Tag Archives: helphub

Hugh Lashbrooke 2:42 pm on February 8, 2016
Tags: , helphub   

HelpHub Meeting Agenda: Feb. 9

We’re well underway with development for HelpHub, so this week’s meeting is more of a development status update than anything else. There won’t be any specific agenda other than developers reporting back and seeing if we can set some goals for feature delivery dates.

Time/date: Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 14:00 UTC in #docs

We still need to discuss content planning, but that’s still on hold for now as I need to work a few things out on the admin side before we can have any fruitful discussions around it. As soon as things are ready, however, we’re going to dive right into the content structure and planning the articles that we’ll need to write.

#agenda, #helphub

Hugh Lashbrooke 10:00 am on February 4, 2016
Tags: helphub,   

HelpHub Update: 4 February 2016

Instead of the weekly meeting recaps I thought it would be more beneficial if I posted a weekly update covering the general status of HelpHub that explains where we’re at and if there are any areas where we could use some additional assistance.

Current status

We finished off 2015 with finalising the wireframes for the project and we’re using those as a base for our front-end development.

We are managing the development of the project through GitHub – project developers are added as collaborators so they can branch and send pull requests with updates. All pull requests are discussed and approved before merge, with all merges being handled by the developer who sent the pull request. Other development guidelines are listed in the repo’s readme file.

You can check out the repo code and issues as at any time to get a more up-to-date view of the current project status.

Where you can get involved

While we have a solid team of individuals working on the development of HelpHub, we’re always happy to welcome others who are keen to contribute. If you would like to get involved then please join us for our weekly meetings on Tuesdays at 14:00 UTC in #docs (note that we might be moving that meeting 30 minutes earlier, but I will confirm that in the meeting agenda post on Monday).

You are also welcome to fork the HelpHub repo and send in your pull requests. If your work is what we’re looking for then you will be added as a collaborator so you can push directly to the repo itself.

If you have ideas for how we should be building HelpHub, but you don’t want to (or aren’t able to) do the development yourself then we will always welcome your valuable insight in the 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/ issues as well as in our weekly meetings.

#helphub, #status

Hugh Lashbrooke 12:19 pm on February 1, 2016
Tags: , helphub   

HelpHub Meeting Agenda: Feb. 2 – Assigning development tasks

At last week’s meeting we finalised who would be on the development team for HelpHub. This week we’ll be assigning development tasks.

Time/date: Tuesday, February 02, 2016, 14:00 UTC in #docs

Agenda:

  1. Development task overview
    • I have added various tasks as issues on the HelpHub repo – we need to go through these and add any additional tasks that might be relevant.
  2. Assigning tasks
    • We need to assign tasks to members of the development team so we know who will be working on what.

Note that I am pushing back the content planning discussion a bit as I still haven’t been able to confirm a few related details for that. We do need to get that discussion started soon though, so I’m shooting for next week to get going on that front.

#agenda, #helphub

Hugh Lashbrooke 10:59 am on January 27, 2016
Tags: , helphub   

HelpHub Meeting Recap, Jan. 26: Development kickoff

Thanks to everyone who was present for the first HelpHub meeting of 2016. It was great to get things going again for the year. Read the meeting agenda and the Slack logs (login required to view chat logs).

We didn’t actually discuss the content planning side of things, as there were a couple of people who need to be involved there who were unable to make the meeting. We should be hitting that next week though.

Ultimately what we finalised at this meeting was the development team as well as the development workflow for the project. You will find all of this info on the HelpHub GitHub repo.

We will be using Underscores for theme base and importing the standard 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/ headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. and footer into it in order to keep things consistent. Aside from that the development flow as well as the project collaborators are listed on the 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/ repo, so you can find out all of that info there.

Note that next week’s meeting may be 1 hour earlier – I just need to confirm if that will work for the key players before I schedule it, but I will post the agenda (with the meeting time) at least 24 hours before the it starts.

#chat-recap, #helphub

Hugh Lashbrooke 2:34 pm on January 21, 2016
Tags: , helphub   

HelpHub Meeting Agenda: Jan. 26 – Kicking off Development

It’s a new year and we’ve got a new phase of the HelpHub project to get to work on! At the end of last year we wrapped up the wireframes and they’re looking really solid.

The next step from here is to get going with development. In order to manage our development in one place, I’ve set up a GitHub repo – it is currently empty, but I will have the barebones structure of things in there by the time we have this meeting on Tuesday.

Time/date: Tuesday, January 26, 2016, 14:00 UTC

Agenda:

  1. Confirming developers
    • A few people have already volunteered to be involved in development, but I know how plans can change, so let’s finalise those plans for 2016 and confirm who will be digging into the HelpHub code.
  2. Content planning
    • We have yet to put a lot of time towards planning the content of HelpHub (aside from a general idea of knowing what the project is), so I think it would be a good idea to start discussing that more intentionally.

If you have never put your name forward for HelpHub before, then you are welcome to attend this meeting and throw your name in as well.

See you all then!

#agenda, #helphub

Hugh Lashbrooke 10:39 am on December 3, 2015
Tags: helphub   

Community Summit Working Day: HelpHub

As the Docs team, we don’t really have any practical projects to work on as part of the Community Summit Working Day, but I thought it would be useful to see if anyone was interested in doing a bit of work on HelpHub today.

