RT documentation weakness
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- jdw-dd
- Newbie
- Posts: 7
- Thanks: 0
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I'm new to RT, trying to set up my first RT theme. I've found the RT documentation woefully inadequate. I just made a Forums post re: head-scratching I've been doing re: Layout functionality versus the Gantry Divider widget, but I've had equal challenges trying to get RokSprocket to recreate some simple Gallery effects I saw in an RT demo theme. The documentation has nothing like the depth of detail needed to understand the related settings. In order not to waste a lot of time, you need to download then upload the entire RocketLauncher package. That will recreate demo effects, yet still doesn't provide the config understanding that good docs would afford.
From the home page of the RT website, via the Themes and Documentation tabs, there's this;
We have an extensive library of documentation that includes comprehensive how-to guides to help you get started on your site. Everything from WordPress installation guides to detailed, point-by-point reference material for each of our supported products is available. Our extensive documentation library continues to grow every day, and we are committed to making it the absolute best user resource in the entire industry.
I would just say to the RT docs team, "You've still got a long way to go, guys."
The new RT site approach encourages user contributions to build out Gantry and theme-specific docs. Wikis have their place, but it's not to build out core documentation for functionality that people are paying to access. We end-users do not have the time to wade through Forums and engage in all kinds of hit-and-miss trials to try to figure out how to effectively configure Gantry and RT themes. There's a lot of impressive functionality involved with RT's work - that needs and deserves much better documentation.
Also, please, instead of the standard "Box 1" thru "Box 8" approach to options, could standard descriptive text be used? That would help a lot re: conserving end-user time and energy. Also, perhaps, the use of standard Color Picker and Background upload config functionality and such?
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 4193
- Thanks: 42
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It seems like you've taken a quick glance at things and haven't had a chance to really get into building a site with RT products, that's just my guess though.
A little insight on the Gantry framework is that it was developed to be built onto and customized. This means things might be done a little different than other systems, but at the same time it doesn't lock you into anything specific. You can really do anything you want with it and with relative ease once you get the hang of it.
I'm not sure what you're wanting from the docs as they do have a walk-through for each aspect of the theme like this one here:
www.rockettheme.com/docs/wordpress/theme...igm/demo_showcase.md
Things in any system can be improved, but we have had good feedback so far on the new set up. One big request from members was that they wanted more input so that is the reason for choosing a system where members can contribute. Its a good community here and we all like to help out when we figure something out.
As for items like class names, "box1" and "box2", this is done on purpose. If you configure your site with custom text names for every widget or module, it means you need to retrace your steps and do it all over again to change themes. This way, you can change themes and for the most part, have something in place for styling with the new one. Keeping things generic in that sense also lets the designers create whatever they need on the next theme without being locked into a specific "dark layout" class or something.
Like anything new, its takes a little bit of playing around with things to see how much it can actually do.
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