Chat Recap – Aug 30

We did a lot in an hour!
Handbook Changes

The ‘user handbook’ is now at https://make.wordpress.org/support/user-handbook/

However this is temp! We’re going to build out at https://make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual/ starting with a more clear Table of Contents. Once we have that done, we can bring pages over one at a time. In the mean time, edit in https://make.wordpress.org/support/user-handbook/ and when you’re done tag the page (oh yes, we haz tags!)

We’re going to try to split the handbook into ‘weeks’ with the goal of being done by WPCS. So two months! (possibly get this so it can be used by https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-help/ or something similar for end users on their own WP installs?)

Week One: TOC! Let’s sort out the best way to present the basic info.

Please go to https://make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual/ and weigh in (yes, comments r good). We’re not doing a straight copy-over, but as we find pages that are relavent, we’ll sort ’em that way. Come up with what sub-topics we should have in each section. We’re trying to KISS, so think of the least technical person you know and start there. Where would they start.

The TOC will drive the next weeks topics.

Mod Handbook

The mod handbook – https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/ – needs your love too.

Misc.

  • More Mods – suggestions? Comment or if you want to be private, 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.
  • Ditto being an editor here. Just ask. As long as you have a decent track/tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. record, I see no problems.
  • Sending bump-a-holics to IRC – https://codex.wordpress.org/IRC
  • Embed IRC in a page? http://webchat.freenode.net/
  • bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org./BuddyPress docs need lurve too!

Nacin List

@nacin’s to do 😉

  • Why no GUI editor? (@Ipstenu)
  • Tags on pages (admin only)
  • List pages by tags so people can see what needs doing

Wish List

Things @ipstenu needs to harangue @otto42 about.

  • One click to 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./delete posts on the forums (for spammers)
  • Hover over tags and see who added it?
  • Can we add this above the new topic field? “Please disable or delete all plugins and switch to the default theme (Twenty Ten since 3.0). After making these changes does the problem still occur? If no, re-enable everything one by one to see which component causes the problem.”

#chat, #write-up

Topics for today's Chat

The chat is at 1800 UTC – translate as need be 😉 IRC room #wordpress-sfd

  • Handbook – How do we feel updating it is going? Suggestions to handle workflow better?
  • Support Handbook (aka our handbook) – What’s it missing?
  • Forums – Do we need more mods? Is there a growing problem?
  • Upcoming Dev Changes – The media upload, JS changes
  • Anything else?

Toss in suggestions below 🙂 I’m going to try to keep this to an hour-cold, as I have a meeting right after and then again! Woo!

#meetup

It’s 5 am and here I am not…

It’s 5 am and here I am not being able to sleep because I have a couple of ideas about the forum. 🙂
I thought I would pass them on and see if we can discuss these later, (maybe at the wpcsWPCS The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards. May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook.?)

I find myself repeating 2 things over and over again in the forum. 1) Please provide a link to your site 2) …making a child themeChild theme A Child Theme is a customized theme based upon a Parent Theme. It’s considered best practice to create a child theme if you want to modify the CSS of your theme. https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/. would be good idea. Here are some instructions….

1) Could this be “solved” by adding a text field when people first submit the thread? The field could be optional, but at least if it’s there, people might use it.

2) When theme developers submit a theme, it might be a good idea, to provide a folder for the child theme with the styles.css ready to go with proper commenting and instructions on how to get started. Not sure if this would fly by the theme reviewers. I noticed that Emile’s theme – Responsive – has a folder for custom templates with instructions on how to use it. There are tons of tutorials on child themes, yet so many questions about them. This might encourage them to get started.

Anyway, these ideas were in my head and keeping me up, back to bed. 🙂

#ideas

Related crosspost for Esmi If you’re hip with…

Related crosspost for Esmi.

If you’re hip with accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) (screen readers, etc) she’s working on the Codex page for all that. Discuss Here

Chat for this weekend is cancelled See you…

Chat for this weekend is cancelled. See you next week!

