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  • Ipstenu (Mika E.) 10:11 pm on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: handbook   

    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.

     

    • Andrea Rennick 3:00 pm on August 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      What about pictures? FIrst time I looked they were all linked back to wp.com?

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 3:07 pm on August 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Yeah, I think it’s because @otto42 and @hanni did a DB import instead of an export/import. ;)

        Should probably sort out how to pull those in *sigh* WP needs a better media importer. And a sitewide search/replace for all the damn instances of en.support.wordpress.com

    • Darren Meehan 3:18 pm on August 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Hi. On call to help. Do I pick a page and get started?

    • andrewspittle 4:08 pm on August 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Quick thought on the outline: might make sense to try putting writing and customizing before settings as once someone has a grasp of how content and presentation work the settings can make a lot more sense.

      Looking forward to seeing this take shape!

    • Siobhan 4:59 pm on August 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      It might be useful to have a basic troubleshooting section at the end, with the most common errors and problems listed – the type of stuff that comes up on the forums again and again. Most of it can be grabbed from the codex and dropped in.

      Can i have editor access please? I can do some editing.

      Also – it would be good to have some sort of system for marking pages as having been edited. Maybe something like tagging them as either “in progress” or “complete”. That way we’ll know what has been done so we’re not retreading over each others’ work.

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:04 pm on August 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Check your inbox for access.

        Sadly these are pages, so we can’t tag ‘em. *ponder*

        • Andrea Rennick 11:27 pm on August 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          What if certain people just tackel the pages for certain sections?

          • Siobhan 6:57 pm on August 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

            So I can get started I’m going to start on 01 and 02.

            We should probably have a section around “Installing” on choosing a web host.

            In fact, we’ll probably come up with things that we think should be added as we’re working on it. Could me make an “idea” page or something so they can all be stored in one place?

    • Siobhan 8:59 pm on August 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Ideas page added to the top of the page list. If I feel like a page is in the wrong place should I move it?

    • Nick Hamze 9:26 pm on August 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      What can I do? I’m a little rusty on WP.org stuff but I know the WP.com docs like the back of my hand so I can help pull all the WP.com specific stuff out.

      Off the bat I noticed some WP.com specific pages that you can probably remove:
      Self-Harm and Online Safety
      Transliteration
      Translation FAQ
      Support Options
      Request Feedback
      Proofreading
      My Upgrades
      List Pages Shortcode
      front
      Delete Site
      Delete Blog
      Contact
      Changing a Blog Address
      Change Your Username
      Cancel Domain
      Disputes: Defamation, Court Orders, Subpoenas, Privacy
      Custom Design
      Custom Colors
      Editing CSS

      • Siobhan 9:30 pm on August 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Having just edited two pages: http://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/about-wordpress/admin-bar/ and http://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/about-wordpress/com-vs-org/ I realise it’s a much bigger task than simply switching out .com for .org :)

        However, the pages do provide a good framework.

        • Nick Hamze 9:38 pm on August 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          The admin bar one was a bad one to start out with as there a quite a few differences between .org and .com in that aspect. Others should be less painful, but it will be a long process.

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 11:27 pm on August 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Hmm. Yeah, some of those can go. I was thinking to keep a delete page, and upgrades, and refactor them into what they are for .org. Nick, I sent you an editor invite, so I think you should be able to delete pages. (Heavens, how long has it been since any of us were editors?)

        • Nick Hamze 12:23 am on August 17, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Thanks, for the access. The My Upgrades page is all about the WP.com specific panel which I why I thought you wouldn’t want it. The delete blog/site ones I didn’t think applied to .org unless maybe in a multi-site setting, but I don’t think it has the same steps in any case. What do you want me working on? I don’t want to step on anyones toes if they are already working/assigned certain pages.

          • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 12:30 am on August 17, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

            What do you know best? That is what are you most comfortable with?

            There are few editors, so don’t worry about toes :) No one’s assigned anything (yet).

            • Nick Hamze 3:31 am on August 17, 2012 Permalink

              I’m game for anything. How about I take the “Just Write” section and update/edit all the WP.com stuff out and add the WP.org stuff in.

    • vajrasar 6:44 am on August 17, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Maybe multiple examples for simple stuff like post vs page, sidebar vs widget, theme vs template etc won’t hurt, as it helps a rookie a lot. Plus, when it comes to dirty details, then hooks, actions and filters should be taken way deep (with example – something like NickTheGeek do in his genesis series.).

    • juanfra 8:40 am on August 17, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      There are also some pages that can be taken from .org – For example, there’s a page for “Installing WordPress” (http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress).

      I can help with spanish translations also :)

    • Siobhan 9:59 am on August 17, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      @vanillalounge has pointed out that if we want the user manual to be translated it should be started while it’s being written.

      https://twitter.com/zedejose/status/236229523367133184

      Is this something that we should take to Polyglots?

