Hmmm. For those who have not been following ians soap story he was told two weeks ago by several members of the forum not to do what he was attempting to do with the software but he ignored us all and managed to get into a right mess. It was only yesterday that he finally listened and wonder of wonders things worked for him. Any software will fail if you use it the wrong way - what is intuitive for one person is unworkable for another. As for the limited community we have I disagree with what he says all the info he needed to do what he wanted is already on the forum and if he had listened to us the job would have been completed in the half day timescale his boss gave him.
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Not that there's any need for sniping. I've tried to follow what was asked of me all the way. FWIW, I'm building the site again from scratch, and I'm still struggling. So much for half a day...Originally posted by RuralWeb View PostComment
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I'm not sniping ian simply putting your comments into perspective.Comment
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My perspective is that of a new user picking up a workload from an existing user with no handover. I can't be unique in that regard, can I?
If I had the experience to demand to do a piece of work my own way (or the way recommended on here), I probably wouldn't be asking for assistance in the first place
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no you aren't alone, actinic is a tool that tries to keep both n00bs and experienced designers happy. Out of the box you can build in 1/2 day, but to do anything more than that requires time and alot of referring to documentation. Upgrading is a whole new ball game.My perspective is that of a new user picking up a workload from an existing user with no handover. I can't be unique in that regard, can I?
this is something that constantly crops up, all to often we see people placed in impossible situations by having to do what the boss says. Careful negotiation skills come in very useful.If I had the experience to demand to do a piece of work my own way (or the way recommended on here), I probably wouldn't be asking for assistance in the first place
Do you have "Excellent Communication Skills" on your CV by chance?
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As jo says upgrading form v7 to 8or9 is possibly the most difficult thing to ever attempt with actinic especially if you have a site with many modifications as Ian had and to do that without any previous knowledge and in a couple of weeks was always doomed.Upgrading is a whole new ball game
Any way Ian I will leave you to get on with the site on your own - as you say the forum could be better so Ill go walk the dog
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Half a day and you can have a basic site operational, I managed to transfer a Joomla site via Dreamweaver and had it operational within a day (its quicker if you can use actinic from scratch) but it took another two days just to get all the images over into products so the site is now in the same state as the Joomla one. Updating V8 to V9 might well take half a day (4 hours) but V7 needs a lot more work.Originally posted by IanSaunders View PostComment
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I can understand Ian’s' point about resources.
He's right in that there seems to be very little (apart from the excellently knowledgeable folks like Gabe, Malc, Lee etc in this forum), on Actinic in the World Wide Web. Earlier this month this forum went down on a couple of weekends (I think!), and it caused havoc.
I'd hate for Actinic to become open-source. Hate, Hate, Hate it. I'm not a fan of open-source/community based products for lots of reasons, but one of their benefits is the community that builds up around it.
However, if you take non-open source products (Photoshop, MS Office, iTunes, Mac OSx, Windows etc. - these are big name products but you get the idea), there are still many many resources available both by the software vendor and the community.
I, for one, would love to see Actinic provide interactive tutorials, videos, guides (and not just the AUG etc) etc. I know that part of the revenue Actinic makes is from training, but I agree entirely with Ian - if Actinic was more visible "in the cloud" to quote the trendy term, then I think it would be great. Let’s face it, the Actinic website is a shambles - in itself it doesn't sell the product...but to have downloads of sample shops, videos, themes etc on there would be huge resource. Developers and Designers would still make their money as, I believe, there would be a lot more users of the product.
Just my 2p of course.Comment
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Kev, I agree with you on this. Although the problem seems to be that developing a proper site - (see Actinic's rivals (both O/S and paid) and you'll see what I mean) - would take a lot of time, resources and thus, money. The more money that costs to develop, as well as the time taken - would mean less time for Actinic to develop the software and therefore we're all left standing shouting "When are we getting XYZ?". Round and round the roundabout.Originally posted by CymraegKev View Post
Unfortunately it looks severely unlikely that we'll all get the features we want, as well as a proper prospectus on marketing, which IMO Actinic fails to do in a justified way. I know Actinic have said all along that they create software, not websites - but at least they could sort out their own site. For a product aimed directly at the internet market, it seems ironic to have an online shop selling the software have a broken design, full of dead ends, dead links, etc, etc.
Constructive criticism, is it not?
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