Greetings Team!
I am still relatively new to the workflow and all, including github, but after observing for a while, I was wondering….
You guys are busy and wearing so many hats, wouldn’t it save you a lot of trouble to have a FAQ? (beyond the on on the main page) Just a simple place with links that point to detailed information or a simple code snippet. Here are some of the questions I had and that I notice many others have. It would save you guys and new users a lot of time.
Here are some suggestions since you answer the same questions so many times...
- Where is the documentation? (Not a bad place to start in case someone lands on the FAQ page.)
- What are the differences between ASP.NET Zero template types? (maybe even a good third party opinion of SPA vs MPA)
- What are the technologies involved that I need to learn? (This would be a HUGE time saver. As programmers we tend to get into our own little world and forget that someone may really like the end result of the solutions but not have all the skills required. No worries, learning is fun, lets do it! :-) What if one of us is suddenly into Python for example with no prior experience. We would know exactly what we want to do but not know how to get there. I came into this with a different kind of programming background so, where to start and get up to speed as quickly as possible? What do I need to learn? It took a while to sort it all out. There could be someone very brilliant who is actually starting off wanting to do a SAAS application.
Point a new user in the right direction with maybe a few links to some good tutorials.) Here is a least a start. Of course it would branch according to the two main versions. This might be a good general order. I was familiar with about half of this and of course, I will never stop learning!
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- C#
- SQL Server
- HTML 5, CSS, Javascript, Bootstrap
- Entity Framework, ASP.Net Core
- Npm
- Git/Github
- Angular (My choice… I liked the end result, user experience and speed) which of course includes a whole ecosystem of its own.
- ABP (maybe most new users don’t realize the importance of this. It might actually be better to start with and APB template / walkthrough? In .NET Zero, it is still sometimes hard to understand where APB starts and EF begins for example…. It just takes a bit of time and experience.)
- ASP.NET Zero
- Xamerin for mobile apps not to mention the specific platforms involved there.
I am sure I missed a lot
- How do I upgrade my project?
- How do I publish my application? (I wanted to do this right away as a proof of concept to see what it was going to take to host something like this and to see what I needed to learn to get it done.)
- General IIS
- Azure walkthrough. For obvious reasons, Azure is pretty popular for VS users.
The list would be long and comprehensive and searchable. I am sure you guys already keep track of much of this. A bit of work up front but I think it would be a huge timesaver for everyone involved.
15 Answer(s)
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I nominate @godrunner for this ;)
I think part of the problem is some of the things should be known or learned on your own. It shouldnt be up to the AspNetZero guys to tell you how to use NPM or GIT. Not everyone uses GIT you could use SVN or something else. These are things that should be tailored to your business process. Like how to publish a site, for us is automatic thru Visual Studio Team Services to our own IIS servers :) Im sure we have all posted stupid questions on here and are like oh that was dumb once we figured out the answer or are given it lol. The guys should focus on the product and how it functions not how you should use it.
I find it interesting you picked SPA instead of MPA, especially seeing how many JS frameworks there are. For us sticking with just MVC instead of angualr was one less thing we need to worry about since every week there is a new JS framework that everyone totes as being the best.
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@BBakerMMC, you have some great points!
I think you misunderstood me a bit. Maybe I just speak Canadian 'eh? :-)
- My point is, if the same questions are being answered many times over, (like publishing on Azure for example) then the answers need to be easier to find. Having them in one place with links if applicable would save everyone a lot of time in the long run. Many of the answers are in this forum, on github or in the Zero or ABP docs or a sample. So, just a link even that says, "There is a good example of how to do this here" would help and save time for everyone perhaps.
- When starting out cold, in takes a while to sort out what technologies are coming from where and just a simple list a least kind of like I did above might help others. This was actually the list I made up of thingss I needed to refresh or learn. I was a bit rusty. It would have helped me. I did the learning. Maybe links are not necessary for this.
- I hear you on the .js mess. It is stunning the number of dependencies that is for sure. Maybe with the recent exploits and all people will start using script blockers, then we are out of business. :-) I'll take another look at MPA. It didn't look as elegant to me but maybe it solves some other problems.