    • JerrySarcastic 7:02 pm on August 20, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Not sure if this is on the radar for this project, but over on the Make:UI Blog there is a post that is starting to explore “New User Walk-Throughs” (See this comment) to create guided tours for new users. Considering how so many of the activities in first getting accustomed to WordPress take place in multiple dashboard panels, this seems like a good thing to have in the new user manual as well. Plus, I want to help. :)

  • hanni 11:09 pm on August 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: goals   

    Post hoc ergo propter hoc: approaching and defining support goals

    Breaking out from the Codex thread below – and using, inter alia, Siobhan’s comment as a starting point, let’s get some outlining goals going on:

    • A clear division between developer docs and user docs
    • A self-contained, concise yet complete landing page for the user coming in
    • Plot a useful journey for different people who want to “learn WordPress”, from beginner to ninja/rockstar/whatever the individual wishes to be - (imho this needs to both respect that not everyone will want to do everything, nor indeed have the nouse (everyone is unique, and has their own strength), whilst respecting and encouraging the learning process – it’s a balance to ensure that eveyone gets to where _they_ want to be, with the best tools and information not where we, or anyone thinks they should be. Without passion, we’d not be here – I think at this point I’m merely restating what everyone thinks and goes without saying, but, let’s just get it documented.)

    So, there’s some overlap and a meeting point with the core contributors‘ handbook, and this is where we need to be super disciplined. I know so many of us, @ipstenu, @andrea_r, @lorelle, @esmi (and everyone here, and more!) have been mulling this over for a good deal of time, so I’m just very much about grouping the discussion and the years of thought and care into a thread.

    Let’s go!

     

    • andrea_r 11:25 pm on August 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Probably first point is to identify actionable items, break ‘em down into manageable tasks and start the delegating / voluntold process?

      I;d say first thing is to get the wp.com useful docs over here with a first pass at editing to replace terms, then link it up to the main.

      • hanni 11:28 pm on August 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        sidenote on wp.com docs – @andrea_r I’ve just grabbed an export of en.support.wordpress.com. Where’d you like to start gathering these? A category here?

      • hanni 11:56 pm on August 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        OK, we had some quick ad-hoc “IRL”conversation action going on here with @ipstenu, @nacin, @otto, @jane and others – noting:

        • Since even /handbook/ etc wouldn’t potentially even be the “final destination for this info, it’s pretty academic where we put them, as long as we keep them as pages (arguably most flexibility wrt simple portability
        • With all of this in mind, we don’t need to ask of anybody’s time (would require a couple of hurdles @nacin’s part which just make it not worth it) to just create a page and import as a sub of the Handbook page @ipstenu has already created

        • hanni 12:05 am on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Done! @otto helped me mass move everything to under “Handbook”. Falling timber, but it’s something.

          • andrea_r 12:14 am on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

            Dang, you guys work fast – and yeah, something somewhere anywhere. :D

          • hanni 12:42 am on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

            So, the general principle of restricting isn’t something you’ll ever see me getting behind, and, was careful to only export / import “published” pages so there is no sensitive anything, I have made the pages private whilst we do a very quick _ initial triage – otherwise 340+ pages is a bit overwhelming to just dump out there, so:

            • @andrea_r, @esmi @ipstenu @hanni- let’s grab any and all pages where we can and, without investing the time to reformat it, or whatever (should this be hard), do a quick once-over to see if the actual page itself is something useful for .org and then make it public, if it’s not relevant, delete – I’ll presume, by Wednesday morning 10AM PST that anything still private can be made public.
            • Then, once we have the public set of pages which are, in theory, the relevant ones, we can do deeper triage, updating, and editing – as @ipstenu pointed out, this may actually be quickly done too! :)

              • This is just for 72 hours, whilst we scrub. If we can do it before then, that’s great.

    • Siobhan 3:42 pm on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Amazing – I go to bed and loads of stuff has happened! Is there anything I can do to help? Have some time to review pages tomorrow if needed.

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:38 pm on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        As soon as we can go through and delete the totally non-relevant .com stuff (like how to set up email/domains with .com etc), and remove the links to .com support, I think we can roll the pages out, have everyone comment, and figure out how to structure a ‘user handbook’

        @hanni and I were talking about this with the Core Handbook, and she has a great idea for overviews.

        If we can come up with big ‘header’ sections, like in a book, and lead people through what you need to know, then we can present a guided path.

        So with WP Codex we should figure out what our ‘path’ is.

        1) What is WordPress
        2) Installing
        3) Using
        4) Extending (? Themes and/or plugins … maybe Personalizing)
        5) Coding

        And then the Coding one would be where we’ve got all that advanced function calls etc. Core can link back to the Core Handbook.

    • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 11:49 pm on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Pages sorted and done. I have a draft post, but since the handbook doesn’t list them all, I asked @otto42 and @nacin if we could have the shortcode for child pages like they do on .com (and like the plugin in the repo) so we could just list ‘em.

    • hanni 11:52 pm on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      @ipstenu, you are a marvel.

    • Lorelle 4:55 pm on August 10, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Wow, I duck into academia and miss out on all the fun. Is there a place to find all these? What can I do?

      WordCamp PDX is coming up and some people have asked me to do a Codex unconference meeting during it. I’d love to tap into their brilliance and point them at specifics. The WordPress PDX Meetup team also wants more directions when it comes to how they can help with the Codex, especially after the very successful recent Codex events.

      Awesome.

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