Re: Prior experience of successful minivend users/ learning curve

[Ryan Hertz <rhertz@gyb.baits.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Ryan Hertz <rhertz@gyb.baits.com>     ******

At 02:05 PM 3/9/99 , mediamob wrote:

>In reading the documentation and the postings to this list, it strikes me
>that there is a hard to describe common tone running through them that
>separtes those who get it from those who (like me) do not. It is a bit
>like the eternal "intuitive use" debate - intuitive to whom?

	The majority of minivend's tags are very intiutive.  I mean, [item-price]
returns just what you'd expect it to, unless you're inside a loop, then
it's [loop-price].  :-)  I think that aside from Mike Heins and a small
group of very-Perl-savvy  minivenders, most of us don't have all of the
answers.  However, TMTOWTDI!  (Perl joke)
	I've got a healthy, happy minivend that functions wonderfully.  I'm not
asking it to do much other than make money.

>
>So what I am asking is the areas in which I need to remediate in order to
>get hip to the world I'm working in. Why is it that some of you already
>know the intrinsic differences between "internal" DMB, and SQL and thier
>relative merits before you started with minivend? How were you able to
>take the given examples and make full blown original catalogs? What
>knowledge do you use that isn't in the docs? How long did it take you to
>get that first store running from the time you installed minivend?

	I still don't know a whole lot about the databases, other than
tab-delimitted ASCII works just fine for me with a couple hundred items.

	The first thing I did when setting up Minivend was to print every last
page of docs, every unique HTML page, the configs, the reports, the
READMEs, and the databases.  And I read EVERY page from top to bottom and
read it again and then went at it with a hi-liter.  Really.

	The knowledge that I use that might not be in the docs?...  I know how to
write HTML without a WYSIWYG editor.  I use vi or joe or notepad (stripped
for extra characters, of course).  In fact, I can't stand using those
fancy-pants editors, they're slow and write lousy HTML.  Other 'knowledge'
is a no-fear attitude and plenty of back-ups...  I've hacked on minivend
slightly without knowing Perl and have had it work.  Of course, now I am a
few chapters into the 'camel' Perl book.
	
	How long did it take?  I still tweak on the design/interface a bit.  The
store went live after about 300 hours of work over 3 months.  SSL and
Apache upgrade, battling over semantics with Internic and Verisign added
another month.  :-)

>This might be useful info for the docs project as well - is any one on
>that list who isn't on this one?

	Probably not.

My only regret is I was never able to drink (at work) while developing the
store!

-Ryan

Ryan Hertz                                              tel  520-645-3812
Webmaster                                               tel  800-645-BAIT
Advertising Director                                    fax  520-645-2588
Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits, Inc.            http://www.yamamoto.baits.com
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