Thread

And when, like a good boy, I searched for “edit group assignments”—the LITERAL name of the page in channel management, BTW—I get this search result:

Your search - “edit group assignments” site:ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/ - did not match any documents.

Really? EE has a functional page with a form and then offers no info about it? How is this helpful? More to the point, WHERE do I look to understand what this is?

Is it just me or is the user guide woefully inadequate? (And is this google search thing for real?) I’ve been through the EE2 intro docs and I’ve read—ad nauseam—the User Guide section of the EE website, but no useful examples are given—using REAL DATA—of HOW these elements/tags/modules/whatever might be used in practice. So everything is confoundingly abstract.

1. WHAT is a category group and WHY would I assign one instead of leaving it “none”? What might this IMPLY about the kind of data I’m using?

2. WHAT is a status group and WHY would I assign one? Would I create one and use it across the board? Why/why not?

3. WHAT is a field group and WHY would I assign one? None? Basic? What IS this?

4. And what are “custom fields” and WHY are they “held together” in custom field groups? HOW are these used in relation to channels and group assignments (and templates)?

I’m hitting a brick wall in understanding the basic architecture of EE2. Having built my own PHP-based CMS, it seems blisteringly obvious to me that some kind of “help” mode is needed from within the EE CP itself—clickable info links that explain RIGHT THEN AND THERE 1) what it is 2) what it does and 3) how to use it. This doesn’t strike me as a terribly revolutionary concept for the benefit of new users.

Otherwise what invariably ends up happening is that a new user starts on one thing, then must go off hunting—as I did—for information about what they’re looking at. Then when they don’t find it—as I didn’t—they try cockamamie ideas like searching for a tutorial on youtube or poking through endless forum threads trying to find any kind of useful info. About ONE simple item. It’s absurd.

So here I am, once again, posting a basic question (and waiting on an answer) about a basic component of EE that could have been spelled out in the documentation with logical examples.

P.S. The Wiki proved useless here too.

Hi, imagesurf.

I created three articles on my site EEBeginners

They are:

What is a Field Group and Why Should I Assign One?

What is a Status Group and Why Should I Assign One?

What is a Category Group and Why Would I Use One?

Do these articles help at all? I’ll be happy to add more.

Thank you, but I would have loved to have had this information three weeks ago when I started. Where would I have found this website?

But alas, it’s too little too late. At every step there are just more questions than I can have answered and so I’m about to recommend to my client that we move to WordPress. The support here just doesn’t cut it for getting new—and paid—users up and running with this kind of system.

I’m so disappointed because I had such high hopes for EE.

Hi, imagesurf.

I maintain EEBeginners as a resource for those people who are just starting out on their journey. It’s not an official support forum. I also have EEHowTo for HowTo entries.

It’s always a balance trying to find out what to document, and how people best learn. But if we don’t know what questions you have, we can’t answer them. What would have helped?

What remaining questions do you have about EE? Would a Beginners section in the forums have been a better idea, so that it would have been a bit easier to look for those kinds of answers?

What remaining questions do you have about EE?

How do I answer this, Sue? Surely you must know this is far too generalized to be useful.

The problem, you understand, is that at EVERY step I’ve had A MILLION questions, and for each of these I have to pore through the arcana of the unnavigable user guide (no diagrams, few useful examples), or use the !&*#%$^ SEARCH box in the FORUM, trying to properly enunciate what code fragment + error message I get, or what bizarre PHP vs EE tag question I have, or how to even know about a module’s existence that does something useful without knowing how to ask whether it exists or not (and that even the CHANNEL is a module—I didn’t know that!), or even just basic questions about how the EE modules relate to one another (it’s still murky to me) and how EE architecture relates to real-world examples of building things.

For the types of niggling common issues that arise in early stages of developing a website on a totally new platform, the forum-based support, user guide and wiki are useless: at a point when users need the most help is when it’s apparently most lacking here. Some problem types are difficult if not impossible to find a solution to simply by virtue of how one goes about searching a FORUM for detailed, case-specific items that rely on code fragments and nomenclature to properly identify. A veritable nightmare if you’re just starting out.

I see no diagrams anywhere and real-world examples—typically the most useful kind of information for understanding how things like channels and categories and statuses and templates and themes and tags and variables work—are few and unhelpful. EE should take some cues from php.net; they do it right.

Only today—4 weeks after purchasing this license—did I learn about the EEBeginners website resource—that you maintain yourself!! Why isn’t EE doing this officially?? What’s the holdup for Pete’s sake? And where was this type of information when I needed it?

And I come at this with years of experience in building PHP-based e-commerce tools as well as a full-fledged product CMS system, and years more building websites. This begs 2 questions: 1) Why did I have so much difficulty understanding EE architecture and modular interoperability, and 2) why couldn’t I find the information I needed to solve (mostly basic) questions of logic and best practice?

The answers are too lengthy to go into, nor do I particularly care to spend any more of my time trying to motivate EE to understand just how badly it has dropped the ball. A great product means nothing without an ironclad support system.

I hope other would-be customers read this and pause before clicking the Buy button. I came to EE largely because I thought a paid license would earn me top-notch support WHEN and WHERE I needed it. Not the case at all. I can get bad support anywhere.

There are far easier CMS choices out there, and some of them are even free.

Hi imaginesurf,

An improved Getting Started guide is something we’re actively working on in preparation for the upcoming stable release next month. Our Community page has a number of getting started resources as well. There are definitely some free options out there with less of a learning curve, but they lack the power and flexibility of EE in my opinion (and I had the same opinion before joining EllisLab!)

So while EE may not be a good fit for you right now, we do appreciate the feedback. Going ahead and closing this but we’ll always be here if/when you’re ready to give EE another shot!