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fed up with not enough info to help newbies

Thread began 9/27/2009 1:40 pm by terry211640 | Last modified 10/15/2009 2:17 am by esms | 12366 views | 55 replies |

terry211640

fed up with not enough info to help newbies

as the tittle suggests i am not too pleased.
i am not a web developer but as you so often suggest in all your speil that there is no need for coding experience blah blah blah.

i have spent a lot of money of soloutions software in the past and have continued to spend with now subscribing all to help me to build a content management system for an estate agents.

i have tried to download all relative pdfs to help me but have found that mostly they do not fully down load and as such are not readable

the ones i have seen are not written for a basic user and are infact confusing especially the pdf for create an administritive back end with webassist extentions which is useless because i cant actually try anything out because i dont know what tables to create in the database therefore i cant carryout the pdf!

i really feel that you are not serving the basic user, the one who is thicker or less experienced as you lot, but one who is spending on your products

i believe you should have actual working tutorials with step by step guides on all the aspects that make a project. i dont expect you to have one which is exactly what i want but i do expect all the details to be clear in a manner i can understand and practice. i can then use these skills to create my own.

its not enough to say the wizard does it all because all of this stuff depends on each other for info and if one bit is not there then the whole thing suffers

not impressed

fed up

feel like giving up

can you change my mind at all? PLease!

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Office-172461

Let me start with a couple of things:
1. I also have complained in the past about the documentation.
2. I have successfully downloaded the PDFs and they open normally

That said, the WebAssist documentation has improved enormously and is helpful once you get the hang of things. It is very difficult to write documentation for such a wide range of experience. The only way to learn complex subjects is to just keep reading and experimenting until it starts to make sense.

One of the problems with selling tools is you have no control over the skill level of those that buy them. Just about anyone can walk into a hardware store and purchase a screwdriver and have some level of success using it.

That same person could buy a milling machine with disastrous results. That doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with the tool, the documentation, or the person that bought it. It just takes more time to learn how to use the tool effectively.

The more an extension does for you, the more time you have to invest to learn how to use it effectively. You have a choice of using single purpose tools that are easy to use but limited, or more complex tools that are extremely flexible.

Dreamweaver also requires a good deal of investment of time before you really see the benefits of such a complex tool. The good news is that once you get the hang of how dynamic websites work, and how the WebAssist extensions make it easier to build dynamic pages, you will never look back.

You can use the extensions without coding, but to make make custom websites you will have to know how to change the code to suit your needs. As with all things, the more you know about the task at hand, the easier it will be.

There are plenty of people here that are willing to help. Here are a couple of articles that might help you get started:

10 Tips for getting quick help from a support forum
145/

How to set up a local testing server for Dreamweaver
144/

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terry211640

thanks for reply

i appreciate your reply, thankyou

i guess i am blowing off gas at the moment because nothing i can do seems to be working. yesterday i could download the pdfs fine and today i cant? it seems to go almost all the way of downloading but then freezes at the end if i am wrong in saying its a webassist problem then i apologise

regarding the helpfullness of documents
i really feel that the way things are written etc are not all bad, infact as you say with practice it could be picked up - the point i would like to make and hopefully anyone can answer is that the help is not complete.
i dont want something to tell me to create a dataassist wizard entry based on 3 seperate tables called three seperate things when i dont know how to structure those tables what contents to put in the fields (i am using phpmyadmin and mysql)- what fields to have - how many - do i always have a id primary key - can the different tables communicate like that or does each one need to be different.

i feel there needs to be a whole layer of info before you even touch the webassist stuff just so you can work with the webassist stuff - even if the info said create 1 database with two tables call them anything you like but make sure you use these amounts of rows cos this particular filed (insert name of important fields) is the primary key that makes them all think as one

its probably that i may have bitten off more than i can chew in trying to do the website i want and i am feeling run down and let down but i was really expecting more

i would be very gratefull to hear any further suggestions from yourself and others

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Office-172461

Not sure which tutorial you're following but have you downloaded the sample database files? You should be able to run the files that end with sql and it will create all of the tables for you.

You might also want to go through the Database starter kit. That covers a lot of the question about databases and how they work.

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terry211640

update

i have just read the first of the links you relate to and here is my responce

i use a pc running xp dreamweaver cs3 and have the entire monthly subscription package at my disposal

my aim is to build a site for a estate agent which will feature a public and a admin section.

the public section will feature a search page based on price range or number of bedrooms in the home- after entry this would lead to a results page after selecting a result i then go on to the details page where i can download a pdf of property details of just print out the details direct from the site. ( if a pdf could be downloaded i do use coreldraw to form pdfs at the moment)

the admin site will have a login page
insert update and delete pages carrying all the info of the properties including room details per house and photos to match

all these files will provide the content the public side displays

now you know the wish list perhaps i can start with the problems

firstly i dont know it to house all the info in one table in one database? i want to include things like sale status ( ie for sale under offer or sold)
price
address details
descriptions or bullet points of each room in the house
photographs of each room or featues

plus other estate agent needed fields

if i do manage to create the admin side to talk to the database how can that info then be displayed to the public side?

do i need a special type of database to hold images when uploading and downloading
how do i match photos with the right house?

these are just a few of my queries i hope this is in a more acceptable help request nature
regards

tf

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terry211640

reply

sorry

do you know where i can find the soloutions you mentioned - database starter kits and sample files

they may be the reasons i am struggling because i have not seen all the help there is on offer

thanks again

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Office-172461

Originally Said By: terry211640
  sorry

do you know where i can find the soloutions you mentioned - database starter kits and sample files

they may be the reasons i am struggling because i have not seen all the help there is on offer

thanks again  



Login to your account, click on "View product downloads", click on "Solution Recipes: Support Files" to get these:

SiteAssist and DataAssist: Solution Recipe Files (1,924 KB)
A zip file containing the databases and the catalog administration pages in all 4 server languages for the eCart sample store for use in DataAssist 2. An MS Access database is included for ASP and ColdFusion developers and a MySQL script is provided for PHP users to create and import a database.

DataAssist Search: Solution Recipe Files (454 KB)
A zip file containing the search and result pages in all 4 server languages for the DataAssist Search Solution recipe available with DataAssist 2. This recipe leverages the MS Access database for ASP and ColdFusion developers, and the MySQL script for PHP users, provided in the Admin Suite Solution Recipe download, also available in your Order History.

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Office-172461

Here's the training section:
?lid=footer

Here's the Database Starter kit:
database-for-php/

Seems to be free now. :)

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terry211640

thank you

thank you once again for your info
i really appreciate your advice and help

i especially appreciate your calm steady responce from my blowing off gas. you could have easily not tried to help but instead you have difused the whole things by providing good information and a good service

i really appreciate it

i will find those files and get to work learning :)

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Office-172461

Thank you for the kind words. After 30 years of supporting networks, I know how frustrating things can get.

Calm is the secret to all things related to computers. :)

Good luck on your new journey. Hang on, it's going to be fun.

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