Contents
1. Why a users guide?
2. Acknowledgments
3. Who should not use Website@School?
4. To conclude
In many Open Source
Software (OSS) projects, documentation often fails to get the
attention it deserves. Writing documentation is a low priority
task on the to-do list of many software developers. They like
to write exciting code, come up with cleverly devised
algorithms, or try to break the unbreakable. That's all very
fine, but we think it's also a pity. Many good OSS projects
could have had a much broader user base if more care had been
taken to properly document the project.
There are a lot of good (or bad if you wish) reasons for this
lack of project documentation.
- Developers like writing code much more than writing
documentation.
- Developers tend to say: "Read the source, Luke". Quite, but
that simply won't do for end users.
- Writing documentation is not considered high-quality work,
but it most certainly is.
- "Users never bother to read documentation, so why bother to
write any?" There might be some truth in that, but then again,
if the documentation were well-written...
- In a CMS that is so rich in features and under
constant development, we forget what we did 5 years ago and
what exactly were the 'great' features of module X or
theme Y.
- Our target audience, who will sooner or later be wishing a
step-by-step guide to perform certain tasks.
- We prefer not to have our work interrupted and precious
time wasted by people asking questions when the answers can be
found in the Users' Guide. We did our very best to make this
guide as complete as possible. The Website@School Users' Guide
is a work 'always under construction'. Suggestions are most
welcome.
- "Stop bugging me with your questions! RTFM!". RTFM is
Internet jargon and stands for many explanations. One of them
is 'Read The Fine Manual'. We hope that the readers of the
Website@School Users' Guide, when using Website@School, will
agree and reject other meanings of the above abbreviation.
As is mostly the case with
projects like ours, this one too leans heavily on the work of
others. Website@School cannot be created without the
cooperation of many volunteers who translated Website@School
program in numerous languages, translators who translated the
manual, testers who found a few bugs and many, many other kind
people who felt the need to help education in their
country.
Thanks are due to our donors: schools, individual donors,
institutions and companies that use Website@School and support us
financially or otherwise.
When you
crave for 'the latest and the greatest', Website@School might
not be a good choice for your organization. If you want 'the
best and the safest', please take a peek at the Introduction and/or do the Basic procedures for beginners.
We hope you will enjoy your
Website@School sites for years to come. Apologies for the
typo's; they 'are not in the code! The manual writer is
visually impaired; unable to tackle them all. Please help.
The Website@School Development Team:
Dirk Schouten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands <dirk (at)
websiteatschool (dot) eu>
Peter Fokker, Bussum, the Netherlands <peter (at) berestijn
(dot) nl>
Karin Abma, Heemstede, the Netherlands <k.abma (at) quicknet
(dot) nl>
September 2013
(top)
Author: Dirk Schouten <dirk (at) websiteatschool
(dot) eu>
Last updated: 2014-12-10