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Thou Shall Read The Manual

RTFM - Read the F... Manual
Published: 01 September 2012

The Good Books have been written and rewritten and translated into multiple languages to guide you in your quest for the perfect and correct way to run your website.

True believers read, reread and can recite relevant passages of any and all versions.

Seriously. While it sounds funny, it REALLY is important for a number of reasons, first and foremost because it takes time away from those of us who HAVE read it.

Technical support is near and dear to all developers and when some newbie (not a slight, we all started there) comes in and asks REALLY basic questions that have been extensively covered in the MANUAL, and possibly in the very forums they are posting in, it takes time away from REAL concerns, that are far above and beyond "how do I make a menu item appear".

And when someone is SO uninformed they don't have the first idea of the ramifications of their actions (this happens in a LOT of areas in my life..) it causes additional problems for the developers.

This person has 6 months experience, and tried for one or two hours.. I don't know which part of this is funniest because anyone who develops websites for REAL knows this is a full on fantasy - if I can get something to run in a DAY fully integrated, I'm happy. There is a reason there are international courses that you PAY to register for so you can learn the software, and people with FAR more experience than 6 months go to them, because this is not an entry level solution. An hour or two, with 6 months experience is like a child saying he's been reading for 2 days and didn't understand the newspaper so it's the newspaper's fault for.. some reason.. ???

So to recap:

  • Read the Manual.
  • Read the Manual.
  • Read the Manual.

:).