Misinterpretation/Misunderstanding Of The MyBB Documentation

[Serpius]

referring to your point about "admins who know what chmod that folder to 666" - when are users going to start taking it upon themselves to go to Google and search "chmod" and so forth?

You know the sad truth of the answer: some – never. The question is whether we want to accommodate these users or not.

Unfortunately, that is the sad truth.

That's why lately, I have been posing the question to these "newbies" or "the clueless", 'Did you read the manual/instructions of MyBB?'

Often, the answers would be one of the following... 'No', 'Too difficult to understand', 'Not in my language', 'Too technical for me', and others that I don't remember now.

The question is: what audience is that documentation targeted at? Admins who know what "chmod that folder to 666" means or people who need a step-by-step instruction? How much skill can/should be assumed? Testing the documentation with experienced admins cannot make sure that rookies will find it useful, too. I'd favor a wiki system where (trusted) community members can modify the pages. Over time,  that will  make sure the  instructions will have the right level of complexity or exist in varieties like "quick guide" vs. "detailed guide".

Basic maintenance and management shouldn't require much technical knowledge - it's difficult to apply that to MyBB 1.8 given the caveats that were the reason why rewriting everything was considered, but that should be our aim after things get cleaned up.

Meanwhile, all technical terms (like file permissions) can be linked to reputable sources that explain usage on popular platforms.

In a perfect world, basic maintenance and management shouldn't be all the hard to do.

But since we don't live in a perfect world,  there are so many parts of MyBB that it does take a long time (well, it did for me) to learn all of the 'ins and outs' of MyBB, especially in the AdminCP.

Then you add in the maintenance of the themes, especially the annoying fact that many theme creators put in their own default logo that states the name of the theme, but it's difficult for many to modify it to fit the name of their own website.