Documentation suggestions

Write where you got stuck and what doc you would have liked to have existed to get you through it:

updated by @michael: 02/03/16 12:34:58PM

You really have 3 challenges (3 course opportunities as I see it.)

1 - Brand new unspoiled user to JR
2 - Those Converting from NING (That has to keep you guys up all night.)
3 - Those Converting long time users from JR3 & 4 kicking and screaming to JR5. ( My group )


I would start out with a list of challenges for each of these groups. A long one.

For an old user I have been really spoiled to JR3 and 4 but mostly 3. I have a specific task I want to accomplish with my site. Maybe some task specific information for each of the groups based on the most common recurring issues.

Item 1 - A list of links for specific tasks.

This was my first big train wreck:
How do I set my jamroom to private where you must be logged in to view any content
How do set my jamroom so only the main page shows to visitors
How do I set my jamroom so that all content shows for everyone

I now have saved the URL link in a notepad because one of the biggest issues I see with JR5 is just finding stuff you need to change settings. So a simple guide to navigate through the maze of stuff you have to go through would be a wonderful help! (Think infographic)

Skin modification information is very vague. It still takes me a while to remember where the page is to modify the featured profiles on the flashback skin. It's there but finding it is a trip through the corn maze.

I love the template editor system in JR5! The ability to make a change and then reset back when you screw it up is great. What tripped me up was that after you save the change you have to go back and click the box and save it a second time!

The biggest thing for me, something I'd gladly pay for would be a simple course on customizing each available JR5 skin. I'd love to see a section of a page highlighted and then show me where that code snippet is and where can I move that too and what would be my result. Right now I'm trying to work with the flashback skin. I would love to be able to move a couple of the sections from the community page to the main page.

I will be soon asking for what items do I change to make my music weekly chart and monthly chart display at least 100 items in the list instead of the current default number. (In my current site it is set to display 300.) The reason is that I wanted to make it simple for my users to see exactly what was in the system without 20 clicks.

Another big issue I face is how do I get more information about the songs showing up in the charting list? I figured out how to add them to the form when I upload a song file but not how to display the additional information.

I'm struggling with the sign up form. I have all the extra fields added to the profile page but I'd like to figure out how to collect that information on the front end when they sign up. And I have no clue where to start looking. I thought when I changed the user/signup form it would automatically add the additional fields on the front end signup form.

So for an old user like me you could give us a roadmap that tells us how to make our systems work as close as possible to our old systems. I know that is not possible and I'm running into a lot of limited or no longer available features that I really depended on. Something as simple as a way to reset all of the counts back to zero at year end. I still don't know how I'm going to handle that one yet.

I do understand the need for creating these modules but somewhere along the way there needs to be a way to navigate through them to find what we need to make the system work for us.

Right now my single biggest issue is that I cannot deliver a 128K and 320K download. Because my radio station users are split almost 50/50 on the file size they need I am struggling with what to do. Because I am having horrific issues with my current host and JR4 I am working almost around the clock to try to get this figured out. So far my only solution is a 2 site solution but I have to tell you for me that sucks. It means double my workload. Every new artist would have to be set up in both sites and all of the artist/writer/publishing/PRO/blogpost/picture/bio will now be X2. Not to mention we publish weekly and monthly charts so now that will double as well.

With that one lost bit of functionality my hours working on my site will double. You see I add everything myself. Every song every update. It is the only way to keep control of my site and be able to produce an accurate chart based only on DJ results.

So I have to add 175 artists/pics/bio's etc X2 and 275 songs with all their info X2..... and educate the artists and my station members on a new system.... ASAP cause my old site is almost toast...

Not sure if this helps or not but maybe you can find a couple bits and pieces to pull something from.

This is great stuff! Thanks @charles-brady

--edit--
I'll try to work the answers to these into the flow of new user docs. For the individual not yet figured out questions, open a thread in the forum for each and we can tackle them one at a time.
updated by @michael: 10/22/15 01:55:46AM

One of the keys in having a good functional system is thinking through the initial setup structure. The 3 keys are the quota setup, profile setup and user setup. I understand the quota portion I think fairly well but I get a bit confused on the differences/uses of the profile VS users.

User Accounts
User Profiles
User
Members

It gets a bit confusing. I know that in a music site I am going to have the Artists/Profile and my radio member/user and that these must be assigned to quotas that dictate the experiences for each. One group adds music and profile information and bios and another just needs to log in and preview that music and download it if they choose. Or at least this is how I want my system to work.

