First of all, kudos, Varnish is an amazing piece of kit and hat's off to you sir.
However, I've been where you are and know how you feel, what you've said makes perfect logical sense to you, in your mind these are clear instructions on what should be done, but they still mean very little to someone who's completely new to this (even though they've been using Varnish for a good while now).
I'm a WordPress dev (I know, but it pays the bills), but I have been put between a rock and a hard place, so now I'm also responsible for setting up DO droplets for standalone websites. The reason I use Varnish is simplicity: apt-get install, wget on a WordPress vcl file, change a port and we're saving ram and can serve to 6x-10x concurrent users than before on straight nginx.
Thing is, I'm not alone in this use case, I know several people, who adore the magic and ease of use of Varnish. None of us know the insides, but we're can copy-paste and change a few things.
We respect and understand the need for dropping backwards compatibility, but all believe that the upgrade docs desperately need some examples.
Your docs are great for someone who has the time to read them all and learn all about Varnish, like a book, but (with no disrespect) borderline useless to someone who's got deadlines and a ton of work and simply has no time to learn this system that he's been relying on for a while.
So I've scanned (not read, ain't nobody got time for that) everything inside of the link you gave and while very interesting and comprehensive, if I was a sysadmin on a salary, I'd sink a few days into this and become really good at it, but I'm booked up, so I just need this up and running, so again, it's useless.
It comes down to your resources: do you have the man power to create several default vcl files that people can "just use": like a vcl for a RoR app, vcl for a WordPress site, vcl for a Symfony app etc (depending on actual usage/popularity)...
I know it's a catchy and grabby title and sort of BS if you think about it, but it just works.
It took me an hour to get a DO dropplet running and blitz.io reported numbers that made me happy ($10 DO dropplet, large WP site, 27k+ requests per minute), that's enough for us.
I've got a few other ideas, but I think that if your company does something similar, you'll be able to get a much wider appeal and engage with users a lot more, which is great PR and marketing for your paid service.
Comments
First of all, kudos, Varnish is an amazing piece of kit and hat's off to you sir.
However, I've been where you are and know how you feel, what you've said makes perfect logical sense to you, in your mind these are clear instructions on what should be done, but they still mean very little to someone who's completely new to this (even though they've been using Varnish for a good while now).
I'm a WordPress dev (I know, but it pays the bills), but I have been put between a rock and a hard place, so now I'm also responsible for setting up DO droplets for standalone websites. The reason I use Varnish is simplicity: apt-get install, wget on a WordPress vcl file, change a port and we're saving ram and can serve to 6x-10x concurrent users than before on straight nginx.
Thing is, I'm not alone in this use case, I know several people, who adore the magic and ease of use of Varnish. None of us know the insides, but we're can copy-paste and change a few things.
We respect and understand the need for dropping backwards compatibility, but all believe that the upgrade docs desperately need some examples.
I know it's the language of the devil, but the docs and the examples are definitely very usable to complete newbies: http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php
Your docs are great for someone who has the time to read them all and learn all about Varnish, like a book, but (with no disrespect) borderline useless to someone who's got deadlines and a ton of work and simply has no time to learn this system that he's been relying on for a while.
Thanks for your honesty! We are really interested in understanding how-to create better documentation for users like you. Bear with us :-)
Maybe an updated version of the book (and its examples) [1] would help? Or do you have some other concrete examples
[1] https://www.varnish-software.com/static/book/
So I've scanned (not read, ain't nobody got time for that) everything inside of the link you gave and while very interesting and comprehensive, if I was a sysadmin on a salary, I'd sink a few days into this and become really good at it, but I'm booked up, so I just need this up and running, so again, it's useless.
It comes down to your resources: do you have the man power to create several default vcl files that people can "just use": like a vcl for a RoR app, vcl for a WordPress site, vcl for a Symfony app etc (depending on actual usage/popularity)...
I started using varnish because of this tutorial: http://ewan.im/900/10-million-hits-a-day-with-wordpress-usin...
I know it's a catchy and grabby title and sort of BS if you think about it, but it just works.
It took me an hour to get a DO dropplet running and blitz.io reported numbers that made me happy ($10 DO dropplet, large WP site, 27k+ requests per minute), that's enough for us.
I've got a few other ideas, but I think that if your company does something similar, you'll be able to get a much wider appeal and engage with users a lot more, which is great PR and marketing for your paid service.