Where is the installation documentation?

[jonnycavell]

Hi

I may be missing something, but I cannot find any information on the most basic thing - how to install Alfresco (Community Edition) on Windows. There is no reference or link to "installation" from the homepage, and my next choice, clicking on the menu item "Documentation", also yielded a page containing no reference to installation. My third choice, typing "installation" into the search box yielded a few Google results for newsletters, but no installation guide. Next, I downloaded the tutorial pdf, but this assumed I had already installed Alfresco.

Not put off, I went to the wiki -> documentation -> server admin guide -> server installation -> installing on ms windows -> download and install Alfresco. This page had the useful information "Having used Documentum for 10 years, everything I have read on Alfresco seems to make a lot of sense. Here I am : discovering the product, installing it and surely promoting it to my customers if it does what it says. Alfresco yours, Pascal".

None the wiser about how to install Alfresco, I have come here. Help!

[ddenev]

After several months of struggle with this product I decided to cancel the project. No proper documentation, no proper presales support in the forum, extremely buggy 3.0 release, there are bugs in the tracker not solved since 2006, the overall feeling of chaos on the site and the wiki. I'm definitely not sure what the level of support will be if we decide to buy the product. And we didn't even ask for a quote yet. After finding and reading this post (http://www.webtekconcepts.com/2007/03/18/sps-vs-alfresco/) I finally was sure of my decision.

The product and the ideas implemented are very promising and innovative but in my opinion the implementation is not acceptable yet.

Best regards

[mikeh]

We're obviously sad to see you go, but it's a shame you didn't really give the company a fair chance to help you! The forums aren't a presales channel at all; that's what our Enterprise Trials are for, as well as making contact directly with our sales team.

Version 3.0 hasn't actually been "released" yet - it's currently undergoing Enterprise QA and validation, following which there will be another Labs release. I notice most of your problems have been with the experimental Sharepoint interface, which is also undergoing rigourous testing in-house. It's common for beta software to contain bugs - we encourage people to log them in JIRA for proper attention.

It's interesting you should link to Justin's blog, comparing Sharepoint to Alfresco; although the particular post you linked to from 18 months ago is a little unfair - as pointed out in most of his readers' comments. From Alfresco's point of view, it's great that we're seen being a Sharepoint equal, considering just how much resource Microsoft has thrown at that product!

Back to your problems: we'd really encourage you to take an Enterprise Trial if you're still serious about Alfresco.

Thanks,
Mike

[ddenev]

Thank you for the reply but I wonder why I didn't get any attention when I was posting problems with 3.0. So now what? Am I supposed to wait for the big bang trial release in order to be able to properly test the software without having exceptions every 5 minutes or so?

OK, whatever, I guess I will have to wait for the official 3.0 release because Sharepoint features is what we're looking for right now.

The sad thing is that the overall feeling so far is that the community edition is released without any support from Alfresco team and that it is used mainly for beta testing purposes. In fact it turns out (and your words confirm that) that you release a very unstable labs release and do not fix any major bugs or support any requests until Enterprise.

Please do understand, I like Alfresco a lot, but I don't buy anything before properly testing it. I cannot go for the 2.2 trial because it doesn't have Sharepoint features. Additionally, we do not only evaluate your product but also the level of support. Currently I can only judge for the level of support by the level of Alfresco team activity at the forum.

I am not disappointed by the product or by the number of issues found, I understand that it is still in beta and needs additional effort, but by the level of support from Alfresco team regarding the community version.

You could change your model or you could not - it's your choice. But some trends should ring a bell 😉

Best regards

[wbox]

An interesting thread.  After trying to figure out all of the various install options and trying to get it all running on ubuntu linux (which I'm new to),  I had to vote that the install doco is difficult to follow, if it can even be found.  Gonna persevere though.

[steve]

Hi wbox,

If you found the instructions here on installing on Ubuntu difficult to follow would you mind adding in your comments or steps please to help the rest of the community?
Thanks!

Ubuntu instructions: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Alfresco_on_Ubuntu_7.10

[ahmed_eltalkhaw]

I have tried to install alfresco 3.0a on windows vista and XP professional SP2 using the installer with all components which suppose to do all the work for me, but unfortunately i couldn't run alfresco as i through exceptions when tomcat starts up, i have searched the wiki and the internet for any instructions or tips but i couldn't find any, and of course the README files inside the instillation directory isn't helpful at all, so i definitely vote with yes in this topic.

[mrogers]

I'm trying to understand what is not clearly working on the alfresco developer wiki.   There's quite a lot of information on installing Alfresco 3 in these forums, on the developer wiki and in the Alfresco Content Community.

Were you unable to find any documentation at all?    Or did you find stuff that was no good?
For example did you find docs like
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Labs_3
Or the Alfresco installation guide?

[ahmed_eltalkhaw]

Thanks mrogers for your response.

I'm trying to understand what is not clearly working on the alfresco developer wiki.   There's quite a lot of information on installing Alfresco 3 in these forums, on the developer wiki and in the Alfresco Content Community.

Were you unable to find any documentation at all?    Or did you find stuff that was no good?

The stuff found was no good at all as it told me that i should only run the installer and alfresco will be up and running, and that's didn't happen.

For example did you find docs like
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Labs_3
Or the Alfresco installation guide?

- Yes i have red the wiki page but it told me just to download and run the executable file, and by the way the link "Running Alfresco Labs 3 (on Windows)" isn't working.

- There aren't an installation guide in "Labs 3 Beta" folder in "My Alfresco > Documentation > Labs 3 Beta " if that what you mean, as the windows installer as far as i know wasn't available in the previous versions.


Finally i think you need to put a strategy or a project for documentation, with a clear scope and specific goals to reach in mind

[geoffrey1211]

installation doc really really crappy.  put everything in 1 pdf, that's it.  in each session it's teaching u something like checking if your cable is not loose… come on.

[surajz]

Extremely painful to install the application !!
I had installed an earlier version of alfresco a year ago. The new version is impossible to install cleanly.