Question

Why have you complicated TWiki beyond usability????

I worked with it for what? About three years now? Had install down pat, Now?

Have you all lost your minds????? Your call, but I say it is 100% an engineers/programmers program, and you have all completely lost touch with reality.

I work 24/7 installing programs for clients with very little problem, and have for three or four years now full time.

I say that twiki is now completely unusable, and not worth bothering with. I asked/recommended over a year ago, or was it two? to SIMPLIFY it. What you have done is unbelievable! It is now uninstallable, and completely unusable except for the private programmers/engineers twiki club here. Which is fine, its your program. I will never recommend it, nor install it again for anyone.

You have even complicated the install beyond anyones ability to understand it in any way whatsoever. Even htpasswd lol

Environment

-- BruceRProchnau - 01 Aug 2006

Answer

If you answer a question - or someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is below the edit box.

Thank you for sharing your sentiment with us. We are listening. Feedback like this will hopefully align the TWikiCommunity better with the TWikiMission. KISS is one, designing for a good "out of box experience" is another point you are referring to. Could you share some concrete details why you think we "complicated TWiki beyond usability"? If we know more details we can perhaps address some of your concerns.

I recognized that we simplified the install docs for power users, but with this we complicated it for people not familiar with Apache configuration. We are fixing this. But again, please bring some specifics so that we can address the issues you have.

-- PeterThoeny - 01 Aug 2006

I see you're still fighting, Bruce! After your last comment in BruceRProchnau I thought we'd lost you

If possible, please do some notes during this first installation try with Dakar, often much is forgot afterwards. When you are done please post your notes to Codev, together with any enhancement suggestions.

On my part I am certain you will find TWiki is actually very much simplified in many ways once your initial frustration is over, but let's take that discussion once we have non-programmer issues clear.

-- SteffenPoulsen - 01 Aug 2006

As a non-programmer going through a virgin install for the first time, some comments: a) there is very little web published tutorial info on getting a web server up and running with perl supported. Took me two days, including the neat discovery on first apache install that perl 5 on apache 1.3 on netbsd 3 causes a core dump, with no real fix documented. pity the chump who doesn't know there are TWO apaches and you should go try the second one... Then its another day installing apache2 and ap2-perl from pkgsrc and trying to figure out why you don't have permission to run configure from /bin. when you do get there (.htaccess, dummy) you discover (in my case) that configure has an insecure dependency error and here I sit.

The install docs say that configuring apache and perl are beyond their scope. They then have several lines of command line editing items which must be performed.

My advice: a) go look at the installer for drupal (coming soon) or Joomla! and then ask yourself if you can do that for Twiki. The goal should be complete automation with no command line editing reuqired for any install.

b) place an end to end tutorial on performing a virgin install from os up, using RHL or some similiar OS. Include every step, and no general statements like 'ensure the .htaccess files include execcgi'. wiki it so we can comment it up for various and sundry OS differences.

c) test it on people like me, with a set time goal for a complete installation. a 4 hour target for install on a virgin disk is a good target. whatever th target is, don't stop improving the docs until you reach the goal.

just 2 cents...

/malcolm

-- MalcolmStanley - 04 Aug 2006

Completely agree with MalcolmStanley.

This is my second week working on TWiki customising to my needs. I've looked through the docs and search for whatever I can using google ($query site:twiki.org). Sometimes I find what I need, sometimes I don't. Good thing is the IRC channel where developers are friendly enough to help out or at least point to the right direction. But still no excuse as to solving the more generic problem for newbies.

Once I'm done with TWiki, I'll definitely contribute as much knowledge I have of TWiki. I take notes down for every changes or things that I do for TWiki to make sure I don't have to go through 2562456234561436 re-installation (I've even made my first bash script to do that, imagine!).

Overall, I see potential in TWiki, but a hidden potential that's only for programmers who are solid enough to grasp upon TWiki. I hope that us newbies have the right attitude to push the developers to the right places for the benefit of TWiki, rather than unfruitful criticisms.

The way I see it is. The more I work with TWiki, the more I see how well I can customise it to MY needs. For others wikis, I don't see/feel the flexibility it gives me. The TWiki journey is hard, and worth it if this is the path that needs to be taken for whatever the project is. For me, it's well worth to go through.

-- KwangErnLiew - 04 Aug 2006

Looking back at what I wrote above left me wanting to change it, but thats abdicating responsibility for my own stupidity. It was unfair to the developers and not the least bit constructive. I'm sre the immense amount of work that went into the new release made major improvements, just can't see them til I can get it working properly. I'm not alone though, this past week I ran into three professionals who found it impossible and asking for an alternative wiki that's more user friendly.

I sincerely hope the dev team considers this important. We don't want a "one click install." Just a sensible one. Hopefully I can turn this rant into a more informed form of positive constructive feedback.

I would like to thank both Peter and Steffen for even taking the time to respond to the inconsiderate rant above. That inspired me to take a more constructive approach.

-- BruceRProchnau - 05 Aug 2006

Bruce, we do try to listen. I will echo the remarks above; unless we know what is complicated about the install, it's really hard to "fix" it. I took the approach with TWiki-4 of creating the configure interface to try and ease online configuration (agreed, there are still far too many options, and not enough information on defaults), and moving as much documentation as possible into online help guides, such as IndigoPerlCookbook (which is I think the sort of install document MalcomStanley alludes to). But there is still the problem that the people who write the documentation are (like me) developers, and not sysadmins who deal with installation issues on a daily basis.

Added to that, people just don't refactor the existing docs on Codev enough, so there is a lot of stale content that the cognoscenti know to avoid, but can catch out the unwary.

It would be really, really helpful to have your input - especially if that input includes rewritten documents.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 05 Aug 2006

Thanks for the feedback Crawford. I, like many, install ftp only. So I will undertake documenting what I do and what results take place, and where I get stuck. Will that be a help?

-- BruceRProchnau - 07 Aug 2006

-- MalcolmStanley - 07 Aug 2006

Could I ask someone to look at my open support question? I'd love to provide feedback on the configure script, but I cannot get it to run and really have no idea what to do about it. A little help would be greatly appreciated...

-- MalcolmStanley - 07 Aug 2006

[url of install deleted as twiki is deleted due to below issues.]

-- BruceRProchnau - 07 Aug 2006

Will say more when I am less irritated. I just tried reinstalling and t did not go good at all, and isn't completely installed. NO htpasswd, and who knows how to make it, good old days we just used the htpasswd file!no stylesheets and yes after 20 or 30 installs the paths are correct.

-- BruceRProchnau - 07 Aug 2006

You know, at this point I could fight with it for ten or twenty hours... but having installed software on webservers for years now as a full time job, and considering twiki was a pleasure to install and configure up until this release, I have to say my choice is to delete this install and forget about using or recommending twiki.

-- BruceRProchnau - 07 Aug 2006

Update: I reinstalled a pre-4.0 version which I had in the past very extensively customized. I'll stay with that as its installable, usable, it works, is easily customized by anyone, and then just for fun I integrated it with Movable Type again.

I wonder about the feasability of just using an older realease permanently...I see cars on the road from the 50's and they not only work and get people to where they want to go, they are also cool...so if I put an older release in a safety deposit box and keep it forever...like I said elsewhere....lol

As an example, I replaced the CSS files with a simple one, and made very basic simple web standards templates that makes it very easy to customize the layout and everything works perfectly, so why beat myself up with using a newer much more complicated release?

-- BruceRProchnau - 06 Oct 2006