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I know what youre saying, then every answer is: this answer is found in the xxx FAQ. Not everyone is willing to look for answers. I admit that some times Im bad, I usually put forth some effort then Im like hmm 4 answers all different and none for the past xx months. Then I say to my self Ill just post and move on to something else for the time being.
So our dev are more back end orientated so sticking with MVC was a no brainier, no need to learn that horrid language of JS :shock: And with DevExtreme everything can be handled usually pretty easy if not we make some ajax calls as needed otherwise the controls are usually ajax feed from a controller end point.
So for publishing to azure why are you guys just using VSTS to build the project on check in and run a deploy process :ugeek: its wonderful lol, set some approval gates for the Master Branch and voila all automated. I dont consider that something that should be "assisted" on per say. But I guess there is more configuration for the SPA stuff, we only publish the WEB project, no host/public site so maybe its easier.
I'm sure if you put the links and some verbiage in a GIT issue of things you think should go in the documentation they will add it. Or even the forums to pin it. I tend to find the Issues easier to read/follow then the forums.
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Well @BBakerMMC, actually, I think that what needs to be done is that you need to donate the entire source for you project to the team here so we can then just scaffold that up and we will have nothing left to learn! :-) Just think, it would be for the betterment of humanity and likely save the planet too.
The problem I had with Azure was some of the settings for multi tenancy in appsettings.json. Once I got that straightened out it wasn't a big deal.
I agree that actually taking the time to look for an answer and knowing where to look is the biggie. Right now there are quite a few places to look. For me, working examples are really the best.
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<cite>godrunner: </cite> Greetings Team!
I am still relatively new to the workflow and all, including github, but after observing for a while, I was wondering….
You guys are busy and wearing so many hats, wouldn’t it save you a lot of trouble to have a FAQ? (beyond the on on the main page) Just a simple place with links that point to detailed information or a simple code snippet. Here are some of the questions I had and that I notice many others have. It would save you guys and new users a lot of time.
Here are some suggestions since you answer the same questions so many times...
- Where is the documentation? (Not a bad place to start in case someone lands on the FAQ page.)
- What are the differences between ASP.NET Zero template types? (maybe even a good third party opinion of SPA vs MPA)
- What are the technologies involved that I need to learn? (This would be a HUGE time saver. As programmers we tend to get into our own little world and forget that someone may really like the end result of the solutions but not have all the skills required. No worries, learning is fun, lets do it! :-) What if one of us is suddenly into Python for example with no prior experience. We would know exactly what we want to do but not know how to get there. I came into this with a different kind of programming background so, where to start and get up to speed as quickly as possible? What do I need to learn? It took a while to sort it all out. There could be someone very brilliant who is actually starting off wanting to do a SAAS application.
Point a new user in the right direction with maybe a few links to some good tutorials.) Here is a least a start. Of course it would branch according to the two main versions. This might be a good general order. I was familiar with about half of this and of course, I will never stop learning!
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- C#
- SQL Server
- HTML 5, CSS, Javascript, Bootstrap
- Entity Framework, ASP.Net Core
- Npm
- Git/Github
- Angular (My choice… I liked the end result, user experience and speed) which of course includes a whole ecosystem of its own.
- ABP (maybe most new users don’t realize the importance of this. It might actually be better to start with and APB template / walkthrough? In .NET Zero, it is still sometimes hard to understand where APB starts and EF begins for example…. It just takes a bit of time and experience.)
- ASP.NET Zero
- Xamerin for mobile apps not to mention the specific platforms involved there.
I am sure I missed a lot
- How do I upgrade my project?
- How do I publish my application? (I wanted to do this right away as a proof of concept to see what it was going to take to host something like this and to see what I needed to learn to get it done.)
- General IIS
- Azure walkthrough. For obvious reasons, Azure is pretty popular for VS users.
The list would be long and comprehensive and searchable. I am sure you guys already keep track of much of this. A bit of work up front but I think it would be a huge timesaver for everyone involved.
hi, Your request is filed to the team. Will be evaluated. Thanks.
