First time user guide is needed

The installation guide for CKEditor is here: http://docs.cksource.com/CKEditor_3.x/D ... stallation

See the Installation Verification section of that article for information on how to check whether your CKEditor works.

The installation guides for CKFinder are available in the Developer's Guide -- just choose the Installation article for the server-side version that you are using (PHP, ASP etc.). See the CKEditor Integration articles for information on how to integrate CKFinder with CKEditor.

I agree with the original poster. I have done all you suggest. My installation has been verified. What is next? I assume this is a browser-based editor?
If so, how do I begin to edit pages? Is there code to paste into each page? Is there a login? How do I start to use the editor?
Sorry, but it is not clear to me. I am not a coder.

Thanks.

I guess that you should read this http://alfonsoml.blogspot.com/2009/08/u ... sites.html

I had the same problems as the OP/TS. It should be made clear on the CKEditor website that it is not a stand-alone CMS, let alone a stand-alone WYSIWYG website builder. It is a WYSIWYG widget that is to be built in in a CMS. A good widget, as far as I can tell, but useless for non-programmers.

FrankC wrote:I had the same problems as the OP/TS. It should be made clear on the CKEditor website that it is not a stand-alone CMS, let alone a stand-alone WYSIWYG website builder. It is a WYSIWYG widget that is to be built in in a CMS. A good widget, as far as I can tell, but useless for non-programmers.

Yeah, I guess your right. It should be made clear...

CKeditor does not need to create a manual for users to learn how to be developers so they can utilize their product.

To the right of 'Home' within the menu of CKeditor.com there is a menu link labeled 'What is CKEditor?'.
Upon opening the menu link which reads; 'What is CKEditor?' one will find the following:

'you'll be able to integrate and use it inside any kind of application' ... 'This is the ideal editor for developers, created to provide easy and powerful solutions to their users.' within the second paragraph.

There is also a menu holding the various features available for the 'End user' features and the 'Developer' features.

Clearly CKEditor is not intended for the average joe/jane. Joe or Jane will need to have some development experience in either PHP, ASP.NET, Sharepoint or Java. Among other things IE; security set-up...

There are numerous forums, sites and books available if you wish to learn to be a developer in any language that CKEditor resides on. This would be your best avenue to begin your understanding of how to utilize CKEditor within your application, site...

There are more types of users than just mom-at-home and the server engineer. I am the manager of my company's server, but that doesn't make me in expert in PHP or scripting. CKEditor came to me as part of another package, and I need to use it. Specifically, I need to enable plugins. But the "how to" is not incredibly clear.

http://docs.cksource.com/Talk:CKEditor_ ... pers_Guide says to put something like config.plugins = 'plugin1,plugin2,plugin3'; or config.extraPlugins = 'plugin1,plugin2,plugin3'; into my config.js file, but not a word about how to know which to use (i.e, config.plugins or config.extraPlugins).

Likewize, http://nightly.ckeditor.com/7334/_sampl ... esize.html gives another example, but I can't find anything that tells me where to "insert the following JavaScript call into [my] code" or why this suggestion is inconsistent with the Developers_Guide.

More guidance to the person installing this for the first time would be really helpful because I've tried to follow the instructions ( see viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24107 ) without success.

The page that you quoted is, as you can see, just a Talk page created by some users and as such (as in every Wiki page) does not really constitute a part of our official documentation.

Your best friend is actually the CKEditor 3.x Developer's Guide. This is where you can learn how to install and configure CKEditor, add a file browser etc.

This article should answer your question about how and where to add configuration code: http://docs.cksource.com/CKEditor_3.x/D ... igurations

The configuration values along with some explanations on what each one of them means can be found in the CKEditor API.

The samples really are great help. If the code snippet shown there is not entirely understandable to you, just view the source code of each page and read into the complete commented code.

CKEditor is a tool that can be used in different scenarios and is highly customizable. It may seem daunting at first, when you want to comprehend everything at once. This is why we always recommend to install a plain vanilla CKEditor instance first, use the samples (because they do not require any installation and configuration effort from your part), play with their code, and start customizing it before you attempt to integrate the editor in a production environment and try to configure a completely new tool all at once without getting to know and understanding it first.

I think that it would be better if that Talk page is removed just in case someone else is able to find it again (I don't know how he managed to find that instead of the current documentation).

It seems to be an overview of how CKEditor works, but I think that other pages explain that much better and if there's something useful there it can always be added in a place where people would be able to find it more easily.