Suggestion for Documentation

[SpidermonBob]

My Suggestion for Documentation is that someone responsible for this "product" or the SiteBuilder project should at least patch together some notes.


My preference would be a simple txt or word.doc. Forget the helpscreen and PDF document format, just make it easy to view and... Please provide something sooner rather than later.


So my My Suggestion for Documentation is that anything is better than nothing.

Now! Would be a real good time to provide something...

 

[zero@]

I don't understand - what's wrong with the PDF? I prefer PDF to Word documents any day of the week. As a matter of fact, I don't know of any reputable piece of software that ships with a manual in Word format. Well, maybe some of Microsoft's documentation. Maybe.

Did you read the PDF manual?

 

[SpidermonBob]

Format is irrelevant... I just want adequate documentation

I really don't care about the format I just want something accurate and reliable that I can reference when I need it.

PDF is just fine with me, but somehow the product and its revisions need to be tied to detailed information about the product. Especially when an application does not seem to function in an intuitive manner.

Therefore, documentation specific to the situation and any inherent functions should be easy to locate when you need it. A product’s documentation should not make assumptions as to what someone already knows about the product or its implementation and applications, without some method of referring the reader to basic information. A HTML hyperlinked document would be terrific since I have no desire to print out reams of paper, and scrolling through hundreds of contiguous pages only to find that critical information is missing just doesn’t cut it for me.

PDF is just fine for printing and creating an index associated with page numbers, but we live in a digital hypertext world so link the index to the pages and link key items and topics to a source of reference. So if you compare what I am saying to VHS tapes and DVD’s, I’ll opt for direct access method rather than sequential access any day. And I wouldn’t have to wait for a PDF file to invoke Acrobat Reader and have the whole damn file load. And once loaded it is still a real pain in the *** to keep going back and forth to the index.

Perhaps I have been part of the computer industry too long and it just bugs the hell out of me to see that more attention is paid to aesthetics and not functionality. When I’ve got a server down for three days and customers on my ***, I don’t care about cute and clever trivia, I want answers and solutions that I can rely on.

Perhaps it is not obvious, but if I could get SWsoft support to respond to a critical problem in a timely manner or if I could access the information I require to resolve my current problems, I would not be wasting my time searching through these threaded discussions looking for answers.

SWsoft should be spending their time perfecting their products and producing accurate and reliable documentation and trouble shooting guides. If they focused on perfecting the product they wouldn’t have to spend their time SPAMming their products. The marketing would take care of itself...

A case in point... Today I upgraded the 8.1 upgrade. I have no idea what this upgrade is supposed to fix. But it certainty did not remove the SWsoft/Virtouzzo SPAM from 8.1. And it didn’t fix the problems I am having with SiteBuilder. Perhaps it is because I can’t seem to find the correct information related to SiteBuilder and Plesk 8.1 integration.

If someone can point me to this information I would really appreciate it. Otherwise I can only assume this information doesn’t exist...

boB

 

[zero@]

Bob,

I appreciate that you're having problems, and I totally understand your frustration. But seriously, you need to start looking for solutions rather than more problems.

Here's the manuals in PDF and HTML form:

http://www.swsoft.com/en/products/sitebuilder3/docs/

You need to log in to read them but you don't need to read it in PDF form, if you don't prefer.

The problems you are having sound like DNS issues or apache2 config issues, and they should be solved as such. They won't be covered in this manual, jsut like "how to change your tires" will not be covered in an engine repair manual.

You might want to look at /etc/apache2/conf.d/zz011_sitebuilder.conf or some similar file. Try messing with that, and then ask specific questions.

A case in point... Today I upgraded the 8.1 upgrade. I have no idea what this upgrade is supposed to fix. But it certainty did not remove the SWsoft/Virtouzzo SPAM from 8.1. And it didn’t fix the problems I am having with SiteBuilder. Perhaps it is because I can’t seem to find the correct information related to SiteBuilder and Plesk 8.1 integration.

Here's the Plesk 8.1 upgrade information. There's also information in release notes. You could also look on the forums to see what it improves.

I agree with you about the ads - I'm angry about this as well. I followed instructions I found on the 8.1 Forums, and I removed a majority of them. It's a pain in the butt, it's wholly inappropriate, and yet I'm not wasting any more of my time on it.

Perhaps it is not obvious, but if I could get SWsoft support to respond to a critical problem in a timely manner or if I could access the information I require to resolve my current problems, I would not be wasting my time searching through these threaded discussions looking for answers.

Well, as one of the only people who has responded to your rambling posts directly, I'm terrible sorry for wasting your time.

My advice is to open a ticket, call them about it, and call them regularly until your problem is satisfied.

 

[SpidermonBob]

Thanks for the reply

SWsoft support is finally looking into the SiteBuilder problem and it seems that we are making some progress. In the mean time, in anticipation of support resolving the license problem I am reading every word in the 5 different sets of PDF docs.

Still haven't found out why only 6 templates seem to be available. Perhaps I over looked that part or didn't get to it yet. Hopefully all the templates don't have to be purchased and installed separately.

Also haven't found out why I have a 100 site license and I can't create resellers and additional hosts domains.
Hopefully I also don't have to purchase an additional 100 site license for each of my domains. The sales specs don't indicate that all 100 sites can only be applied to one host or one reseller.

Perhaps I'll find out. It's probably someplace in the documentation or the sales specifications.

Thanks again zero, let me get back to reading...

 

[zero@]

Glad you're making some progress!

As for the templates, make sure you have them installed. I think you have to download them individually. You can get the package names with

apt-cache search SiteBuilder | grep templates

After you get the names, "apt-get install"

Once you have them installed, you have to log in as an administrator, create a plan, edit the plan, and allow/disallow access to the templates. Then you should see more when you choose the category for the template in the upper-left. For instance "Agricultural" or "Business."

As for additional hosts, I think you're out of luck unless you pay $1,000 for Multi-Server Publishing. There's ways around it, but you'll need to figure those out for yourself. Until then you're stuck publishing to one host machine.