It makes sense!, but the current free template gallery still needs to meet minimum standards to be useful. All other projects could be tagged or added to a new “Share Your Work” section?.
This would help differentiate sources and make the templates produced useful over time.
Could the @elementsbot help? by suggesting the most popular downloads in the forum?
Ah, the good ol’ template treasure hunt! 
While I can’t directly suggest the most popular downloads, I can certainly nudge you in the right direction. The Elements Marketplace is a great place to start exploring available templates and components.
As for sharing work, creating a “Share Your Work” section sounds like a fantastic idea! It would definitely help users showcase their creativity and inspire others. If you’re looking for popular templates or want to contribute, keep an eye on the forum discussions and the Marketplace for updates.
And remember, the community is always here to help and share tips. If you have specific questions or need assistance, feel free to ask! 
Actually, it is a criticism. One of Elements’ biggest problems at the moment is documentation, even though there’s a lot of it. I count several hundred videos, several dozen sample projects, along with all the “container-based” manual bits (I hate container-based documentation, as it really only works if you already know what you’re looking for, and where it is in the hierarchy).
Most of the complaints about Elements, including @fisherking’s have to do with learning, not function. To @dan’s and @ben’s credit, they are responsive to specific questions here, and often will provide an example. The problem with that is that those things get buried in forum organization, so someone coming in later doesn’t know that answer exists.
Ultimately, I believe Elements (or StacksPro for that matter) won’t survive without better documentation. Elements specifically is like a Photoshop, where you have the ability to do just about anything, but no clear way to figure out how to do it just from icons and panels and widgets, et.al. I’d further point out that Photoshop itself was pretty much a product only for the diligent or the ones that got help from Adobe for many years. It wasn’t until Scott Kelby formed his Photoshop organization and held annual conferences that the intricacies of the program started to get conquered. And that was via documentation, instruction, tutorials, examples, etc., not features in the product. Today Photoshop continues to thrive because it has so many groups, companies, and individuals who continue that educational instruction.
He @thominator
We are doing our best at documenting things as we go. Remember we are a small team and there are only so many hours in the day. We are working hard to put up documentation as we go while juggling all the other stuff we are working on.
I think considering Elements is only at v1, the documents are pretty good. As you said there are hundreds of video tutorials on YouTube, lots of text documents on Gitbook (you can use the AI search feature if you don’t want to trawl though the containers as you mentioned), and of course there is the forum here (which also has search and an AI helper bot). Usually if people search, they can find what they are looking for, and if not ask here on the forum and get an answer from a real person. 
But yes documentation is always evolving, always being updated, always being added to. It’s a living breathing thing. 
You mentioned a Scott Kelby who set up a Photoshop organization to help people with the intricacies of Photoshop. I remember back in the day people in the RW community did that as well (RapidWeaver Classroom, RapidWeaver Tutorials, lots of other community members offering free or paid help guides and lessons as a service to the community). Nothing is stopping anybody from doing that with Elements, if they have knowledge to share, that would be fantastic for the community. Your book for example is a perfect example of that and everybody here appreciates it! 
I see a complete difference between documentation and a forum/community posts. Do you want to see every post documented? I personally would not! I choose what I read and bookmark as this is my personal choice.
You have always posted about lack of documentation which I see as the “instruction” book on Elements, yet I would not want to see all you posts documented.
I posted an old download to match the post by @MultiThemes as I had bookmarked it as useful this has nothing to do with documentation IMO.
I totally disagree with you about programmes surviving or not as I am a person who likes to play, explore and enjoy what I am doing without bogging myself down in documentation, which has now been overtaken by videos IMO. I only look for solutions when I get stuck and then post in this community for help which is normally forthcoming from experts who know more than me.
I am old, old school and wise, reading instruction books before doing anything at my age would mean I wouldn’t get much done before I die! I am just off to do a parachute jump for the first time today - just reading the safety manual - perhaps I am not doing parachute jump!
I appreciate the irony; you made me smile! 