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@alper, it was meant as a suggestion, not a request. 8-)
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I would just like to chime in that I think this would be very useful.
Especially topics like hosting, deployments, CI, etc.
I know this isn't necessarily Volosoft's responsibility, but there are some unique challenges due to the framework. For instance, the nature of the application means that our TeamCity build process has some extra steps, and must create two separate packages for Octopus, one for the migration project, and one for the web app, because we are deploying the application to an Azure Web App.
Also, it seems like a lot of the customers are choosing this product because they don't have the resources to develop the framework on their own, so it stands to reason that they may not have dedicated senior DevOps to guide them.
For our team, it definitely took us a while to realize that we needed to go back to the ABP documentation and really dig into it before we could understand how to work with Zero. In the beginning it was very unclear for us where ABP ended and Zero began (the truth of the matter is, ABP is really all that matters. Everything in Zero is just customization / extensions to ABP.)
But from a business perspective, their team is small, and they actually have better documentation that most frameworks I've worked with outside of monolithic frameworks like Angular. I think, as consumers, we could contribute a lot to the community by sharing our solutions, and Volosoft could contribute by compiling them into an easy to consume platform (a Wiki or something) that would allow us to find these solutions in a better format than the forums.
Just my two cents :D
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@strix20 The only problem is since we are now on .net core everything is super dependent on OS and such now. For your CI info that would totally fall outside the scope of support I would say. First youre using TeamCity and Octopus (Yes we use the same process for some of our other apps, but are moving away from it). This has its own complexity and configuration beyond what should be done. Also since youre doing Angular its a slightly modified process than MVC. I guess if you were to write up a guide it for them to use it could help. We are moving away from TC to VSTS since everything all together from IDE to Azure. I personally would like to start using Docker to deploy to azure but I havent had the time to sit down and learn that yet, but I also dont expect the guys to tell me how to do it either. Again alot of the questions are basic questions that people can sit down and probably figure out, maybe its because English isnt their native language (based on how some of the questions are phrased) and trying to search for the fix might be harder? Agree the documentation is pretty good, but its also lax in other areas. Yes ASPNetZero is really just the UI components that ABP implements, which also leads to confusion on where to search. I always forget to review the ABP release notes since we are only concerned with Zero, but it looks like there some nice audition feature being pushed in the next ABP release I need to review :)
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For our team, it definitely took us a while to realize that we needed to go back to the ABP documentation and really dig into it before we could understand how to work with Zero. In the beginning it was very unclear for us where ABP ended and Zero began (the truth of the matter is, ABP is really all that matters. Everything in Zero is just customization / extensions to ABP.)
@strix20 that is well said. There are a LOT of technologies going on here and it takes a while to kind of get it all sorted out.
I think it is a good idea to allow suggestions to contribute. My list above with a bit more detail would help a new user like I was.
You guys at Volosoft are great. Making it easy for your customers to succeed with your product always translates into more sales and customer satisfaction and renewals. I think the upcoming RAD tools will be a really good learning tool as well and will help a new user more quickly understand what is going on. Instant sample code right in your existing app. Great idea!
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@BBakerMMC , @strix20 , @godrunner Thanks for your suggestions as always :). I think such inputs makes our product better.
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any update - when to be released?
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@faisalalam we haven't startaed to work on this issue yet. Do you need any help ? If so, please create a new topic and we will help you.
Thanks.
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any update on a FAQ???
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Hi @commondesk
We have written about some of the topics requested in the initial post and put them into aspnetzero.com. Could you share your specific requests so we can decide to add them to FAQ or documentation.
Thanks,
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I think there are two issues here, the need for FAQ's and the need for better documentation.
Since there is no FAQ page, what i see happening is that instead of your team saying, "look at the FAQ page" the link to the last post, with the answer, is just pasted in. So, i would say, everytime you find yourselves doing that 2 or more times, it should be added to a faq.
As for documenation, i will work on a general list of topics that would be helplful to me.
