An Actinic Book

[leehack]

There isn't the quantity of people to buy this to warrant the time spent building and maintaining it externally. It has to be made and maintained by actinic, sold or packaged up in the software at a financial loss to be viable.

Don't get confused with the 'dummies' guides which are for software with much bigger userbases or are far smaller pieces of software. An approx 10k userbase is very little to get a captive and paying audience from.

If people are prepared to pay £30-40 for a book (i don't belive this for a second when it came to paying), then a forum for paid support with £30 membership per year would be a much more viable option IMO.

[george]

I've said before, back when v7 was replaced I think, that a decent reference guide would save a lot of the regular requests for help on here.

For people who get into building their website, get it up and running, then it can be months before they get back into the design or cosmetic side of their site and many of the methods of doing this will have been forgotten. Many replies on here, although correct (and much appreciated of course), are too brief for some people to understand fully (no offence meant to anyone of course). Chris Dickens replies were the bollox back in the day.

Trying to think up an example suggests `blockifs`. I'd like to have any marketing lists just pick from products that are in stock, so where does one start looking for the solution for that? Its not such an unusual thing to want either is it?

A chapter on css... the theory, and the application of it in Actinic would be handy.

I'm sure it could be collated like an ebook thingy. Buy it once and get free updates for life, and just print out the bits that you need.

I'm really surprised how much basic stuff I've forgotten about Actinic and how to modify it due to the fact that I only get `into it` every few months or so.

It does look like other carts are becoming easier to modify as time goes on as well so maybe Actinic has a bit of catching up to do.

[leehack]

Chris Dickens replies were the bollox back in the day.

100% agree with that. However, he was of all the frequent posters, the only one to get paid for his time to reply. The rest are replying and earning a separate living.

[leehack]

Trying to think up an example suggests `blockifs`. I'd like to have any marketing lists just pick from products that are in stock, so where does one start looking for the solution for that? Its not such an unusual thing to want either is it?

Again George i agree, but as a site gets more successful, it has less time to administer the design side so usually gets someone in on that side. If you do not use actinic regularly, you simply cannot expect to understand setting up a blockif once every month or so without extensive step-by-step instructions.

That then creates a time versus reward argument. For instance, if one of my clients wanted what you ask for George, it'd cost them around £15 to get and usually within 24 hours. Why spend time learning things they will never use again, focus on what you are good at has to be a better use of time surely?

[Chunkford]

how about an actinic wiki?

You could use either http://twiki.org/ or http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

[pinbrook]

Sounds good. To get round the printing problem for away-from-computer reading...why not offer a simple A4 manual, bound with a plastic binder. It doesn't need to be anything too flashy, and would surely be cheap to produce and easy to replace and update...

well you could easily print it yourself....

having books on the shelf would be a waste of paper, ink etc as most of the stuff on the shelf would be out of date.

[Chunkford]

A quick reference sheet might be an idea instead of a book.

[JFro]

well you could easily print it yourself....

having books on the shelf would be a waste of paper, ink etc as most of the stuff on the shelf would be out of date.

True, but I would be more likley to read something organised into a book, rather than a mass of printed paper sheets. Make it cheap to produce, and easy to recycle...!

And I would pay £30-£40 for a book, honestly!! Not that I dispute how useful this forum is, I just want to get my head round Actinic more fully - and that's what I'd pay.

[jont]

Interesting that nobody has mentioned the inbuilt help file - there is a load of stuff in there worthy of a read. Agreed it is not a "dummies guide to" but it contains a lot of info and I wager not many bother to consult it.

[jont]

Why spend time learning things they will never use again, focus on what you are good at has to be a better use of time surely?

I am finding this more and more - sometimes it is far easier and cost effective to farm it out, get it done correctly and for less than it takes in time to pfaff around yourself and potentially kill the site.

[leehack]

I agree but people only see this when they see the other side, they're blind to it somewhat. Take the latest site review, 36 separate page layouts was it, you have got to be kidding me, what an absolute bonkers situation when someone thinks they have to do that. There is no book that could teach them not to do that i'm afraid.

The most successful sites that i know of and have worked on do not administer the design side at all, that may be coincidental, but i very much doubt it. Letting go must be very hard for people and i fully understand the stance, it's just a little naive IMO, but only obvious, once the other side has been seen.

[gabrielcrowe]

blimey, are we talking about wikis again? years later?

[Rich Brady]

IMO not enough users use the resources that are available to them now. Not to there full extent anyway:

1. In built help
2. User Guides
3. Advanced User Guides
4. Community
5. Knowledge Base

Adding another one to the list is only going to cost Actinic time and money that I don't think will be recouped.

[george]

Does a post from someone who does not think it'd be a good idea for a book mean a vote is taken away?

[Rich Brady]

Does a post from someone who does not think it'd be a good idea for a book mean a vote is taken away?

Thank George that's reminded me.

Ben would it be useful to Actinic if these wish list threads were converted into Polls? I'm pretty sure the forum software allows it. It would give you and us a clear indication of how popular an idea is?