Joomla! 1.6 User Guide

Comment by Amy Stephen on October 24, 2009 at 6:33pm

Who is leading this group? Volunteers? Lead's job is to keep the group moving, building consensus, make coffee, etc. Double-pay - so, that's always nice. ;-)

Comment by Tony Davis on October 25, 2009 at 6:10am

I would be happy to volunteer.

For me, the aim would be to construct a Users Guide which was multi layered. It would

1. Provide a vanilla description of how to get going using J1.6 aimed at experienced users. I envisage this to be much in the style of other User Guides, e.g. J1.5
2. Provide extension descriptions to allow those new to the process to be more hand held. This will require scanning forum questions and identifying holes that folk fall into. It would provide both how to avoid the hole and how to scramble out.
3. As extensions to J1.6 become available it would offer cocktail shaking advice. Here is a combination that runs a club without subscription/with subscription, without social interaction/with social interaction.

Publishing aim would be also layered.

1. Based on a wiki which might allow the structure to be pulled around in light of experience.
2. Develop into a number of documents (probably pdf) like Community Builder but reflecting the layers indicated above.
3. Develop associated videos.

The idea is that a single fully detailed approach intimidates ingenues and hides the trees in the wood for the experienced. An excellently indexed set of documents based upon real experiences would be better.

But on the other hand you may all think this is a load of elderly BS.

Tony D

I do make excellent Guatemalan mixed blend coffee.

And I am an amazing democrat. Consensus is most easily achieved by doing it my way. :-)

Comment by Helio Alves on October 25, 2009 at 8:36am

Hi everyone,

First going forward with this I would like to know if there will be a collaboration with the Joomla Team, if yes what kind of collaboration?

If there will be no collaboration between us and and Joomla Team then we might simply be splitting ours efforts and the end user will be the most affected.

The title lets a lot of place to talk about a lot of things and we should maybe specify a little bit things.

Is the purpose of this guide to describe the differences between Joomla 1.5x and Joomla 1.6.x, describe in details the new ACL, registration, extensions development. Is this guide for newbies or is this guide for Joomla users who already know 1.1.x or 1.5.x versions? I'm pretty sure Joomla Team is working in a user guide for the 1.6 version.

Amy I think you should tell us more about the purpose of this group, what do you have in mind will the information gathered here be shared with Joomla Team?

Thank you Amy for this information :)

By the way if we have better guide lines and if we know where we are going then I'll be more than happy to help of course :)

Comment by Tony Davis on October 25, 2009 at 12:20pm

Absolutely.

But good things are built on solid foundations and, I think, they might be clear.

[Why Joomla]
[Comparison between 1.5 and 1.6]

Technical requirements
Installation process
Major features

[Description of how to use ACL]
[Similar for other features]
[How to build extensions]

I have used square brackets to suggest what, I think, might wait until a foundation had been constructed.

It will, of course, be necessary to obtain some understanding and assistance from the developers and it may well be that they have already sketched out an approach. But help will also be required from users as they describe where they stumble. Probably not directly offered but from observing forums.

I do agree that we need some direction. I think the following would make a good start point.

1. Is there already a sketch/draft/whatever of what is intended?
2. Is there a place where the documents can be developed or shall I create one? I would anticipate a standard development/assessment/production approach from the outset.
3. Is there a particular core team member who would be seen as the link person for this work?
4. Is there a timescale for the initial product?

Tony D

Comment by C O'Shea on October 25, 2009 at 12:44pm

Installation process
manual/automatic/technical/non technical there are so many ways to do it.

Comment by Amy Stephen on October 25, 2009 at 5:06pm

@Helio - Yes, we absolutely work with the project! I added comments in this thread where the group is kicking around ideas.


@Tony - updated your account to an Admin. Thanks for your willingness to help keep this very important effort going.

If others want to help with the lead role, let Tony know - he can upgrade your role, or post here.

Thanks!

Comment by Amy Stephen on October 25, 2009 at 5:16pm

Tony -

Since this is a User Guide Group, the one suggestion I would have is to omit the extension development topic from this project. That will also be needed but not in this guide, I think.

I like your approach. See if you can get an agreement - perhaps in a discussion thread in this group - about a table of contents. (I'd recommend doing a very easy set of chapters for the first attempt - expand later)

Then, post the idea table of contents in the Joomla! forums - see what Chris Davenport, who is responsible for documentation thinks. See what other new learners think and others in the forum.

Then, create the Table of Contents on the Wiki. We'll each take a chapter or two. When complete, a couple of us can walk thru the copy for voice and correctness. Chris will also be watching over and adding in his ideas and corrections.

Chris is going to add a PDF Booklet creator to the Wiki, so, we should be able to offer nicely formatted output. That's a "must have" for this group and I'm excited to see it come together.

Thanks for your willingness to help lead!

Comment by Amy Stephen on October 27, 2009 at 10:54pm

In case there is confusion, unleash.it apparently left the Ning, which is why his posts are gone.

Comment by Carolien on October 28, 2009 at 1:19pm

too bad the whole discussions are gone...

Comment by Amy Stephen on October 28, 2009 at 1:42pm

Yup. It's kind of a bad design.

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