I would also like to make it so that any visitor could view things like charts and blogs but not be able to stream or download songs. JR4 worked perfectly for what I needed.

So even though I've watched the concept videos and read and reread information I'm still a bit confused over the terms above. Something in the structure of JR changed in JR5. Maybe a clear explanation of how those changes impact how I now need to set up my community again would be really helpful.

Something like:
IN JR4 you did this and got this.
IN JR5 you do this and get this but xyz is not available in JR5.

From a developer standpoint I would think either creating modules/skins to help those accomplish their objectives would be a great help. I see some of it but enough for those who like myself built niche music communities and would like to keep running them.

Fast food franchises test with changing menus all the time and while I understand the need to expand a system to make it available to a larger audience sometimes we leave behind our core customers who stick with us like glue if we can continue to deliver what they need. I'll never forget pulling up to my local Arby's restaurant one night to order a roast beef sandwich. The girl said "we are out of roast beef but we still have chicken. I laughed and said "Ya'll need to change your name to KFC then!

JAM room. It's a great name and a wonderful system.... You have provided the single best system for artists and musicians and fans to come together. Thanks!

more useful stuff, thanks.

You made up "User Members" though to try to catch me sleeping, that doesn't exist.

Quota systems pretty similar to what JR4 had. the USER is the person, the PROFILE is where they put their stuff. one USER can have a number of profiles. the QUOTA is attached to the profile to define what can be put there.

Along with the docs, I think I need to get some maps to lead through the docs for explaining points.

This page tries to explain the user/profile system:

"Concepts the admin user needs to know"
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/getting-started/2167/concepts-the-admin-user-needs-to-know

Awesome!

Sorry about the typo!
I meant:
Standard User
Profile Admin
Master Admin
User Accounts
User Profiles
Users
Members

This line helped a ton!! "the USER is the person, the PROFILE is where they put their stuff. one USER can have a number of profiles. the QUOTA is attached to the profile to define what can be put there."

Thanks!!!

Most used tool and new best friend while working with template site changes:

ACP/Tools/Reset Cache

In the early stages I had a problem fixed, broken and fixed again and broken again all because I did not Reset the Cache after making the changes....

Rule 1
Make change
Reset Cache
View changes

More useful stuff! thanks very much. I will add some sections on what the user levels are:

USER LEVELS
* Standard User // what 99% of the site will be
* Profile Admin // the trusted users who go round editing profiles content
* Master Admin // the guys who can access the ACP

'Members' isn't a term in JR5 like it was in JR4, there is no member level user. In JR4 it meant "FANS, users who cant upload stuff because they are not a band". But in JR5 all profiles stuff is set via the quota they are in, so you could make 2 quotas ARTISTS|FANS if you wanted to set it up how JR4 was and not let the fans quota upload stuff.

I'll get some docs up on these topics and post the links here once they are done.

--edit--
Oh, and you can put the site into always refresh the cache mode at:
ACP -> TOOLS -> DEVELOPER TOOLS -> GLOBAL CONFIG -> run in developer mode

That will make the cache refresh each pageload.
updated by @michael: 10/23/15 05:36:35PM

That line really helped me just now too, after all these months!

Michael, when you say "Profile Admin // the trusted users who go round editing profiles content" -maybe good to also include?: "has access to the Dashboard but not ACP".


--
...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Just call me dazed and confused... I can't even create a profile without a fight over who the owner is.... See attached...

The use of the term USER as in USER ACCOUNTS and USER PROFILES is part of my problem...
I was attempting to create a "USER PROFILE" (an artist) in the "ARTIST QUOTA" but I got hung up on the "PROFILE OWNER" question... I thought OK I'll just make a record label name but NOOO It has to be a whole number? WHAT DOES A NUMBER HAVE TO DO WITH WHO OWNS A USER PROFILE? What number? Where do I find such a number? Do I just make one up? In my day job I'm an accountant. I should know about numbers. I know about profile IDS (after they are created) and I know about quota IDS and even Song IDs but a NUMBER for a profile owner?

I have attached art to further display my confusion.... @michael HELP!!!

Maybe you have to first create a USER ACCOUNT and then attach the USER PROFILE to that account? Is that what I'm missing here??

