Join Google’s Season Of Docs: Help Us Create Better Documentation for WordPress

Are you an experienced writer? If you are familiar with writing docs and tutorials for WordPress and want to contribute in Open SourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL., we have few amazing projects under Google’s Season Of Docs 2020, and the sweet part if you are accepted, you can get paid for it!

This year we have submitted a number of project ideas to be considered at Season of Docs, you could see we got accepted.

If you look at timeline, you will see we are in the final phase of “Technical writer applications“, deadline July 9, 2020 at 18:00 UTC.

I am personally mentoring for a project I proposed (look at the Project Five on the Idea List Docs), Curate Existing HelpHub Article To Create Pillar Contents, I am writing this post to guide prospective technical Writers to access the project properly, communicate with the mentor, and successfully submit the proposal in time.

I will compile the rest of the post as a resource, will mainly focus on my project, but it should be useable for other projects as well, just communicate with your mentor before you proceed. Remember here Mentor plays an important role if you look at this doc that describes the Mentor’s responsibilities you will realize.

Basics You Need to Know About Season of Docs

• What is Season of Docs
• Participants of Season of Docs 2020
• WordPress Project Ideas
• Timeline
• Stipends Details

Prepare To Apply As Technical Writer

• Technical Writer Guide
• Contact the Project Mentor (reach out in Slack)

Season of Docs Project List Idea

Must-Have Qualities for Technical Writer

I will rewrite this portion from official review criteria, as that’s how we will review the application when Google forward your proposal to us.

1. Prior Experience: For most of the project pas experience is important, and if you do not have past experience as a writer, you will mostly like won’t be a good fit. At the same time as this is a Technical Writing project, you need to be very aware how that particular technology works, for WordPress nothing is complex, and very well documented already, but as an example, if you are working with docs related to our new BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. Editor, but have not explored that deeply, it will be very hard for you to complete the project.
2. Language & Communication Skills: Though it’s not must that English is your first language, but as we will be doing everything in English, your command over English is very important. So, we will want to see evidence that shows your English skill and overall Communication Skills.
3. Content & Doc Design: This is very important. Content style and design of the doc is very important if you look at the projects ideas, it’s more about how different mentors are planning to organize the future of documentation approach for WordPress, so any applicant needs to understand the format, style, and design of the doc of that particular projects.

Special Requirement for my Project

Let me copy the project details again here –

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Project Five: @asif2bd

Project Name: Curate Existing HelpHub Article To Create Pillar Contents
Description: We are continuously creating more content in HelpHub, but basic questions like “Locally Host WordPress” or “How To Secure WordPress”, are answered with separate CPT and not one article to answer completely or links to existing content. While the current configuration is good for SEO, it is confusing for our users.
Related material:

• Link to the open source project that needs documentation: https://wordpress.org/support/
• I am proposing ‘Pillar Content” that will be curated collection of existing content that will direct guide users in finding more authenticated information. Like “How To Secure WordPress” will give precise guideline and will link and resources from following contents

•  https://wordpress.org/support/article/hardening-wordpress/
•  https://wordpress.org/support/article/changing-file-permissions/
•  https://wordpress.org/support/article/why-should-i-use-https/
•  https://wordpress.org/support/article/brute-force-attacks/
•  https://wordpress.org/support/article/password-best-practices/

Include links to similar documentation in other projects:

• https://developer.github.com/v4/guides/intro-to-graphql/
• https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-rails5
• https://www.gatsbyjs.org/tutorial/part-four/

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If you have read all the above carefully, then you should realize the requirements for my project. Discuss with me if you need clarification, so you get more clarity before you proceed to the final proposal. This is not an official requirement, but if you submit this before submitting the final proposal, you will have a clear idea, how I will review your proposal in the final stage, as I probably can’t take more than 2-3 writers here, and I am already getting a hand full of the proposal, and this is not a very simple content plan, I need expert hands to truly help WordPress Documentation.

And I would expect about 10Hrs/Week commitment for the duration of the project.

I will try to give feedback via slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. 24hr, just knock me in Making WordPress slack (@asif2bd).

After you successfully submit the proposal, Google will send it to us, we will review it based on those guidelines.

Let’s flourish with Season of Docs, and improve WordPress Documentation!

#season-of-docs