Meeting recap

We had our first ever IRC chat today at 1800 UTC in #wordpress-sfd. Since this was our first ever, we mainly clarified a few things and went over projects in progress.

For the post below about editing pages ported in from WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/, no one present was actively working on any specific pages. We should probably group them out somehow and assign or volunteer for those, so we know who is working on what, and so we’re not tripping over each other and duplicating work.

I suggested a mentorship drive at pretty much the same time Siobhan did, so look for a post about that soon.

Jane popped in and suggested that our two pages listed support might want to be tweaked. The page for the handbook on how to contribute for support personel is one, and the https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/ should maybe be renamed to current projects or just Projects, since it’s going to be moved anyway.

My apologies if I missed anything. The chat log can be accessed here.

Handbook, Pass One

Okay, I removed all the pages that I knew were 100% .com

I left the pages that are maybe .com

What I’d like to see as a first pass is if people can, in the comments, rewrite them (in sections if you want) to correct them for the Codex. Once we have the info ‘right’, or right enough, we can do something like https://codex.wordpress.org/Handbook (I just stubbed it out to ‘save’ it) – Note: I do not know 100% if we’re going to stay ‘here’ or go to the codex with this, but either way, the principle’s the same.

We will need a ‘table of contents’ so if you have an idea, I’d really love to see this done like a book, and I want to aim it so that the new user (think about your most un-technical family member) sees the stuff at the top, and then follow things down logically. Check out https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/ for an example of what @hanni and I did there. It starts with learning, goes to contributing, and so on. Obviously this isn’t the exact same flow, but you see the idea.

It’s possible we’re going to end up with Handbook, Handbook/Themes, Handbook/Plugins, and then send ’em to CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress./Handbook for Handbook/Core. I’m 99% sure I can redirect a codex page to any HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. in mediawiki, but I may need to harangue Otto about that. We can decide how later on.

So our todo!

Then? We tackle that main codex page (once we know what info we want, we can organize how to coerce people that way). I’m not terribly worried about changes we don’t like, since MediaWiki has awesome revisioning.

Let’s get started!

The Handbook

On this post, let’s comment to get the BIG sections first. My spur of the moment ToC is this:

  • About WordPress – I know nothing, what is this thing.
  • Installing – How do I do that?
  • Settings (maybe ‘Configuring’?) – How do I make it look more me-ish
  • Just Write – Forget all this! I wanna blog!
  • Customizing – Themes and plugins and widgets, oh my!
  • Miscellaneous – The rest of the stuff 😉

Open for improvements. We can either ‘edit’ the pages in comments, or if you want to be an editor and be able to, er, editor the pages, speak up. Top level table of contents, let’s fight out here in the comments. Sub-page organization is going to be a nightmare no matter how we do it.

#handbook

Post hoc ergo propter hoc approaching and defining…

Post hoc ergo propter hoc: approaching and defining support goals

Breaking out from the Codex thread below – and using, inter alia, Siobhan’s comment as a starting point, let’s get some outlining goals going on:

  • A clear division between developer docs and user docs
  • A self-contained, concise yet complete landing page for the user coming in
  • Plot a useful journey for different people who want to “learn WordPress”, from beginner to ninja/rockstar/whatever the individual wishes to be – (imho this needs to both respect that not everyone will want to do everything, nor indeed have the nouse (everyone is unique, and has their own strength), whilst respecting and encouraging the learning process – it’s a balance to ensure that eveyone gets to where _they_ want to be, with the best tools and information not where we, or anyone thinks they should be. Without passion, we’d not be here – I think at this point I’m merely restating what everyone thinks and goes without saying, but, let’s just get it documented.)

So, there’s some overlap and a meeting point with the core contributors‘ handbook, and this is where we need to be super disciplined. I know so many of us, @ipstenu, @andrea_r, @lorelle, @esmi (and everyone here, and more!) have been mulling this over for a good deal of time, so I’m just very much about grouping the discussion and the years of thought and care into a thread.

Let’s go!

#goals