To be honest I had the same confusion in the early days about User Profiles and User Accounts, but being as no one else has brought it up in the three and a half years of JR5 I assumed it was just me !!! The fact the User Profiles are in the Profile section and User Accounts are in the Users sections resolved it for me

The Profile Owner field on the Create Profile page is a 'Live Search' field in that it will prompt you with users that match what you have typed so far. So if your username is 'admin' and you start typing 'a' you'll get a little popup with 'admin' (along with 'adam', 'alf', 'arthur' etc. (should they exist)). You typed in 'Ham Hock Records' and that user doesn't exist, hence the error, so yes, create Ham Hock Records as a user first.
Agree that the error is confusing. Its because the field is actually passing the numeric 'user ID'. We'll check that out.

Thanks


--
Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

It's also important to understand WHY Jamroom works this way. Jamroom allows a single USER to have multiple PROFILES (think of a band manager that is managing a profile for each of their artists), as well as a PROFILE to have multiple USERS (i.e. each band member has their own USER login, but once logged in they are all part of the same PROFILE).

This is a really powerful feature of Jamroom, but it is one that users who are new to Jamroom sometimes struggle to get at first.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net
updated by @brian: 10/25/15 09:23:09AM

A couple thoughts/questions

1 - So the profile is the "container" and you can have multiple owners/users of that "container" but that said "container" cannot exist without an owner/user is that what I'm understanding?

2 - What I was attempting to do was to set up 200 "containers" (artist profiles in my case) that are all set up and created and managed by one "user/owner (that would be me) (admin)

3 - I only have one set of "users" (radio stations) who come and listen and download music for their stations.

4 - So I guess when I log in and see those 200 profiles attached to my admin account I guess that's OK?

Setting up a user for each profile seems redundant and since I only use the one admin email I'm thinking could be problematic unless there is a way to bypass the email requirement for setting up user accounts just so I can attach them to profiles....

I know that I have a different use for the system than most but I was always able to make it work in JR3 & JR4 but the deeper I go into this the more I wonder if I can really make this work or not.

I've already given in to the fact that I will be doubling my one site that delivered 128K and 320K downloads to two sites that can only deliver one file type now but I'm still struggling with the initial setup phase....

Guess I should just give in and just let everyone set up their own stuff and hope for the best... What a support nightmare that would be... )

Hi Charles - You can easily do what you describe with JR5.
Yes - all Profiles need a User and all Users need a Profile but in both cases the needed Profiles and Users can be one, or many!!
So as site admin you have a linked admin profile and admin user. As admin, goto the User Profiles tools tab and select Create Profile. Enter profile name and select its quota, then start typing your admin user name in the user box. It'll popup, so select it and hit the submit button. You have now created another profile but owned by user 'admin.
Repeat the above until you have created your 200 artist profiles, all owned by, and controlled by you (admin).
Hope that makes sense.
Pa


--
Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Thanks @paul That works! Going to be a long long night since I gotta do this twice...

Just updated this thread with one method that will be better than doing it twice.
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/forum/installation-and-configuration/33653/are-there-still-lofi-and-hifi-audio-options-in-jr5

Thanks @michael for that! It will at least give me something to test. Meanwhile after working with our marketing folks we have pushed onward with the 2 site option. Since I'm using JR hosting I did figure out how to do a very quick and simple import of all the artist and bios and pics so that saved me about 10 hours... I still have over 200 songs to add so that will be several days and I hope our old site stays together until we can get it finished. This has been a real nightmare for us and I hope we never have to go through it again.

@michael I just had a 3AM HUGE aah ha moment that you may want to incorporate in your future training. In all these 100+ hours there was a missing link that I never really "got"

We talked about Quota's and Profiles and Users and I struggled with how the pieces all came together. It was so much easier in JR4 because it was only in about 2 places. In the old system you set up a artist account and added this and that to it through the use of the quota.

My moment came when I realized that what the quota was missing in JR5 was "THE MODULES"
In order to have a functioning quota you have to assign and understand all these various modules to give the quota its functionality. Without the modules being tied to the quota it's worthless. That's what I never fully grasped until I started taking away some things from a quota. It was the taking away that I then realized what I missing in trying to build this thing. I was missing the importance of the modules. In JR3/4 the Quota was King. In JR5 the Quota is the janitor looking for a job to do...

So it really is a complex system that you can't just expect to find a ready made out of box solution for. You have to really plan this thing out. You have to study what you want the end game to be like for your users and then almost reverse engineer the thing. And MODULES are going to play the role of KING!

You don't want to think about building a JR5 without knowing that there are 4 main components to this thing.

QUOTAS
MODULES

PROFILES
USERS

(Quotas and modules) go together almost as much as (users and profiles) do...

So my 3 legged table now has a forth leg..

I'll make sure to emphasise that point more, thanks very much.