Volunteers for writing Documentation

Projects Documentation
1

We need to continue our work on CP Documentation

The next important steps is recreating the doc we currently use in CP Admin (help tabs and the like) and links to (old) WP doc (be it codex or new manual doc)

This is a large work, it mainly consists of:

  • Draft up a CP version of the respective DOC (this can start with a copy paste but should then be carefully edited, rewritten and enhanced where needed)
  • Post it on our own DOC
  • When done, we ask James or else to update the redirects

What I am looking for specifically here in this post, are people who can invest time into this work.
Once someone starts on a doc, it should ideally be finished by the same person, within a reasonable time.

By my estimation, it takes somewhere between an hour up to maybe 5 hours to rewrite each doc. Perhaps more, sometimes less.
Depending on how much content and links it has, how much reference it has to things we do not use in CP, etc, it will be quite some work or just a quick swapping of images and changing names etc.

What we do not want is a pure copy paste. Each DOC must be in its final result a real valuable enhancement, if that is not possible, we can just keep linking to existing WP Docs.

The Editors/Authors of said new DOCs will not gain access to the DOC website.
We will work on either local documents or Google Docs (choose what you prefer).
The doc will get revised prior to publication and then published in name of the CP organisation.
Of course we will attribute work done, by creating a list of “Documentation Contributors” on the very Doc website, and if @wadestriebel can help me set this up, the contributor gains a specific badge in this forum. That would be really nice :slight_smile:

What kind of help is required/What skills are required

  • General Documentation writing experience is welcome but not a must.
  • Good command of English Language should
  • Of course, thorough understanding of how CP works
  • Proofreader ability, SEO and Semantics experts are welcome as well, helps extremely to let another pair of eyes review what one wrote/review semantics/etc etc

Please inbox me directly on either Slack or this forum or just add your availability to the post here, if you are into helping with this. We can then orchestrate the rewrites with each of the volunteers.

I set up the main project management screen on Notion - anyone with an email and internet access should be able to access, comment and edit that:

Suggestions as of how to better approach this, etc are warmly welcome. However the priority scope here is to get people who are willing to, and have the time to perform the work required in order to get our DOC enhanced and the CP Admin links pointing to our own stuff, which we control.

2 Likes
2

They probably should but I can’t work it out.

3

Well, access there is not crucial. It is just a list of DOC links we need to edit with a few guidelines how to do so/write those etc.
To access, you basically need to sign in for free in the notion, I think there is a login screen when you click on “edit” top right asking you to signup/in (and you may use google account, no need to create a new account. It is free, as well)

I could also paste it here, for that is, or into a GIT issue, or anything else (like PM)

What do you recommend?
In notion I have the opportunity of moving the cards to done/in progress etc, integrates with Slack, and I have a pro account so that is why mainly I work with it, I like it better than Google for some reason. Is it the / command that reminds me so much of Blocks? I am not sure lol.

I could also set up a GIT project for that, btw.

Will “folks” be able to work that out better?

Happy to do so if it generates some motivation to do the necessary work!

4

Yes, tried that. It sent me a one time password. Now I am stuck in a loop where it wants me to create a workspace and invite members.

5

Not sure what went wrong there for you but I just signed up with a custom email and all went as expected
It sent me that temp pass word, I entered it, chose “for me” (as I do not want to pay) and was in, I can edit now the document shared above
Perhaps you need to navigate to the said doc again, because it redirects you to the main admin of your space instead of back to my doc

I see this might be cumbersome… so, other tools?
Should I duplicate the thing to GIT?
I already spent an hour or two on it so I don’t want to spend too much on other tools if then folks struggle with that. As said, at the end it is about the nature of writing docs, not getting familiar with the management tool used to manage the work, so, I want that to be no hurdle, neither for the writers nor for the managing part.

6

I don’t mind working on these because I did much the same thing with the Classic Commerce docs.

The main thing is not to have 2 people working on the same document. Put me down for this one: Posts Screen – WordPress.org Documentation

3 Likes
7

Done!
Doc is set to “in progress” and commented that you are on it :slight_smile:
Thanks!

1 Like
8

Since we have v1.3 coming out soon, should code reference be updated too?

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9

That’ll be done with parser once the new version is available (stable/release)

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10

We are still looking for people that can help with this.

Currently it is a 2-people show. Of which honestly only one is currently producing any docs (thanks @ozfiddler)

We need to produce (current status) 19 more documents and many more to come.

2 Likes
11

I looked at comment-spam
Content seem generic in terms of reference to WP
It has links to other wordpress pages i.e.

How is that handled?

12

If it has links to existing wp docs we need to gather those and check if it makes sense to bring those into our doc as well, if not we remove them from the cp “version” of said doc

If they are needed or make sense to have then we just need to write those too

It doesn’t need to be done at once but I’ll need to know which Doc for example you’d rewrite for cp, so I can keep track of the “related” docs and make sure those get written and connected later on

About rewrite itself, mainly we want to ensure not to copy over bugs and errors (there are more than one would think of in the wp doc) and also make sure to erase any reference to WordPress itself of course. Screenshots also need to be re-taken
Plain copy paste isn’t accepted, but we also don’t need to re-draw the wheel each time :wink:

For an idea how to do… Using ClassicPress | ClassicPress Documentation are all docs we rewrote from existing wp docs (they are linked inside the help tabs in admin areas)
This should help to get an idea about what “rewrote” means (mix of copy and actual new doc)

Does that help?
Ps please inbox me if you decide to go with one of the docs… so I can keep track :wink:

1 Like
13

Would it be better to leave the links to the WP docs until we create our own versions (assuming that they can still provide helpful context)?

14

That certainly makes sense if the linked DOC is very important and we can’t write it as a direct follow up.
And yet I did not find such doc. Most are just linking to some other screen (like Tags Screen links to Category Screen when it mentions Category)
Thus it is more of a SEO thing actually, and we wouldn’t want to link back to WP too much.

That’s why I have been removing them - unless of course the link would be vital to the doc. But then I think it is better to just not publish said doc until we have all the “surroundings”

1 Like
15

Is anyone willing and able to help with documentation? There’s a list of articles that we need to re-write for our docs site.