Here in rural PA (USA)--ease of use is paramount
Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 8:07 pm
I run a site for the library where I work (*ambo makes my life MUCH easier!) and another for my primary volunteer project, the Community Information Network. (They're in the regular showcase thread; will re-post in this showcase when I've converted to Joomla, which I hope will be soon!) In both of these contexts, people (staff members for the library site, just about anybody for the CIN) being able to add their own content is the biggest selling point.
But I have found that even with a good editor on the front end, most people in a rural area like this just don't have the technical skills to be comfortable adding content, to my disappointment. I knew tech skills were low, but I was sure that most organizations would have at least one or two people who were web-savvy enough to grok pretty quickly. Well...no. The concept of "publishing" throws them. The tabs confuse them. They don't get intro vs. main text. Thank goodness for TinyMCE cleaning up Word bloat, because most everyone uses Word and IE... badly. Even logging in is tough for some people. I've done some training sessions and put up some FAQs, but people still say they want step-by-step documentation (which takes forever to write, is impossible to update, and most people don't actually read anyway, or they skip crucial steps, or... OK, I'm whining now, I'll stop!) At the CIN site, we really need a proper calendar, but Events is just a bear to use--nobody understands the publishing tab on that! (as an aside, I've started looking at Ext Calendar but it doesn't do what I *really* want either, because I want to be able to sort/filter by both category AND location)
Stingrey and Nic's code to supress the extra tabs is the kind of thing I think smaller, less tech-savvy non-profits could use in future releases. A simpler interface in general, available for particular groups, would be great! Even a simpler editor with just a few buttons.
And sort of related to that... I wanted to do more hand-holding in the acknowledgements of submission, etc., but mosmsg going in the URL is a TERRIBLE way to do that. I would like to see those kinds of messages be content that doesn't have a length limit, can be formatted, can have links, etc.
But I have found that even with a good editor on the front end, most people in a rural area like this just don't have the technical skills to be comfortable adding content, to my disappointment. I knew tech skills were low, but I was sure that most organizations would have at least one or two people who were web-savvy enough to grok pretty quickly. Well...no. The concept of "publishing" throws them. The tabs confuse them. They don't get intro vs. main text. Thank goodness for TinyMCE cleaning up Word bloat, because most everyone uses Word and IE... badly. Even logging in is tough for some people. I've done some training sessions and put up some FAQs, but people still say they want step-by-step documentation (which takes forever to write, is impossible to update, and most people don't actually read anyway, or they skip crucial steps, or... OK, I'm whining now, I'll stop!) At the CIN site, we really need a proper calendar, but Events is just a bear to use--nobody understands the publishing tab on that! (as an aside, I've started looking at Ext Calendar but it doesn't do what I *really* want either, because I want to be able to sort/filter by both category AND location)
Stingrey and Nic's code to supress the extra tabs is the kind of thing I think smaller, less tech-savvy non-profits could use in future releases. A simpler interface in general, available for particular groups, would be great! Even a simpler editor with just a few buttons.
And sort of related to that... I wanted to do more hand-holding in the acknowledgements of submission, etc., but mosmsg going in the URL is a TERRIBLE way to do that. I would like to see those kinds of messages be content that doesn't have a length limit, can be formatted, can have links, etc.
I think your experience with your users highlights the dilemma between simplicity and functionality. The more useful and feature-rich any application becomes, the more complex it becomes to use. And while Joomla does a fantastic job of keeping things as simple as possible, it does require a basic level of web know-how to operate.