I think a very big problem, here, is that WebAssist is paying insufficient attention, in its marketing, to the 'toolbox' concept, which is a clear part of the reason for its existence -- its raison d'etre. If I am a weekend car mechanic and I know exactly what I am doing, then it's of really great help to me if someone rents me space in a garage (i.e. I buy a WebAssist extension or sign up for the extension library). It helps me because I know what all those tools are for, and I know exactly what I'm doing. But if I don't know, and don't have any idea, then those tools are a complete mystery.
WebAssist is deliberately marketing its products at people who have absolutely no idea about php or programming, when in fact it is not quite so clear that this is a good idea because its toolbox concept is greatly questioned with that approach. This is particularly so when the only way WebAssist now has of offering any help to people is these totally unsatisfactory forums. These forums are fine when you have a clear idea of A, and B, and only need to know whether a reverse or an inverse sprocket wtench is better for getting you from A to B. But what if you don't even know that a sprocket wrench is required.
As but one small example ... why doesn't WebAssist take one small feature in one of its products ... say something in eCart. And then EXPLAIN in words of one syllable, exactly what coding its product is putting in the pages and why. So a WebAssist tutorial could take say a simple 'AddToCart' procedure and say do blah ... now have a look at the code in code view. You will see these lines. Now push the blah button. See ... our product has inserted these lines into the code and this is why. Now do blah and see blah. And that's because we now what the software to do this and that.
A couple of examples like that would then make it very clear to both WebAssist and its customers exactly what a toolbox is, and exactly what it is these products are trying to do. But at present ... WebAssist is inducing customers like me to believe that if they buy these products, then all their problems are going to be magically resolved just by using your wizards, which simply is not true ... and is not particularly helpful when only these forums are available to assist.
So I think that while WebAssist is doing all this in-house cogitating and research, it should go back to square one and think through to itself what it actually MEANS to be selling a set of toolboxes. What those toolboxes are trying to do is save people the trouble of writing code themselves ONCE THEY HAVE FIGURED OUT THAT THEY NEED A PARTICULAR PIECE OF CODE. But if you don't know that you need a particular piece of code in the first place, then it's all very different.
We are WebAssist. We sell toolboxes. You will get the best out of our products if you understand the nature of a toolbox. Here's an example of what we mean by a toolbox.
Done.
Now ... I am off to try to figure out how to get your products to do something I want done that it cannot do, which means figuring out the closest I can get with your products, and then sitting back with a PHP manual and trying to figure out how to insert my own code into yours so I can get something done. Thanks for your toolbox, but at least I have figured out what is going on here.
Bye now.
