Hey y'all

In case you missed the announcement in our last newsletter, we have prepared a few helpful articles to help everybody get a better understanding of how to use the app’s features. More articles will be coming soon, but now you can read about the various site elements and learn how to style them in the design pane.

Your feedback is greatly welcomed!

Enjoy

For now, I'd be happy with just the Manual with images. Later on video's can be made.

I think there are two usage modes for documentation, and two corresponding organizations for documentation.

The first is "Tutorial" mode. You present things in the order that they're easiest to grasp, delaying advanced topics until those they depend upon have been explained.

The second is "Reference" mode. This is for someone who wants to go directly to some arbitrary feature or function and get a description of it. You organize things alphabetically, or in categories.

I personally think that software that lacks *complete* documentation is like a library whose books aren't indexed or sorted. Contains a lot of potential, but in practice it's mostly useless. IMO software is not ready to release until the manual is done.

User fora are *not* a substitute. Forum questions are useless for a tutorial user for obvious reasons,and interestingly, become less and less useful to a reference user the more posts there are. This is because support is a pathological case for search; the ratio of unanswered variations on the same question to valid answers gets higher and higher with time, and no search engine can tell the difference. Try finding the answer to any question via the support forums for any Google product for an example of this.

So, Scott, much as your coders won't like this, you must insist that they knuckle down and write a manual. A good one - with complete explanation of every single button and function. Make it a rule; code doesn't see the light of day until it's documented.

BTW video is a mistake for anything but a quick start guide. It takes far to long to find what you want for a reference-mode user, and even once you've located the desired piece of info, it's too slow; most people can read/skim far faster than they talk.

Best,
jhd

Agree.
videos sound great but any different setup or change of version and they are out of date.
Documentation will move a product beyond a niche product into a more widely adopted product - Having been in the business of writing software since the late 1980s I would also suggest that developers are (IMHO) not the best people to write manuals and documentation. Get someone who can write and has a reasonable knowledge of the objective of the software (designing/building websites) - the process of them learning the product, with good access to the developer(s), will also have the spin off benefit of identifying bugs and feeding back into developer(s) ideas to improve the software.
If you don't have someone who fits this bill, engage with your early adopters offering free hosting and/or the ability to get their suggestions/requests incorporated into the software (and of course credits) or something in return for their producing the manual.

I would want written material with a picture or two when necessary. Video is a slow, clumsy way to quickly solve a problem.

Whatever gets written, for god's sake get non-techies to proof read and trial it. If you want the product to attract more than just professional website designers it needs to be user friendly. I've spent far too much time mucking around with it because there wasn't a manual and would have held off buying it had I known. I think it is a great tool but don't feel comfortable recommending it to others without a manual.

I strongly prefer documentation that offers a step by step and examples as Gllincoln wrote. Anywhere I can get such articles Terry

You can find all the articles for RSD here http://www.coffeecup.com/help/articles/ … e+Designer

@jhd,

Absolutely agree with you and the others who have voiced a similar recommendation.

Manual, complete. Video is pretty but very slow and time consuming.