Installers that don't suck

The first part of your web application that users will see is its installer. It’s a surprisingly important piece of your application, yet because it’s only seen once, it’s often an afterthought or doesn’t get the same attention as the user experience of other parts of the system. When it does, however, there is a tendency to focus on a very specific new-user experience only, to the detriment of the multitude of ways that a web application could be deployed, installed, or set up.