Reply about Carrington Theme documentation
Every now and then as I’m reading the daily news streaming into my RSS reader, I jump to the site and will add a comment to the conversation. Since I’ve been developing the foundation for a new local web portal project, inVerdeValley.com, I’ve spent a fair amount of time at the “support” forum of the WordPress theme creator of Carrington.
Time and again, when you read through threads on their forums, end users are asking about documentation. Yes, it exists and is there. And if you want it to be found in one convenient place you can get it from their website’s Carrington Theme Documentation page. Apparently many of the people using this theme framework just don’t get the theory and philosophy behind the overall project, and tend not to be led closer to that “ah huh” moment by reading the documentation offered.
Below is a comment I left today at their support forum. You can read the entire thread by clicking this link. Following is my reply, which I believe stands on it’s own.
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Probably good that you’re willing to pay for an e-book that offers more detailed instructions. If, as a reader/user of these forums, you’ve read several of the threads, you’ll likely be familiar with the very short/terse replies to users asking for help, usually followed by the reminder that paid support is available for anyone needing solutions to their problems.
Not saying there is anything in the slightest wrong with this approach. When running a business for profit, it is clearly important to try and drive the revenue producing efforts. Not all releases in the WordPress world specifically, and the Open Source world generally are completely altruistic and designed to service all of the end user’s needs for free.
Clearly their are some challenges with certain aspects of this framework, documentation, for me at least, and apparently for others, being one of the weak points. That said, I can recall a number of occasions where it has been suggested, and supported by the theme’s creators that someone take advantage of the opportunity to generate something a bit more hearty in the way of documentation.
Carrington’s creators have indicated they are not likely to take the time to go down that road, and that’s fine. At least they are up front about it. It’s also great that they are okay with (seemingly, from a couple of quick comments I’ve read in these forums) others stepping up to the plate and generating something that might be a bit more useful to end users.
This isn’t a project I’m likely to spearhead, however, I have been working with Carrington Blog theme for a bit now, and would definitely participate in a project if someone were to launch it. Maybe a wiki or a focused forum that generates conversations and solutions to some of the challenges that site developers are dealing with on their own.
Would love to see someone launch this. I’d definitely participate if you do!
Comments
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James D Kirk