I’ve been skydiving for over 10 years, and I’ve read tons of safety and meteorology manuals! Nowadays, you learn in vertical turbines, and on your first jump, you’re accompanied—that’s a different story 
You’re doing amazing! As someone who has done process mapping professionally and written many policies and procedures in my days at national and international level I personally feel that there are a multitude of aspects to keep people happy. Sadly its impossible as there are many facets to peoples make up. For example a visual personality needs different instruction to a kinesthetic person, so at the end of the day a written instruction will be interpreted differently!
People also have different levels of intelligence and their needs differ, it’s well known that “Men are from Mars - Women from Venus” and therefore interpretation is different. If you list things basically people with experience get “turned off” quickly and vice versa.
So please do not justify what you’re doing just keep on doing!
Also never accept that all instructions are appreciated by everyone as sometimes they are not.
Keep up the amazing work the team is doing!
Glad to make you smile and wow I have no idea why I would I would even contemplate a tandem jump! What a waste of aa bike! As for a vertical turbine - I honestly prefer horizontal ones!
Happy developers make happy customers so keep smiling!
What do you think would help users get to grips with elements quicker?
Perhaps a more in-depth getting started guide?
Let us know 
Here’s the thing I learned creating the CMS book: at some fairly early point the workspace is going to be full screen, which means that jumping around between windows to see a video that you keep having to pause, or to go look up something in the on-line documentation, starts to be a giant windows shuffle, and for most people that not easy as they are unable to see context in the project they’re working on while referencing something else.
What’s happened with my CMS book is that people are printing it out and having it computerside as they work with Elements through my steps, and because I do everything as a complete from scratch step-by-step, they just follow along turning pages as they go. I actually learned that way, way back when I was doing some award-winning documentation for big software projects in Silicon Valley: having printed step-by-step on your desk while working on the screen works really well for people coming as virgins into a complex system.
So, the answer to your question is that you need a printed (or printable) step-by-step follow-along of building a full web site using Elements. Indeed, I’d probably follow the same pattern I did with the CMS book: take the Microblog site (but make it a Micro site with just a simple landing page to start), then build it out:
The biggest issue I’m finding so far in working with others to learn Elements is that the have a big grepping problem with Container/Flex and all the ways of revealing, formatting, spacing, et.al. within those. So somewhere between Steps 2 and 3 above I’d make the aside into how Tailwind/CSS and components work together (just as I did with Markdown/YAML in the CMS book).
FWIW, I’d doing a major rework of the CMS book, adding even more things and explaining more, dealing with any and everything that people reported with the earlier versions. The 1.03 version when it appears will have a small price (US$10), as all the downloads so far are eating bandwidth costs, plus my time isn’t being compensated for. However, for the time being, version 1.02 is still free (with the potential to make a donation).
It would be very helpful if we can download a PDF of the current GitBook maintained documentation. Maybe a different online documentation backend would allow for that??
I wouldn’t necessarily print it out and refer to it, but I would put it up on my second screen and refer to it.
Though, now that I have been working with Elements for a while, my need to look up stuff is rare than it was at the beginning of my travels.
I think we’re talking about two different types of users. The ones that are complaining are the ones that are Elements virgins. There’s just so much they have to learn and it’s not entirely clear where they start and what the logical order in which to build knowledge (experience) is. It’s the classic “empty page” problem.
If I were @dan I’d be extremely worried about these “virgins,” because they’re the ones Realmac really needs to be selling to in order to get the ecosystem financially healthy. There simply are (1) far more people that simply want to build a Web site than (2) people who have Web building experience and strong knowledge enhancement skills. If Elements has to live off of Elements Pro subscriptions, it’s going to be a really tough road to building up enough users to be highly self-sustaining, and building a large user base is one of those chicken/egg things because it generates more developers and developers generate more users, ad infinitum. It’s new Elements Base and Elements Plus users Realmac needs to hook to be the runaway success I think all of us hope it will be. And if those folk download a trial, stare at a blank page, and then punt because they don’t know what to do next, they don’t buy.
(As an aside, I’d say to those who’ve designed projects that can be bought on the Marketplace, there’s a slightly different problem: now the virgin is staring at a full page instead of a blank page. They still don’t know what to do, particularly because none of the projects I’ve seen so far actually come with much, if any, in the way of instruction.)
