Updating the manual

[neeltje57]

Hello all,

I started 4 days ago reading the CMSMS wiki. I could not really follow the structure of the wiki, a lot of dead links, links which brought me out of the TOC, double items at different places, order of the TOC did not match the CMS Made Simple core, outdated information, and so on.

There was though a lot of information available in all the available pages in the wiki as well as in the forum. To be honest, i did not even read everything yet, there is enough available. And that is a good thing.

I am willing to help the CMS Made Simple community to update the manuals. I thought that if i waited untill i am done reading everything, i probably don't like it anymore to go back into the wiki and organize it. So i decided to do this along my road to knowledge. I gain some knowledge and i put effort in organizing and updating the available documentation. I see this as my contribution to the Open Source Community. Don't be afraid that i will screw up the manual. I don't change content i don't yet understand myself and i don't throw away information until i joined it into other pages. Nothing will be lost.

I already worked many hours on this project and reordered a lot of stuff, updated a lot of links, pictures and text. Put the manual in the same order as the CMSMS core. Made a more or less default template for every page to give the manual a better look and feel. I am still not happy with the result but i only started a few days ago.

I am Dutch, so my English is not 100%. When i am finished (this may take a few months or more) i will
ask my wife to spell-check the manual as well as the grammar, she is Canadian and speaks good English, French, Dutch
and a little Spanish.

I red a few initiatives of improving the handbook but that posts stopped all months ago. So i hope that i am not annoying someone with
my work because i did not read all the posts available, that is almost impossible.

I wanted you, guys and girls, to know that i am working on this project for the next few months if possible. If you have suggestions feel free to post.

neeltje57

[alby]

I wanted you, guys and girls, to know that i am working on this project for the next few months if possible. If you have suggestions feel free to post.

One but not suggestion:  THANK YOU 

Alby

[neeltje57]

Here i am again. I worked a lot on the handbook last week . The structure of the handbook now folllows the structure of CMS Made Simple. I changed a lot of names to follow the naming convention of CMS Made Simple. A lot of "lost pages" are back in the menu, every page is in the Table Of Contents, double stuff is removed, old pages are redirected to the new ones, i changed some more pictures, joined pages together, added a page on how to install on a local Windows PC, added a chapter on how to edit the wiki with some hints to keep the look and feel the way it is (it is not necessarily the best choice i made, but it is always better not to make the best choice than to make no choice at all, which will result in a messy look). I hope i didn't hurt the feelings of too many people by changing so much. I myself i think that the result so far is not too bad but maybe i have a narrowed view because i saw every page so many times.

My next goal is to read the handbook more carefully, make changes during that reading if necessary, update the layout of the pages to the overall look and feel a little more and try out everything i read in real as much as possible to see if everything works the way it is written. This probably takes some more time.

I keep you informed.

neeltje57

[Pierre M.]

Hello,

thank you ! nice community work.
I haven't reviewed much but I have a happy feeling and I'm not "hurt"

A suggestion (if you agree, when you have time...) about the FAQ : May be several FAQs would be efficient. I mean one per topic (hosting, learning, upgrading, design, security...) or howtoS, I don't know. I've seen you have split the FAQ in 2 due to a MW technical constraint but this has made me think this split could be not arbitrary but topically. Hope it helps.

Pierre M.

[neeltje57]

Thanks for your response, Pierre M.,

I will keep that in mind. I am not sure how we should organize that kind of stuff. There is the FAQ, the Tips & Tricks and the Howtos. Even when you are familiar with this site and you are looking for something you always look in the wrong place. Probably because there is not a big difference between them all. If you put a question mark behind a Tip, you have a FAQ 

Putting them all together probably gives 4 or 5 faq-pages which doesnot make it easier, so Pierre M.'s solution is not too bad. Maybe someone has more suggestions?

neeltje57.

[tyman00]

I know this is probably not exactly what you are covering, but I wanted to throw this out there. There is end user documentation (for secretaries, office personnel, etc). The file is not released, but is in SVN I have some changes and have not committed them to SVN.

I also have one put together to cover the Basics of the Products module.

Link:
http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/enduserdoc

[Pierre M.]

Hello,

please notice some little oops on http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/FTP_program
This page had saved me hours of support covering broken uploads. It hinted to use FileZilla for FTP and to monitor upload logs.
It seems to redirect to page 1 of the FAQ now and this page misses the broken upload explaination.

No offense, it is just a minor issue. I like the work being done by the community on the wiki.

Pierre M.

[neeltje57]

The link is fixed and points to FAQ2. As explained before i had to split the FAQ in 2 sections because of limitations of some browsers (according to Mediawiki).

It should not happen, but the best way to make no mistakes is to do nothing  .  Thanks for letting me know anyway. I will check the other links of FAQ2 later too.

neeltje57

[neeltje57]

tyman00,

I am working my way up in the cmsms knowledge stepladder, so i am still a kind of rookie. So i really have no idea what you are talking about. Has it something to do with the manual?

neeltje57

[calguy1000]

I know this is probably not exactly what you are covering, but I wanted to throw this out there. There is end user documentation (for secretaries, office personnel, etc). The file is not released, but is in SVN I have some changes and have not committed them to SVN.

I also have one put together to cover the Basics of the Products module.

Link:
http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/enduserdoc

Tyman, why not just create a single enduserdoc for the core stuff, and then add seperate docs to that repository for different third party modules.