Hi everyone,
This is a general discussion to gauge the main difficulties encountered when first learning OctoberCMS.
Additional comments are welcome. Thank you for your input.
Hello, I am a frontend developer using OctoberCMS in production for about 5 years.
Initial Challenges: it was a bit difficult when I started because the documentation was not as friendly as it is now. Everything became more clear after watching a series of tutorials on the “Watch and Learn” YouTube channel that covered a lot of features, if not all the features available at that time. After that, searching through the documentation was much easier.
Documentation and Resources: for me, it is much easier to understand the documentation now, compared to the previous version. Also continue promoting October Talk. I prefer to solve “my problems” here instead of a chat group. Sometimes I can find similar issues here and I don’t even need to ask anymore and it’s just because I was advised to come here from the Telegram channel.
Learning Speed: New colleagues seem to learn the features faster than I did. I think the videos are a more attractive way for learning, so maybe, if possible, more videos in future.
I understand that making videos takes a lot of time and they might become outdated in a short period. For example, I use GSAP and with each major update, they update their documentation videos with new detailed versions, which makes it much easier and faster to learn. On YouTube there’s a lot of outdated video tutorials and I personally avoid them in general.
It’s a suggestion to help the new users and hopefully to make the whole CMS more attractive.
Features and more comprehensive reviews to plugins and features could be a good try. Reviews about the the ways plugins are made with explanations.
P.s.: Docs are good these days,
Thank you!
Hi, I’m the founder of an experienced agency and started using OC about 3 years ago. After a couple of months we had adopted it as the go to solution for almost every web development.
Initial Challenges:
I agree with @Alex. I started with the “watch and learn” video series and also Sam’s screencasts on the help centers OC website section. I think that if I would had to start only by documentation it would’ve been much much slower and maybe I’d just not follow using it.
Documentation and resources:
I think that the documentation now is far much better and more detailed than on V1. Having said that… I find the new organization of it very confusing… Extenging, Api, markup… I go there very often and still find that some things are scattered. For example, Tailor has a part in the CMS guide and I usually go there also when I want to remember something about the Entries content field, just to realise that this is on the API handbook section.
I love that lately there have been a lot of examples added in the docs… that is great. I would also love to have some in depth new videos.
Learning Speed:
In my case with those videos I learnt to use OC quite fast. I had to get used to the incredible additions on V2 and specially V3… but the Forum helped me a lot. I did notice a decrease on that speed when dealing with more advanced stuff, but I guess that is pretty much the common case. I would like the DOCs to keep growing and evolving with specific examples to address that need.
Everyone at our team love working with OC. Keep up with the great work you’re doing!