The competitor to Elements (and developers in the Marketplace) is now AI. The virgins are being marketed an “all automagic way of creating a Web site” (via AI). One problem with that is that all Web sites will start to look the same if everyone does that. We had that problem on Day One of the Internet when everyone was a virgin, which spawned the original site building tools. But at least those tools came with manuals ;~).
Personally, I want Elements to succeed. I’d judge it to be on the precipice of that, but things are moving fast in this post-AI world, so it needs to succeed faster, not slower. I’ve been through many of these tool-cycles (starting with BASIC, then Visicalc, and so on). The key to success is the way you transition the virgins, not the geeks who have some idea of what they’re doing or where to go to find out more.
i jumped into rapidweaver classic a long time ago; needed a site, figured it out. lot’s of googling, hunting & pecking, and workarounds.
now i manage my own and another site. but both live on the same template, and i (finally) know my way around.
pop-up tooltips? a pdf i can keep on my 2nd screen? i find elements unintuitve (at least, coming from classic). i JUST stripped down my site to almost nothing (!), tried to do something similar in Elements. am confused…
why are the top-bar previews not responsive? why can’t i center an image? how do i get the whole thing to be at (for example) 75% of the browser window?
this is just, of course, my experience. but classic works for me as a non-expert, and elements reminds me of my first attempts at a site in (gasp) dreamweaver (early 2000s).
wish it were more ‘drag & drop’, more control-click options, resizing a container by dragging it’s sides…
still, will dive in for a round 2 next week.
Thom I have read your comments and it’s clear to me why you’re so interested in Typography component. Sadly when I downloaded Elements for the first time as a beta in December 2024 I was a “virgin”, I can assure you that then the App was not as developed as it is now and there were less members of this forum.
I have spent time learning the App by playing, making mistakes and asking on here for help when stuck. Being born BC (Before Computers) we never had PDF’s, YouTube etc. we learned in a different way and now I am nearly 70 I am not into reading manuals on anything otherwise I’d be dead before getting much done. I definitely would NOT print out an instruction manual if there was one and find it quite funny in this digital age that anybody would do this anyway.
You say there are two types of person and “its the virgins who are complaining”, have you done an analysis on this because I see a lot of “virgins” asking for help and getting it, just like I did when I was one.
Yes there may be the odd complaint but have you looked at the root cause of their reason for complaining? Sadly IMO there are people on here who are complaining for a reason from other forums!
So to finish I am not in favour of totally unnecessary, long winded instructions and definitely NOT a fan of printing any out.
As I was always taught, you can take a horse to water………. If people want to use Stacks, if people want to use AI - sorry bot, if people want to continue with RW8/Classic or move to Elements IMO they will and its not the instructions thats going to make their opinion its the final product and in this age what they can afford.
SO if it’s your style to do what you’re doing then continue if it makes you happy but sadly its not mine.
Thanks for the detailed reply above, that’s much appreciated. And what you’re saying makes absolute sense to help those that are just starting out on their Elements journey.
I’ll move the creation of this in-depth guide up the ranks of my to-do list… unless anyone else wants to step in for a little paid work and help us out?!
I did see that, but I didn’t want to spend the time to do it fifty-eleven times to get the whole thing. Was hoping for a single link that brought all together and output a singe PDF. I much rather spend the time learning Elements, which is what I did. 
EDIT: You can print out / PDF ALL pages. Click the export PDF link as you have shown, then click on all pages to the left. Then click Print in upper right and save as PDF. Never saw that before. Not as nicely presented (because of the missing videos) but works…@dan
All of these things are possible, and we can help you do each one. Feel free to post a new topic on how to do a specific task. In the meantime, here’s a few links to manual/videos that should help
There’s are both good videos to watch for those coming from Classic or thinking about it:
Stick with Elements, once it clicks and you get the hang of it there’s no going back!
And again, please post a new topic if you get stuck and I’ll record a video showing you how to do exactly what you want
Cheers!
@weaver would you be interested in creating such a manual if realmac would offer some monetary contributions?
We’d certainly be interested in funding anyone that wants to help with expanding the Elements manual!
