New contributor at a Contributor Day

  • Weekly Office Hours: Mondays 15:00 UTC
  • Where: The #docs channel on Slack

This guide is a quick starting point for first-time contributors for the Documentation Team. If you are on a Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. at a local WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more., this should get you pointed in the right direction. If you feel there is any aspect left out of this please let us know in the comments below.

Getting started

If you haven’t got a wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ account already, now would be the time to create one. You can easily create one using the registration form on the website. Once you’re done with that it’s time to get on 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/.. Slack is used by the Documentation team to coordinate efforts and to keep in touch. You can sign up on the web version of the WordPress.org Slack. Use your WordPress.org credentials to create an account and head to the #docs channel. There you should find people that can help you with any questions you might have regarding the documentation process.

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Group Responsibilities

This team is responsible for coordinating all documentation initiatives around WordPress, including the Codex (moving to HelpHub and DevHub), handbooks, parts of developer.wordpress.org, admin help, inline docs, and other general wordsmithing across the WordPress project.

Most of what we do ends up in one of these two sites:

  • developer.wordpress.org (aka DevHub) – This is where all the documentation aimed to developers are, such as: Code reference, Plugins and Themes development handbooks and more.
  • wordpress.org/support (aka HelpHub) – This is where all the documentation aimed to the end-user are, such as Installation instructions, Admin panel reference and more.

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What about the Codex?

The Codex is a community-created repository for WordPress documentation. Anyone can edit any of the information on the Codex, and only a WordPress.org user account is required to create a page.

At this moment in time, the Codex is not actively maintained and pages are being migrated to both HelpHub and DevHub.

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How can I help?

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Migrate docs from Codex

If you’re looking for a good place to start, you can help our effort in migrating all the content from the old Codex to both HelpHub and DevHub.

We use this spreadsheet to map every function, class and hook that needs to be migrated. Please check this guide and pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” us on Slack for help!

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Improve the docs

Have you found an error or something that needs to be updated? Do you have a nice example to share in some of the Code references to help other users?

This is a good time to get guidance on how to edit these pages and fix them yourself!

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Prior Knowledge

Prior knowledge that you’ll find helpful for working on docs is:

  • some familiarity with WordPress, though keep in mind that writing docs is an excellent way to learn
  • good English language skills
  • knowledge of theme development for working on the Theme Developer handbook
  • knowledge of 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 development for working on the Plugin Developer handbook
  • for writing documentation, the ability to write clear, concise documentation
  • development skills (PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php., CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site.) if interested in building tools

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OLD Open projects

Currently there are two projects that can use your help. These two are the current main focus for the Documentation Team. The projects are HelpHub and the inline documentation for all JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. used in WordPress.

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HelpHub

You can find the current state of this project listed in an earlier post on our make.wordpress.org pages. If you do decide to help out with HelpHub, make sure you read up on our styling and formatting guide.

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Inline JavaScript documentation

The second project that’s currently being worked on is the inline documentation for all JavaScript used in WordPress. You should be able to find all information relevant to that in this (Core) post.

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Other projects

If these two projects are not your cup of tea: Take a look at our Current Projects page. You can find more documentation projects there. While these currently don’t have our main focus they can still use some love and care.

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Working on HelpHub

If you want to help out with HelpHub, you’re going to need access to the staging environmentStaging Environment A staging environment is a non-production copy of your site. This is a private place to build the site -- design, copy, and code -- until your client approves it for production or live. Sometimes used in addition to, or as a Development Environment.. You can request access from anyone that has administrative rights within the HelpHub Staging Environment. Most of them are in the #docs channel on Slack. If you request access in that channel you should get an answer in there rather quickly.

Most work is currently coordinated in this Google document. Most of the work being done right now is proofreading all articles that are currently in HelpHub.

 

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