bradgrafelman wrote:
I suppose I can see where a beginner might get lost or confused, though, and would rather turn to one of these packages.
i agree with you. stepping back and looking at the discourse in this thread i think-- if a beginner were to stumble upon this thread, looking for answers to her own question about whether to try a manual install, or to go w/ a package-- i'm afraid the idea of a package my have been "down played" (i'm guilty too of down-play too, i realize that), and i don't think a beginner should feel that way-- obviously those packages were developed for a reason, with a specific audience in mind-- and i think they are probably perfectly good choice for someone who simply doesn't want to deal with all of the manual install issues (which i cite below).
i guess what i'm trying to say is "are we being fair to the beginners here?" we're talking about something which is apparently "marketed" to newbies and yet (and i hardly fit the "experienced" category myself) we're experienced w/ successful installations. it's easy to say "yeah, it's not so difficult-- don't fool around w/ one of those packages-- just learn to do it the right way" when we know how to do it. it's like saying "sure, it's easy to ride a bicycle!", but for someone who's never done it-- perhaps the training wheels just might be the right idea.
yes, i do have a bad habit of rambling, but it's how i get my ideas out, so i apologize for all the extra text. sorry!
bradgrafelman wrote:
Following documentation, I really didn't think it was that hard to install Apache, PHP, and MySQL and customize each (.conf/.ini files) to my liking.
indeed. i agree w/ you, bradgrafelman. It's not that difficult at all-- it's rather amazingly easy when it comes down to it-- especially if you follow the directions properly, and with patience and care.
The potential difficulty for a true "newbie" that I recognize, and the challenge that i faced coming into it cold myself-- having never studied it in college or anything of that nature, i found that it was difficult to find exactly what information pertained to my situation-- i was perfectly willing and eager to read whatever material i needed to read, but i found it unsatisfying-- or maybe that's not the right word-- i felt uncertain-- no matter how "certain" i was that i had the correct versions, and i was reading the proper material for my operating system configuration, for me there was really no way to verify it with 100% certainty.
and that is not just the versions and O/S configurations, but even-- "am I on the right web site?"... "is this the truly the file that i want?" ... "i've never installed something w/out an installer before-- what should i expect to happen throughout this process?" ... "how will i know when it is installed if i have no pop-up dialogue telling me that it is finished?"-- the answers to those questions are really unavailable to the newbie. it's much like shooting in the dark-- and one must be at least fairly comfortable doing that to their system.
even leading up to the process of searching for files, one would probably search for a tutorial-- and that's a whole other goose chase-- because most of them are inconsistent in their details, in what is emphasized, in sorftware versions, proposed configurations, etc.
fortunately for me, i am comfortable tweaking and trying this stuff because i realize i would have to do something horribly wrong to damage anything (hard drive, OS, etc)-- so i was not intimidated to try-- i merely didn't want to get it wrong the first time, to arrive at what appeared to be a working installation, begin learning the software itself, only to find later down the road that i did in fact install something incorrectly-- it's that paranoia that i have that frustrated me when i felt uncertain as to whether i was using the right process, etc... all i've mentioned above. again, fortunately, out of instinct, or whatever-- maybe just dumb luck, maybe i understand more than i give myself credit for-- the point being-- was i lucky? because i certainly didn't feel all that confident, even though i realized later that it was a successful installation. if all of those aforementioned issues could be somehow smoothed out for an absolute beginner (such as i was), then i believe the issue of installation should not be much of an issue at all.
i'm really curious what a newbie has to say about all of this!
🙂
