David Piehler wrote:
I'd like to begin my work on extending the Radiant documentation, but
before that I'd like to get an idea of what others on this mailing list
are specifically planning to do so we don't duplicate effort.
Overall Goals:
* Make Radiant easier to setup for beginners via better wiki
documentation
* Reorganize the wiki so info is easier to find
* See if we can make the third-party plugins list a main page in the
radiantcms.org navigation, and call it Extend or something
My Goals:
* Beginner Docs - simple website setup in 0.6.6
* Beginner Docs - navigation systems (simple using r:navigation; complex
using r:if_self and r:if_ancestor_or_self and part="no-map")
* Intermediate Docs - extending the built-in Archive extension to
maintain News and Events
* Intermediate Docs - password-protected pages via a simple user
login/logout system
* Extensions Docs - how-to setup and bug-fix 0.6.6 extensions Shards,
WYMeditor, PageAttachments, Reorder, Search, FlickrTags, and Tags
All of the articles specifically for 0.6.6 are already written, I just
need to clean them up and put it into the wiki. The other pieces I still
need to write.
Thoughts? Other people's goals for the documentation? A plan of action?
- Dave
Dave, this is great! This is what I was planning with regard to the
documentation.
I am willing to help proof read your documentation and walk through all
the steps (even look at it from the perspective of 0.6.7) if you need
someone to do that. So far, I have a simple 'Hello World' article that
talks through creating your simplest first site. I've just finished
setting up 0.6.7 for that and have finished capturing screen shots to
augment the original article.
Next, I want to work on this idea of showing how you can solve tasks
using different extensions and what would be a natural flow for setting
them up.
Your flow is quite comparable to what I had proposed earlier, so I'll
post it here again for reference:
The way I see it, there are 3 sets of documents that are probably needed:
1. Radiant for Users: A guide for publishing content using Radiant.
This would be targeted at end-users and would explain the basics of
adding pages and using the built-in tags. The idea would be that this
is the documentation that would form the starting point for someone
providing a Radiant-based CMS as a solution to their clients. I think a
lot of the information is probably there in some form in the
descriptions of the tags. However, it would need to be crystallized in
the form that a user of a CMS would like to see. I imagine that there
would be a need also to include a brief guide for designers (though I
think it would be very brief).
2. Developing with Radiant: The entry-level guide for people starting to
develop a solution based on Radiant. This would form the basis on
teaching a developer how to create a solution around Radiant. Targeted
primarily at developers who are trying to integrate Radiant and a bunch
of extensions for their client, this guide would help developers on how
to install, deploy and use Radiant. It would also look at commonly used
extensions (PageAttachments, Mailer, basic language support, etc.) and
how to use them in a solution. It would also look at how to achieve
most of the common tasks that would be needed in a solution. It would
also look at answers to the kinds of questions I may have asked in the
past - how to avoid pages showing up in the menu, how to make search
pages, how to provide one or more RSS feeds, etc.
3. Developing for Radiant: This would cover programming for Radiant. I
imagine that it will include items on creating extensions (with and
without database usage) and also look at programming tasks related to
Radiant. It would also cover concepts such as creating page types,
overriding the title of a page, creating special kind of archive pages,
and the often asked how to integrate Radiant with Rails, etc.
I'm also working through a more detailed break-up of items with specific
extensions, etc. that would be needed. I think/ suggest that we use a
SQLite database so that we can share it out as a base for the
documentation generators to work with.
I imagine that this documentation should eventually make it into a form
that could be produced as a book with the above 3 as the main sections.
It's not from the perspective of having a book, but I find a book format
(even a PDF) always gives the feeling that things are stable and solid -
a wiki tends to suggest chaos. Therefore, I would want to head in that
'eventual' direction.
I'm happy for others to suggest how they want me to get involved. I
think my best roles would be:
* Proof reading (I think I'm good at this)
* Creating 'idiot-proof' step-by-step articles with tedious screen shots
* Co-manage the effort (I have some experience in technical how-to sites
- http://onghu.com/te is based on my main work)
I don't use Radiant enough to be very familiar with the source (would
love to be, but it won't be productive in time terms if I worked on it);
so those areas may be better covered by others (at least) initially.
Best wishes
Mohit.
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