Newbie Friendly

[Flit]

Hello my dear programmers and commiters,

I am very pleased by satchmo and its design.
It is a nice code, and nice way to do the things for a ecommerce
solution.

One thing I am willing to help is to make it more 'newbie' friendly.
There is some conflicts or older documentation for the newbies that
need to be updated.
By example the quickstart part.

It does not say that you need to install south.
(I know seems obvius....but not for newbies)
Indeed there is a open ticket for that:
https://bitbucket.org/chris1610/satchmo/issue/1317/add-requirements-to-setuppy

And what about the 'default' password, why it was not indicated on the
quickstart documentation?

But it seems we had a 'troll' moment and after the real issue was
sidestepped with another issue.

I do like satchmo and I do think people are not able to appreciate it
more because we have some entry barriers that should not be there.

I am willing to help with my Newbieness ;)

What you think of a simple 'target' something like:

1. All beginners will be able to follow the quickstart instructions
and be able to run the django local server may it be Mac, Linux or
Windows

Please do not see it as criticism but I am willing to help.
I do think the far the beginners can go, the more they will get
comfortable to learn more.

If it is ok with you tell me:

What is the best way to submit modifications to the web page/
tutorials?

Thank you

Carlos Henrique Cano

[ionic drive]

Hi Carlos,

1)
your suggestions sound good.
I think we are already on a good way. With the time all levels(beginner and intermediate) get better and better.
Both levels are important to all of us.

For me it was not that bad, that installing satchmo was a bit tricky and time-consuming.
WHY?
Because during that process I have learned a lot about the base system, which afterwards helped me
out when I needed to do some re-configuration/adjustments to fit my needs.

2) South is an option. Its not a necessity.
This is the same on all django projects. South can help you on db changes, but you do not need it.
You can run satchmo without South. But I would recommend using South, as its a great tool!

Great to see you joining
ionic

[hynekcer]

> south...

South was long time integrated in half way. Since Satchmo 0.9.2 final
South will be enabled in the quick installation by default and
necessary to be installed before Satchmo update/upgrade or if a future
upgrade is expected. I am trying to support upgrades backwards from
between versions 0.9.0 final and 0.9.2 final easy even without
previously installed South.

Documentation should be balanced. Some people say that Satchmo is an
unusual Django application which duplicates parts of Django
documentation. Not all is to be duplicated.

> And what about the 'default' password, why it was not indicated on the
> quickstart documentation?

I do not know what you mean by 'default' password. (which password and
where?) In general: If you customize anything related to a password, a
default password should be an empty string in all cases for security
reasons in order to every input is rejected by default if a password
is not configured intentionally and no password should be stored in
the souce code except of local_settings otherwise it can be easy
revealed by repository. (no defaults like "1234"!) This is not
anything unexpected what should be explained.

> issue 1317

Nobody wrote anything to my objections to the issue
https://bitbucket.org/chris1610/satchmo/issue/1317/add-requirements-to-setuppy
. Therefore the ticket stay not only "open" but "new".

> What is the best way to submit modifications to the web page/
> tutorials?

The source is the /docs directory of Satchmo. Create a fork of
Satchmo, edit what you want, commit and ask for beedback or send a
pull request if you are just sure with yourself.

[Patrick]

I would say that to make things very newbie friendly that you could make a virtualbox with everything setup. Say an ubuntu server with sane defaults so people could test drive it with minimal effort.

- Patrick

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[flit]

All your suggestions are very good.

All levels are needed for a project like this.

We need beginners so 20% of them became intermediate.

And we need intermediates so 10% of them became experts ;)

All projects need all levels, beginners like me can see what is missing or confusing for normal people.

The Virtual Machine is a good Idea.

I will work updating the quick start steps and doing a virtual machine for easy deploy.

And will check, recheck and  check again  before committing.

In the firsts commits I will do a Pull and ask for feedback just be to safe.

And if someone else has more suggestion please do it

Thank you

Carlos Henrique Cano