We know what our users want. Tutorials. Lots and lots of tutorials. How do we know? Because that’s the content that people read on this website. Always been this way. Will probably never change, either, and I can’t blame you. We are a pretty good source for fixing weird things that nobody ran into, I think. Or maybe we are just great at breaking things in unique ways.
Going forward, however, there will be a change in the way we approach our tutorials. We will still try to write the best possible tutorials, of course, but we are changing the way we are writing the “advanced” sections of our tutorials.
From this point going forward, when we are giving advanced instructions, we will no longer be providing step-by-step instructions for things we consider to be “common knowledge”, or as we like to call it “common sense”.
What that means is that we won’t be writing out all the steps leading up to a solution but instead focus on the solution itself. But this might be best illustrated with an example of a recent article that we have written.
E.G editing a MySQL database
Let’s say that we are writing an article on how to edit your MySQL database. In the future, we will no longer be explaining the steps to connect to your database. Instead, we will simply teach you the command(s) that you need to run to achieve your goals.
Why the change? Because I don’t believe in handholding for people attempting to do “advanced” things. In other words, there are some things you should be capable of on your own before you want to even consider following the advanced instructions.
Sometimes, these advanced steps are potentially dangerous. I’m aware that by not explaining all steps we are increasing the difficulty of the tutorials. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Additionally, writing out all those steps consumes a lot of time, especially if we want to make sure that you can follow these steps safely. Connect there. Click there. Then go there… Instead, we’re counting on you finding your own way inside your tools which you should be familiar with.
There’s an upside to this: If we are saving time, it will be easier for us to write articles. If it’s easier for us to create articles, we will be more willing to do so. And you will end up with more tutorials that will help you get things done.
Win-win! Unless you really were depending on these tutorials. In which case, I would suggest reaching out for us. We can always discuss creating a paid article covering the steps. After all, this blog isn’t my job and is taking time out of my job to maintain.
We hope you’ll understand that we took this decision because we honestly believe that it’ll benefit this blog.