234q42install/.”
First off, the first two statements should read:
“We strongly suggest you rename the install.php file.”
and,
“We strongly suggest you rename the install directory.”
More importantly, when you give the first two directives, followed thereafter by the two statements that the subject actions have just been performed, you leave all kinds of room for confusion because the first two statements can now be interpreted in more than one way. Does it mean:
a) They’ve changed the names for me once, but I still need to change them again; or,
b) Have they changed them for me, and I need do nothing; or,
c) If they changed the names already, are those files they changed the names of, one in the same as the file and directory I need to yet change?
(I looked for those modified file and directory names (the long ones with the numbers in the names) in my cPanel File Manager. They don’t exist. So. Did your installation actually work???)
At the end of your installation process, you state we are the most important to you!
If that is true, you need to take these comments as your opportunity to make your product into one with the quality you aspire it to be.
Now is the time to do that.
If you want help, let’s talk about it. It may be time to create a position of Copywriter. I’m sure you have many, many capable and well educated university professors working in the English languages. Maybe time to hire one or two. Hopefully, some that are not code writers. Let them be ‘users’, with the background and skill set of users, not programmers. Have them install the program, and have them write about what they discover. That will put you way ahead of your competition. (Even though they are in the US, the US educational system is no where near what it was in the 50’s and 60’s. Though their docs are better than yours, they aren’t anything to be proud of.
So, seize the day, ‘Carpe Diem’, and go for it. Solve this problem, and make it better!!! ;))
Great and brave comment; hope Richie really learns from it. I have to even go further and assume that Richie must surrender his control and allow others to share moving the process forward.
Though I agree with you in the most part, your comment re the US competition is dead wrong from my viewpoint. They have tons to be proud of, and what we can learn from them here is to put ourselves in the users’ shoes and take it from there.
Cheers.
To Ricky_0: As you are so good at English, and as this in an open source project, why don’t you CONTRIBUTE by submitting your patches, changes and suggestions to the team?
It would be so much more valuable to all of us and would be gratefully received. Rather than spouting off on this blog and making yourself look plain silly; the whole point of Open Source is community contribution.
How much did you pay for Vtiger?
Also, if you can’t hack (no pun intended) the install then you could always buy some support from a local service provider. Although, it isn’t that hard, I can install Vtiger in about 10mins and I’ve only done it twice!
theopensourcerer
Apparently g.g. understood what I was saying; whereas, Mr. Lord is, well, …. I won’t go there.
Actually, I have contributed. It has nothing to do with ’spouting off’. It has all to do with moving things forward. Too bad some take things personally. Not going to win them all.
What I would like is for someone to provide me a quick path for submissions. I write quite a bit, and submit nearly as frequently; most recently to this project, to others in the past.
Difference is, I don’t take the comments personally. So, moving forward. Someone please provide me with the best venue for presenting drafts of doc augments.
Cheers to you also g.g.!
I have to agree and empathize with Ricky_O and understand where his frustration lies.
I too would very much like to be able to contribute to the documentation and materials for vTiger. I wish I had an understanding of the architecture, schema, models, code, etc. to be of help.
I’ve just spent 6 hours with v5.0.3. Absoutely an amazing release. The folks behind bringing this to life really have something to be proud of.
I’ll be looking for ways to contribute. Feel free to suggest or point me in some direction.
Best Regards to all.
Why don’t you contribute to the wiki: ?
now with the url:
Why don’t you contribute to the wiki?
True, people can contribute to the wiki but still, the website architecture need to be upgraded, the community part is hard to browse efficiently (in my point of view).
I thank and agree with JPCook and Krem.
On both counts, they have hit the proverbial nail on the head.
Out of frustration, I downloaded the Win version and did a full install on a local machine. The 5.0.3 version is remarkable! It goes well beyond being a CRM. The contributors should be extremely proud of what they have created.
It could use some flexibilities, and I’m sure those will be brought forth with time. The key is how and where to get those feedbacks placed.
I also agree the website architecture is inadequate. It is ‘far too busy’, confusing, duplicates tasks, and is simply in need of re-organization.
(For purposes of providing an example of an alternative that works, take a look at LimeSurvey.org. It too is an open source project. It use to known as phpsurveyor. It is not perfect, especially in it’s grammatical structure [which we are slowly working on], but it is extremely fast for contributing and communicating. And therein, it moves the project ahead efficiently and effectively. If you don’t recognize it, they are using Joomla with an add-in template.)
I have to tell you, I stick with great developments, and vTiger is one of them. It just needs to listen to its devotees. Many of us contribute, and not just in edits and code, when we can implement a solution in our businesses. We just won’t do so until we see value in the form of benefits; that being can we use it. If we can’t understand it, we can’t use it; and therein lies the entire purpose of this thread.
So again, Let’s move it all forward one more step. Let’s get some avenues of submitting input that are fast, understandable, and actionable NOW.
And thank you for the project. You have a WINNER!
I just revisited the Wiki as was suggested to me earlier.
Again, it is far too complicated.
I do not consider myself a developer. I haven’t either the skill sets, nor the knowledge of how to write code. As an alternative for those of us who are definitely “Users”, that section is all for one purpose, ‘taking’ information. There is no link to “CONTRIBUTE”.
To be able to do that, the first-time user, who has discovered something that could be useful to others, and wishes to share it, needs to spend quite a bit of time just learning the layout, schema, and context of this immense online venue. That’s just not going to happen for most visitors. We work for our livings as well, and having to sort through all this is ridiculous. I run two businesses. I have a desktop crammed with ‘to-do’s’ that need to get done by end-of-business each day. Even though I (and I’m sure many others) have discovered some improvements for the project, we simply aren’t going to run a mile to deliver a message next door; if you get my drift.
It can be improved upon.
Please do.
Again, this is only input, from one of those that the project has deemed to be their most important participant.
Thanks for reading.
Dear Team,
Thanks for your feedback.
I have created a Wiki page to gather our community feedback on organization of the wiki content. Please consider posting your constructive feedback here.
I am sure, with our strong community (~500 wiki users) support we can successfully organize the exisitng information and provide better docs for all (end-users/consultants/developers etc).
For any additional clarifications, please feel free to contact me at gopals at vtiger dot com.
Regards,
Gopal
Hi Krem & Balduin,
Thanks for posting your feedback on our Network of Sites
Regards,
Gopal