[pLog-svn] Suggestions for PLOG team

[Jon Daley]

On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, nick nizhenyuan wrote:
> (It worried me a lot that although 1600 person registerd on my site, but 
> only several persons keep using it),
 	My guess would be that that happens to everyone - people are just 
checking things out, maybe not even sure if they want to blog, but their 
friend said that they just *have* to do it, so they sign up, maybe post 
once, to see that it works, and then realize that they don't have the 
time, aren't interested in posting their thoughts to the world, etc.
 	I think a more telling statistic would be, how many people do you 
have that used plog for a month or so, and then never came back.  I would 
guess that those sorts of people switched to another service.
 	Additionally, I'll bet it is like version control programs - if 
you research which program you should use for a corporate environment (ie. 
have the bucks to fork up if it ends up being a better product) you will 
find that everyone complains about all of them, and as I told people I was 
looking into switching, I found that a number of companies were also 
switching, VSS to PVCS, PVCS to Perforce, Perforce to Subversion, 
Subversion to VSS, etc. people know what things they don't like, see that 
another product doesn't have those problems, switch, but in 6 months 
realize that the new product has all sorts of other oddities that they 
didn't know about.  (I ended up sticking with PVCS, since we already know 
their downsides, bugs, etc).
 	There are a ton of free blog providers, and so it fairly painless 
to switch, particularly if a user hasn't posted very much stuff.
 	I think it would be great to hear from more users, not just that 
it is too hard, but specific things that would make it easier.
 	I think you are probably right in your statement that after they 
use it for a bit, they are fine, but the initial glance can be 
overwhelming.
 	I posted this on the forums the other day, but I will say it 
again.
 	I have gotten four other people to start using pLog, a 
computer science phd, a home-maker, a grandmother, and a Christian campus 
minister (degree in biology).
 	The programmer has had some trouble with the install, 0.3.2 to 1.0 
to 1.0.1, mostly small things, and figured it was easier to call me then 
to look for documentation.  He hasn't touched the templates yet, 
except for a couple minor things, just hasn't had time to work on them. 
He has integrated his blog into his main page, using the api calls, I 
think did it before Oscar had his API page done, so just poked through the 
class files.
 	The homemaker (my wife) hasn't modified anything, just posts, so 
she maybe doesn't count, as she doesn't need to think about admin sorts of 
things, I found out the other day, she hasn't ever clicked on anything 
except "manage" in the dashboard.
 	The grandmother started with my template, but has made extensive 
changes on 0.3.2, will eventually switch to 1.0, particularly if I can get 
the auth and blogstatistics plugins working.  She is looking into writing 
her own plugin, and has looked all over the place in the admin section. 
She has learned HTML over the last couple of years, and has found smarty 
easy to learn.
 	The campus minister, who hasn't ever touched HTML in his life, has 
been blogging away like a madman, using the resources, and has modified 
the templates a little.  He has been helped extensively by the jupload and 
template editor plugins.  I think he thought the admin section was fine, 
he went through one by one and looked at all the settings, asked questions 
about some, and presumably ignored others.  I don't believe he has ever 
looked at the documentation/forums/etc.  And I haven't answered all that 
many questions.
 	Who knows who actually read all this, I tend to ramble too much, 
but I think I have a decent cross section of people, of course including 
myself who I think blacksnday includes in the "developers have always 
hated me for years" stuff, and of course, I only heard about plog last 
May, hmm, that is actually longer than I thought it was, I guess I only 
started actively working on development stuff in November or so.


**************************************************************
*     Jonathan M. Daley     *  It's always easy to see both  *
*   jondaley at snurgle.org    *  sides of an issue we are not  *
* www.snurgle.org/~jondaley *  particularly concerned about. *
**************************************************************