Samuel Sidler 8:38 pm on January 13, 2015
Tags: helphub, spec ( 3 )

Helphub Spec

At the WCSF community summit in October, one of the things we discussed was a support “hub” – affectionately called “helphub” by @ipstenu – to replace support-related Codex pages and to act as the front page of WordPress support, likely living in front of the 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//support forums. In many ways, helphub is meant to mirror similar efforts by other organizations, like Apple, Disqus, Google, MailChimp, Media Temple, Mozilla, and countless others. Below is a general overview of what we talked about to get things started.

Goals

Helphub has a few goals:

Replace support content (mostly on the Codex) with high quality, easy-to-understand articles.
Create a searchable repository that makes it easy for users to find content.
Reduce the amount of support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations. posts by making it easier to find answers in helphub.
Provide a reference that support forum volunteers can link to for common questions

Stakeholders

The major stakeholders in the project are:

the support team – it will be tightly integrated with the support forum
the docs team – who will write and maintain the content
the metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team – who will build and maintain the site

Solutions

To meet the goals listed above, we discussed two solutions:

A “knowledge-base”-style support section with high quality articles.
A powerful search feature for the knowledge base.

At the same time, it will be important to improve the support forums in ways that complement helphub.

Components

Helphub consists of three components:

Content
A knowledge base on WordPress.org
Search

Content (Articles)

The success of helphub rests on great content. In order to generate this content we will:

Review analytics from the Codex to determine the most viewed pages.
Review analytics from the support forums to see what questions are most asked.
Ask support volunteers to generate a list of the articles they would find most useful
Ask WordPress businesses that provide support to their customers what the most common questions are.
From the above analytics, create a list of the top n articles that need to get written.
Put together a standard template for knowledge base articles.
Put together a KB style guide.
Start writing articles with end users in mind.

Until the knowledge base is built, we will need to host this content somewhere. There should be at least 15 articles created before the design phase starts, to provide the designer with content to work with.

Knowledge Base

The knowledge base should have the following features:

Good integration with the forums:
- For example, a link that says “Still have questions? Click here to ask your question to a volunteer in the support forums.”
- When a user starts typing a question in the support forum, a list of possible KB articles should be suggested.
- A solid taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. system. Content should be flagged according to experience level (e.g., beginner, advanced, etc) and it should also be tagged with specific areas (e.g. wp-config, media, multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core.https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network.).
- A quick way for forum volunteers to link to articles in the KB.
A “Did this article help you?” yes/no button to gauge the helpfulness of knowledge base articles.
Perhaps, the ability to leave feedback (comment) on an article. Comments would be private and allow an article editor to fix any issues.
A “related topics” feature.

To get to this point, we’ll need to:

Review other knowledge bases to determine which features work well.
Contact the leads of other knowledge bases (especially those in the 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. community) to see what works for them.
Create a detailed list of features needed for our knowledge base.
Develop wireframes from articles (see the content section above) along with our feature list.
Create mockups from the wireframes.
Determine the appropriate WordPress 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/theme structure.
Develop a WordPress plugin to run our knowledge base.
Develop the mockups into a WordPress theme.

After this, we’ll need to fill the knowledge base with the content above.

Search

Good search is crucial to a good knowledge base. We will need something more powerful than the current search on WordPress.org. Rather, we should use elastic search to provide the best answers for users. To ship an effective search engine:

Determine the best search engine to use.
Develop the search engine.
Test and tweak the search engine.

We’ll probably rely a variety of other elastic search users to make this possible.

#helphub, #spec

Stephen Edgar 10:07 pm on January 13, 2015

Very nice, the only thing I don’t see mentioned is if this would be available for translation for non-English locales?
- Samuel Sidler 10:32 pm on January 13, 2015
  
  That’s not on the table for version one, just as it wasn’t for devhub, but it’s definitely something we’re considering as we look for a solution across 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/. I don’t think it should be specific to helphub.
Mike 4:40 pm on January 14, 2015

IMO I think this project needs a little reorganisation.
It’s become way to complex and as the complexity has risen the productivity has slowed.
Wouldn’t it be better first of all just to take what’s there and keep it updated?
And from there improve it abstractly via “themes” that can construct different aspects of the content at will?
Perhaps the backend needs some manipulation to accomplish this.
That would yield the greatest benefit to the widest number of people in the least amount of time and the least amount of effort.
- Andrea Rennick 5:18 pm on January 14, 2015
  
  We’ve been trying to keep the current content updated and been failing. This has been tried over the past 2-3 years, and it’s just no longer working as it is now.
  - jonradio 2:02 am on January 15, 2015
    
    I agree with Andrea on this one, even though I’m not an active partipant in the Doc Team, but am a frequent responder to Support questions on the WordPress Support forums. The current Codex “just doesn’t cut it” for both those asking the questions on the Support forums and those of us answering them.
    
