Tutorial/Faq's

[Nizzok]

Hi all,

First let me say how cool I think ARK is. Just sort of gleaming the
cube if you will, this is exactly the sort of tool a lot of people
need. Right now it's probably far and away beyond the use of most
regular academics who tend to think Excel is a database, fear
computers, and so forth.

The issue I've run into is a catch 22. This system is meant for non-
technical people (i.e. people who couldn't code something equivalent
in VB or php) but requires at least the technical knowledge to set it
up (although yes, I can see how if you know enough to want to use it,
you should probably know how to build one yourself). Now, I don't
pretend to know computers all that well, and I've turned to Ark
essentially because I didn't want to reinvent the wheel, but I've had
some trouble figuring this stuff out and some of the documentation is
really opaque if you don't have level X of technical knowledge (I
know, I know RTFM but...).

From my short experience with the program you definitely need to have
the tutorial username/password in the install document.

The next most practical thing would be either/or a good tutorial on
how to customize modules, or putting out a site_register/monument
module a la Fasti. I see how useful the field recording module is
(contexts) and principles behind some of the validation logic but
still lack the technical know-how to implement this quickly or
efficiently.

So, if there was a Ark user's wish-list I'd suggest.

1) slightly improved 'getting-started' documentation
2) a module creation FAQ-tutorial
3) a transclusion tutorial.