Author Archives: Marius L. J.

Marius L. J. 8:26 am on August 23, 2017
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Summary for Helphub Meeting August 22nd

MigrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies./Editing

The introduction pages for contributing to HelpHub, in the docs handbook, have been updated to help with onboarding new contributors, and a contributor document has been added to the project on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/.

General migration of documentation is moving along at a decent pace.

Design

Input is being provided on the various visual elements of the project, and tickets are being created for tasks that need addressing in relation to this.

Development

Documentation on code contributions is in the works.

We’re also looking into possibly having everything under a team as it can become messy to mix plugins and themes in one large repository, splitting plugins into separate repositories for management purposes would help with that and needs a team to keep track of the mall in one location (as a continuation on the sub-modules discussion form last week).

Attendance

@kenshino, @milana_cap, @sergeybiryukov, @atachibana, @davidmlentz, @picturecities, @mapk, @clorith, @kafleg, @hugo-finley and @joyously attended.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#summary

Marius L. J. 8:46 am on May 25, 2014
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Admin Help, week 21

A bit of a late write up, sorry about that I’m preparing to be gone for a week. The late update does mean we get to include what we got from Thursdays Docs meeting as well.

Chat logs here

We need a clear component list
Defining components to get a clear line on what we wish to focus on for each iteration will help greatly. The definition of a component is not necessarily just a single page in the admin, but the flow of a task. An example f a component would be “media in posts”, this would be the flow of users adding media to their post, from wanting to add it till it’s actually in their post, and would thus mostly involve the media modal, but some users may not know how to properly work it and go to the Media page to upload first (that would mean we failed at making the media modal obvious/simple enough to use, and it should be looked into).
An important element to this is knowing what coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. components each of our components relate to (if we can use core components for things even better, no relationship table required, but I know some components can be too narrow). Drawing relations makes it easier for us to tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. what we discover.

Started planning for how local user testing can be performed, utilizing WordCamps or Meetups.
Being able to do actual testing with users should help leverage the problem we have with online user testing services and time constraints. How to record the data was discussed, and we touched on what kind of setup that might be the most appropriate for this in regard to sitting on your own laptop or looking over shoulders of users. When possible using your own laptop is the most beneficial as it will allow you to do screen recordings. Emphasis on getting users permission was made, as privacy is important, and if they don’t want it publicly posted we need to respect that.
@kpdesign suggested we check with meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers to see what they often find their users struggling with, we should check in with @jenmylo to find a good way to keep that dialogue flowing, since meetups are a reoccurring event it would be beneficial to keep in touch with organizers there.

Interviews
There was some interest for following the interview route. I’m personally not familiar with it but will be looking into what others have been doing here to see if it’s a viable approach as well, the more data the better, I like data.

I will be gone for week 22, from Monday 26th of May, for mandatory military training, but I hope you’ll keep up the good work for Monday and continue the great work we’ve begun. What I’d like to see happen during next week is a draft of the component list

#admin-help

Marius L. J. 2:18 am on May 14, 2014
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Admin Help May 13th, 2014

Bit of a fleshy update!

@trishasalas has stepped down as project lead, feeling the project was moving in a direction she did not feel fully comfortable with leading. I’ll be stepping out of the shadows and taking point moving forward.

During our meeting we discussed what we see from the current set of tests. We chose to focus on the newly updated theme screen for these tests, and although more data points would be nice we did identify some consistent misconceptions on the users ends.

We then discussed how to best utilize our time when deciding what to look into and when, some ideas thrown out by yours truly were to focus on modules of the admin that have either recently been updated, or haven’t seen any love in a while.

Further more, @jerrysarcastic voulenteered to look into the process regarding credits for tests.

Another idea that was thrown out seemed like it might be very interesting; An opt-in pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party for dedicated users who wish to help further WordPress, which would do anonymous heat map data of the admin. I would certainly like to re-visit this idea at our next meeting and look into the viability of this.

#admin-help

Marius L. J. 6:47 am on March 14, 2014
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WordPress task identification

As @trishasalas mentioned, we want to identify what areas of WordPress people struggle with, and we’d like to do some user tests on this (both for new users, as well as seasoned veterans, we all have things that bug us at some point or another), and then focus on how we can improve these and help get more people to adopt it and use it on a regular basis.

Our previous user tests have some value to them still, but as mentioned some areas of them have changed quite a bit, and we are also skipping a major part of the getting started experience; the setup, and all the pitfalls it may include.

It was also discussed to make the user tests intentionally “vague” (although this hasn’t been fully decided yet), to avoid being too leading as we want to see how users interact, not how they follow commands.

To this end, we’d like input from various sources on what tasks you perform in WordPress when getting started to help us shape tests to get a broader view of it all.

Some examples to get the ball rolling;

  • Upload and configure WordPress
  • Remove the default post and comment
  • Drop by the theme editor and find the right theme
  • Writing my first post

From the list above many people will probably butt heads at the configuration because the wp root directory isn’t writable and they can’t get wp-config automatically configured, they couldn’t find the remove option for the default post, the theme they liked didn’t work well with their WP version (or they couldn’t install it because of permissions again?), and so forth.

We’d then take that list, and break it down into a “vague” list (if that’s the approach we go with) of something like this;

  • Here’s some FTPFTP FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol which is a way of moving computer files from one computer to another via the Internet. You can use software, known as a FTP client, to upload files to a server for a WordPress website. https://codex.wordpress.org/FTP_Clients. details, go add WordPress
  • Make the site “yours”
  • Create some content

The first task might be the most stressful I suspect, but it’s also an extremely important aspect of WordPress, it’s the initial step you take after all (we are also aware that many hosts have single click setups, but that’s a custom setup by the provider, and not part of coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.).

#admin-help