    One missing ingredient in the new plan, however, is an on-going program of reviewing Support questions as a way to create new HelpHub articles and enhance existing HelpHub articles. Much in the way that our local University has teamed up with the City’s Transportation department to identify and inexpensively fix poorly designed Roads, especially intersections and traffic lights, by doing some really good analysis of traffic accident data.
    - Andrea Rennick 10:11 pm on January 15, 2015
      
      We might be able to get some fuzzy data by traffic stats and rough counts of posts tagged with specific issues. It’d be ballpark, but better than a blindfolded guess.
    - Daedalon 10:20 am on January 16, 2015
      
      This sounds like a good improvement. However, I’d like to bring to attention a related and more pressing issue: the support forums aren’t searchable on a per-forum basis. Not kidding here.
      
      As a case in point we’ve many times had to post a new support thread to https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/events-manager because there was no way to search for support threads on that support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations. only.
      
      This is an issue hindering the work of countless WordPress users, 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 / theme developers and support volunteers every day. Implementing this might benefit the community as much as the whole Helphub project while requiring less work than this item alone: “When a user starts typing a question in the support forum, a list of possible KB articles should be suggested.”
      
      Wouldn’t it’d be odd to only suggest KB articles in support forums when the same exact question the user has in mind may have been answered already but not searchable?
      
      https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7
      - Daedalon 10:25 am on January 16, 2015
        
        Comments from the metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. ticket:
        
        “will save literally millions of people thousands of collective hours searching”
        
        “I have been hoping for this for ages.”
        
        “I’ve been wondering about this for years … would be very, very helpful.”
        
        “Why this feature is not implemented yet? … should be a really high priority task”
        
        “+100”
Angelika Reisiger 2:00 pm on March 6, 2015

@Samuel Sidler: A few guys of de.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/ are just discussing the collaborative options to translate codex into german language.
But based on this article (which will be a big improvement imho), we now doubt, if it makes sense to put energies and time into something (codex), that will not exist in future? Are you yet able to answer a few questions, concering the helphub?
1.) Will Codex be replaced completely replace with helphup?
2.) Do you copy the picked up articles into the helphup or do you rewrite them?
3.) Do you can estimate the timeframe how long it will take to publish the helphup and possibly replace codex?

4.) In short: What is your appraisal: Does it make sense to translate Codex Pages furhermore?

Thanks in advance
Angelika
- Samuel Sidler 2:04 pm on March 6, 2015
  
  I’m happy to answer your questions.
  
  1. The Codex will be replaced by helphub and devhub, with user docs on the former and developer docs on the latter.
  
  2. No articles will be completely copied from the Codex to helphub. All of them will be edited and improved, with some being completely rewritten.
  
  3. There is no timeline because we have yet to start this process. We’re waiting for someone to step up to lead the helphub project. If no one steps up, it could be months or years before helphub can exist.
  
  4. I think each locale team should make its own decision. Since there is no firm timeline, it does not make a lot of sense to wait for helphub to exist. Even when helphub does exist, we still need to build in the localization feature, just as we need to do on devhub.
Angelika Reisiger 2:06 pm on March 6, 2015

Thanks for your very fast answher, very appreciated 🙂
wturrell 7:49 pm on March 23, 2015

Hello. Once it’s running, how will updates/new articles work? Will anyone be able to contribute, like Codex? Will there be some sort of moderation queue or way of reviewing edits like Stackexchange? Wiki-style revision history?
- dinsan 11:03 am on June 11, 2015
  
  The feedback (private comments) section will be a good way to maintain this. There can be an internal dashboard where all the comments show up. Writers/contributors can pick up comments, review and make changes if required.
dinsan 1:36 pm on September 15, 2015

We can assign article IDs to help support volunteers easily suggest articles and attach them to their responses. This will keep the article slug also short.

Welcome to the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Team!

Contact