Yes, getting started with radiantcms is really tough, but worth it... I tried for 2-3 days, ended up getting my server admin to do the install.. I think he only charged me a half hour. I still can't get many extensions working but it's good enough for now. Radiant is really easy to use, so it should be easy to set up too. One click would be nice.. like web2py.
Radiant is great if you have complicated pages and want to be able to easily specify many different page parts. The tabs keeps it all nice and compact. And, having total control over the html & css is great.. so much better than wordpress. Making site wide changes is a dream compared to my old static site.. and adding new content is a snap, every page can be a new directory with subpages.. nice URLs... Yes, radiant is very fun, even for someone like me that hasn't learned much programming yet. Tip: the firefox plugin 'It's all text!" enables external editing of the html/css in your radiant page parts with programs like dreamweaver. All you need to do is right-click on the text field and choose your editor, make some changes, then press save to update the original radiant page in your browser... No more copy/paste. Amazing! On Jan 3, 3:17 pm, Ross Laird <[email protected]> wrote: > These are great ideas (IMO). As more people start to explore R0R-based > CMS solutions, many are looking at Radiant -- which is the best RoR > solution, in my view, but which is indeed challenging to people who > are not too familiar with the workflow and methodology behind Rails. > So, these folks want to try out Radiant but they get stopped right at > the start. That's a shame, and this first-impression-shock turns > (some) people away from the many possibilities of Radiant. As a > persistent but not savvy user, I have managed to make Radiant work for > me very well, but I do find that the toughest part is always right at > the start, when I get the invariable lists of error messages. Once the > app is running, though, it works wonderfully well and is very easy to > use. So, if something could be done to surmount this first hurdle, I > think Radiant would see its user base grow substantially. > > On Dec 15 2011, 3:13 am, Dave <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > Hi, > > > I have been off the list for a while but using rails, radiant and > > spree for several years. Looking through many recent items on the mail > > list, I think that I can identify a common theme that has not been > > addresed. I only noticed this because I set up a new rvm environment > > using 1.8.7 to run radiant and I did not have the gems locally. Since > > github makes it very easy for new people to access the source (good), > > the mails indicate that many people are first trying to install and > > run radiant from a cloned radiant/radiant source tree (bad). Even > > though it is certainly not the best way to get started, we could try > > to make this easier for them, or provide hints to put them on the > > right path. > > > For example, if a newb clones/downloads the radiant source tree, cds > > to radiant and then runs bundle install, it appears to work! He/she > > gets a nice message saying 'Your bundle is complete' but it is not > > truly ready for use. Then running 'bundle exec rake production > > db:bootstrap' as in the readme gets the next error message, which is > > 'no such file to load -- radius' because the bundle isn't designed for > > this purpose. It doesn't include radiant as a gem, which pulls in the > > other dependencies. > > > We could:- > > > 1) Include remarks in the readme and install files saying that it > > probably should not be run from the source tree :-) and advising them > > to install the radiant gem > > > 2) include another file like a development Gemfile that contains the > > full list of dependencies and providing a hint to newbs that they > > should rename and use the longer file if they want to run from the > > source. > > > 3) I know it sucks, but if we included a database.yml file (not just > > the templates like database.sqlite.yml), it would be one thing less > > for a novice to do > > > David V. > > > PS I hope that the for,atting works out this time!
