Handbook, Pass One

Okay, I removed all the pages that I knew were 100% .com

I left the pages that are maybe .com

What I’d like to see as a first pass is if people can, in the comments, rewrite them (in sections if you want) to correct them for the Codex. Once we have the info ‘right’, or right enough, we can do something like http://codex.wordpress.org/Handbook (I just stubbed it out to ‘save’ it) – Note: I do not know 100% if we’re going to stay ‘here’ or go to the codex with this, but either way, the principle’s the same.

We will need a ‘table of contents’ so if you have an idea, I’d really love to see this done like a book, and I want to aim it so that the new user (think about your most un-technical family member) sees the stuff at the top, and then follow things down logically. Check out http://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/ for an example of what @hanni and I did there. It starts with learning, goes to contributing, and so on. Obviously this isn’t the exact same flow, but you see the idea.

It’s possible we’re going to end up with Handbook, Handbook/Themes, Handbook/Plugins, and then send ‘em to Core/Handbook for Handbook/Core. I’m 99% sure I can redirect a codex page to any HTML in mediawiki, but I may need to harangue Otto about that. We can decide how later on.

So our todo!

Then? We tackle that main codex page (once we know what info we want, we can organize how to coerce people that way). I’m not terribly worried about changes we don’t like, since MediaWiki has awesome revisioning.

Let’s get started!

The Handbook

On this post, let’s comment to get the BIG sections first. My spur of the moment ToC is this:

  • About WordPress – I know nothing, what is this thing.
  • Installing – How do I do that?
  • Settings (maybe ‘Configuring’?) – How do I make it look more me-ish
  • Just Write – Forget all this! I wanna blog!
  • Customizing – Themes and plugins and widgets, oh my!
  • Miscellaneous – The rest of the stuff ;)

Open for improvements. We can either ‘edit’ the pages in comments, or if you want to be an editor and be able to, er, editor the pages, speak up. Top level table of contents, let’s fight out here in the comments. Sub-page organization is going to be a nightmare no matter how we do it.