Documentation Project - Update and Call for Volunteers

[versatility]

We are moving forward with the revamp of the documentation project!  I have taken the role of Lead on this project and DaveW will be Vice-Lead.

The major objectives will be to move the documentation into the structure of a CMSMS website and make it accurate, complete, and easy to use.  This clearly won't happen overnight and will need some dedicated souls to work on...

In the previous thread, the following folks volunteered to help:

• 
  Patricia
  nhaack
  Cubix
  Pierre M.
  nivekiam
  westis
  Nullig

For the volunteers - if there is a specific area of interest you have (such as translation, or modules, or ?) please let me know.

For anyone interested in joining the Documentation team, please reply here and let me know your area of interest as well. 

There will be several more posts that delve into the overall game plan, project organization, organizing a team meeting, etc.  so please watch this forum. 

Thanks!

Diane

[westis]

This is fantastic, Diane and Dave!

As I've mentioned before, my time will unfortunately be limited. I would first and foremost like to focus on the translation to Swedish. But I would like more Swedish volunteers for this, as the core and modules also need translation.

What policy will we have for translations, like what pages always should be up-to-date and what pages could be linked to the English version if not translated? And how will translators be notified of pages not being up-to-date with translation and visitors what pages have been updated in the English version but not in their language? For visitors, maybe two dates at the bottom of each page that says: Swedish translation updated 31 Jan 2008. English version updated 28 Jan 2008. In the local language of course...

When time allows I could also do modules help, that I suppose would include copying the module-included help to the documentation site and keep the site help updated. It could also include checking if the help for a particular module is complete and up-to-date and if not notify the module developer(s) about this.

I'd suggest we keep a list of modules where people can put their names (who is working in the help for a particular module) or check when a particular module help is updated in the site help (and what version of the module that is).

If we put the module version in the site help it is easy for a user to see if the help is actually for the version of the module that they are using (maybe even linking to the forge, with a text like "Help for version 1.1. Latest released module version: 1.2), and having an automated list somewhere with modules needing updating. Or if there is a possibility to comment the site module help users could also notify of module help that is not up-to-date.

Trying not to promise more than I can keep I'd rather leave the core documentation to others, at least for now.

Again, many thanks to Diane and Dave for taking the lead on this and for others volunteering to help.

/Daniel

[Nullig]

Will there be some communication/discussion with us volunteers as to how to proceed?
What will the nature of these discussions be? Email, PM, IRC, Project Management Site?

Nullig

[versatility]

Nullig & all volunteers - I am just starting to put the various pieces in motion here, so project management is a great question.  We have discussed scheduling a meeting to organize ourselves as well as get some other pieces in place.  DaveW was kind enough to set up a dotProject install to evaluate as a project management option as well, so we are looking at that.

I have been reading the entire documentation forum to gather ideas, requests, etc.

I would welcome any input from an organizational/communication perspective, my first thought this morning was to find out who the volunteers were and what the areas of interest were.

More to come..

Diane

[nivekiam]

I live on the West coast.  My main areas of interest would be writing tutorials, instructions, etc.  Mostly on installation, basic customizations and frequently requested tasks.  I'm willing to take the extra time to expand and add more content to suggestions or posts made in the forums or on the wiki.  Basically to take a rough draft and polish it up.

I don't think I would ever have time to make any sort of irc meeting during the week, at least not during the day (6am to 7pm PST), unless I happened to have that day off work.  Mailing list, forum or some sort of "slow" communication would be better for me.

I'm probably in the same boat as most others, and don't have a lot of extra time between a full time job and trying to run a business with the wife.

I'm here for purely selfish reasons, I like CMSms and want to help make it a better product for myself   I'm not a proficient coder (I can hack something up, but not very well) so I try to help in the forums and will try to help with documentation.

I can translate English to English, if that rare talent is needed.  On a more serious note I'm pretty adapt at translating end user garbage speak into common terminology (something I have to do every day with my job).  I'll be better at that with CMSms the more time I spend with it.

I hope to get the time this weekend to import my site into CMSms and make it live.  My main goal for using a CMS system is to make it easier for me to add the 100s of pages I plan on adding in the next few months.  Right now with my current SSI "template" system there would be a lot of directory making, file copying and editing, etc.  It wouldn't be bad if it was going to be a write once, never ever modify type thing.

[Pierre M.]

Hello Diane & all,

this is good after meeting news

One thing : isn't Patricia forgotten in the volunteers' list ?

Here is how I can help today :
-push topics to the documentation team : "that topic 'T' is support team boring, it should be answered once for all in the doc". hehe.
-translation to French, althought I think I have not enough time for this.

Have fun all !

Pierre

[hexdj]

I wouldn't mind doing some translation into Spanish if it is of any help.

[rab]

Hi,

I'd like to volunteer to help. Specifically, I would like to focus on documentation for newbies, i.e. all those people who are NOT programmers, developers, graphic designers, coders, and/or experienced website builders. In other words, a manual for people like me who need basic beginner's help in getting started with their first CMSMS project. I thought maybe I would document everything I did in building my first CMSMS site, including mistakes, lessons learned, things to avoid, tips & tricks, etc. in a step-by-step manual. The goal here would be to provide a way for the non-programming newbies to learn about and actually become productive in CMSMS which, I believe, would help significantly to increase the number of CMSMS users and, therefore, the size of the "pool" to draw from when recruiting help for support, documentation, etc.

If you think this would be worthwhile, let me know how you would like me to proceed. Also, I speak rusty German, so might be of limited help with translations.

[calguy1000]

Documentation team members:

Where are you?

Please give us an update.

[nivekiam]

I'm around, sort of.

I haven't had nearly as much time to work on this as I'd like, other obligations in life have kept popping up.  But I've been pulled current installation instructions and have been going through them, massaging, reworking and trying to get them into the new format.

It's been pretty quite from the rest, I don't know what the status of the others are.

EDIT:
Just found this post:
http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 626.0.html

I'll see what else I can gleam and use from that.

Again, things are still moving slow on my front....

[alby]

I agree to the request and if the doc team can post the status I see to contribute too (in my linguistic limitations  ).
I think it's important with the 2.0 release have a organized documentation.

Alby

[cubix]

hey team.. the following excerpt is from the latest documentation post.

Hi all, just a quick note to let everyone know that I am recovering from a dislocated shoulder, which has greatly impaired my keyboard/mousing! Back on track shortly.

from the person who is leading the documentation team, including the rights/access to update content to our dev area.

if we dont hear anything further shortly from our team leader, we will be moving ahead by ourselves, as alby said, 2.0 is on its way and we need progress.

i hope this has given you all some insight.

[GDS]

I might participate with translations to Norwegian.

GDS

[Sonya]

I've just started to translate documentation in Russian. FTP Installation part is ready. I had also to change header and footer template to add link to Russian documentation in wiki.

I am going to translate all sections continiously but I cannot promise to do it just in time I'll do my best.