If you look through the HelpHub category archive you will see that we’re at the stage now where we have wireframes complete and are ready to get going with:

  1. Development
  2. Content planning

We have volunteers for development and will start planning and working on that in January, so for now it would be great to get a head start on planning the content structure for the site.

With this being my first Community Summit, I’m not 100% sure how the Working Day is structured, but if anyone would like to be involved in shaping the way that we present and interact with WordPress user documentation then come find me (or 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.” me 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/.) and we can spend some time working on this together today.

Given the scope of what needs to be done, I can’t see it taking the whole day, so if you are involved in any other team as well then there will still be plenty of time to work on other projects too.

#helphub

Hugh Lashbrooke 11:06 am on November 26, 2015
Tags: helphub,   

HelpHub Meeting Recap, Nov. 25: Wireframes Finalised

Thanks to everyone who chipped in during yesterday’s HelpHub meeting. It was the last one that we will have this year and I’m excited that we have made the progress that we have so far! You can read the full 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/. logs here.

Wireframes

The main purpose of this week’s meeting was to nail down the final wireframes that we are going to be using. We went through the feedback thoroughly and, based on our own ideas as well as the feedback we received, we have finalised these wireframes as the ones that we will be running with. A huge thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts and ideas to this process especially @saracope and @greensteph for their hard work on the wireframes themselves.

We will also be adding wireframes for mobile views before we begin development as we will be keeping responsiveness as a priority for v1 of this project.

Design

After finalising the wireframes we decided that it would be a wholly unnecessary step to create full design mockups for HelpHub, largely because we already have the layout finalised and the actual styling will be based on the rest of 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/, which leaves very little need for actual designs to be put together.

Development

So the next phase of the project is development. We have a number of volunteers who will be chipping in to help with this for both the front-end and back-end side of things. When the new year starts we will kick off with a discussion regarding the data structure (required custom post types, etc.), which will then inform the architectural decisions for the project. At the same time we will discuss the theming side of things and settle on the way forward for building the front-end of the site. I will look into our options here regarding the use of 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/ and any other related tools that would prove useful, but either way – development of this project will be done in an open and inclusive manner.

 

So with that, I’ll leave you all and will report back next year when we kick off with the development phase of this exciting project!

#helphub, #recap

Hugh Lashbrooke 11:00 am on November 24, 2015
Tags: , helphub   

HelpHub Meeting Agenda: Nov. 25: Wireframes decision & design plan

Please note that this week’s meeting is moved to Wednesday again (same time of course – 14:00 UTC).

A huge thanks to everyone who gave such valuable feedback on the wireframes – your input is invaluable and will help us to make properly informed decisions about the best way forward with this project.

This week’s meeting will be about deciding on the final wireframes and then looking at the next steps from there.

Time/date: November 25, 2015, 14:00 UTC

Agenda:

  1. Wireframes
    • We will look at the feedback and decide on the final wireframes that we’re going to be using
  2. Design plan
    • Now that we have the wireframes in place, let’s chat about the design process

This will most likely be our last meeting for the year – I’ll be at the Community Summit next week and moving house after that, so once we’ve made some decisions in this meeting we’ll agree to reconvene in early January to continue.

#agenda, #helphub

Hugh Lashbrooke 12:29 pm on November 19, 2015
Tags: feedback-needed, helphub,   

Feedback needed on HelpHub wireframes

Hey everyone,

At yesterday’s HelpHub meeting we nailed down the final wireframes for the front page and the single articles. The other pages (search results & archives) will come later and will be largely informed by wireframes of the pages that we already have, so I’m not too worried about them.

What we need now is feedback from the broader community, which is where you come in 🙂

You will find the wireframes up on Balsamiq where you can view and comment on them without having to login. To give a bit more context for what you see there, we have three options for the front page:

  • Home page 1
    • Focussed search box and categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. boxes
  • Home page 2
    • Focussed search box, less category boxes and boxes for user skill level with a curated list of links (dubbed ‘learning paths’)
  • Home page 3
    • Focussed search box, tabbed box for learning paths and a few category boxes

Then, alongside that, we have two options for the single article pages:

  • Single article 1
    • Clean layout with focus completely on the article and related links pushed to the bottom
  • Single article 2
    • Related links in the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. for quicker access

Don’t worry about the design at all – these are just wireframes, so we’re looking at the layout here and not the design.

What we need from you

So with all that info in mind, what we’re looking for at this point is feedback on which wireframes you think are more effective at delivering a great site for user documentation. You can leave comments on this post or directly on the wireframes, but either way – it would be awesome if we could have some feedback of what you all think of them and if you think we’re hitting the right mark.

Huge props to @saracope, @greensteph and @versatility for their hard work on these wireframes!

#feedback-needed, #helphub, #recap

Hugh Lashbrooke 12:06 pm on November 16, 2015
Tags: , helphub   

HelpHub Meeting Agenda, Nov. 18: Finalising wireframes

Note that this meeting has been moved 1 day later than usual and will be on Wednesday 18 November this week at 14:00 UTC.

This week’s meeting will revolve around finalising the wireframes that we went over in the last meeting. I would like to get these 100% final and ready for community feedback ASAP.

Time/date: November, 18, 2015, 14:00 UTC

Agenda:

  1. Wireframes
    • This is pretty much all I really want to chat about this week, so it would be great to hear from @saracope @versatility and @greensteph about the progress there.

I’m happy to chat about anything else related to the project that is worth discussing at this point, but the wireframes are the priority right now.

#agenda, #helphub