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[wiki] User docs are one thing, but what about Txp content in general?
If there’s a process for improving the content, messaging, customer journey’s, and so forth of the global Txp experience, I’m not aware of it, and it’s critical that there probably be one if Txp wants to improve it’s standing in the CMS market. If people come to planet Textpattern and are immediately forced to start asking questions in the forum, we’ve failed them. This forum should be a last resort, not the resort. Hanging out in a forum all day isn’t what most people want to do. I’ll bet most people, outside of spammers, probably don’t even want to have to create a forum account. They just want to build and publish with this CMS we’ve been telling them is great. Well, we need to do more than blow smoke up their bums. We need to make every step of their journey on planet Txp meaningful, helpful, and a pleasure in some way. That’s not easy, but even baby steps go a long way.
Not to pick on poor Stuart, again, or TextGarden, but it offers another poignant example of what I’m getting at.
Perhaps it would be useful to have some sort of centralized process for everyone to add a shout about something they think is problematic with Txp’s global content. Maybe something like jsoo’s idea of a support ticket process, but instead of being for wiki docs, exactly, it’s for other Txp content that doesn’t really have a proper editorial strategy. Of course the ideal thing would be to implement a proper editorial strategy, but that’s unlikely, so this might be a next best approach. Something should be better than no recognized process at all. At the very least there should be a visible, central place to call things out, which the responsible site owners (be it wiki, .com, textgarden, .org or whatever) can refer and respond to transparently. By having this visible and centralized it’s more likely to encourage thinking on the issue, thus positive evolution of the process and resulting content. Ultimately maybe a real editorial strategy comes into existence. Until such time, it could still be better.
And that’s my brain dump for the month.
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Re: [wiki] User docs are one thing, but what about Txp content in general?
Here is another example:
Textpattern 101 – http://textpattern.net/wiki/index.php?title=Textpattern_101
To get to this, you go to The Manual and scroll down substantially below the fold to the Process Section.
Suggestion: Move the Process section up higher – and name it something under than Process – maybe Getting Started or something like that.
Now getting back to the content: The first thing I read is the Foreword dated July 22, 2006. Now it may be that every bit of this content is as wonderful as it was when it originally written 5 years ago – although the text explains that it was actually written 7 years ago and then relocated here, and links to a site hosting ads, which I am sure has gotten some wonderful page rank from that link over the years. But as a new prospective user, I might be slightly taken aback that the tutorial for new users is half a decade old.
Skipping over the text, which I am not going to evaluate right now to the Links Section:
Textpattern Specific – the first link is broken, the third is in process
HTML and CSS – In the days when everyone is excited about CSS3 and HTML5, do we really want to look that old school?
Design and Finesse – OSWD (last updated in 2007) and CSS Zen Garden (last updated in 2008)
This isn’t a criticism, just an observation of what might happen when one of the initiated arrive.
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Re: [wiki] User docs are one thing, but what about Txp content in general?
Ah, good one. Yes…it’s coming back to me now. That page was actually a blog article by Mark Norton, and Textpattern 101 was one of the more popular back in the day (times have changed). Anyway, along the way Mark kind of fell out of the community and offered to donate all his Txp blog articles he had written to the wiki. It was a kind gesture, and at the time it didn’t seem like a terrible idea.
But, in retrospect, it was probably not a good idea at all, because blog articles are more personal in nature, and even if donated to a wiki, people tend to not touch them. I think I fiddled with it just a bit when first adding it to the wiki, but I really didn’t want to go rewriting someone’s blog article either.
We need to remove the article, and any others like them that look like personal blog articles. The first-person authoring is one problem to be edited out of the wiki, and the long blog article style that tries to cover 100 topics is also bad.
In fact, that whole process list is coming out, and so is the configuration list just above it, which is redundant to the links in the Admin-side links below it.
It’s probably also worth reminding that the wiki homepage will eventually – eventually – get a content redo, but that’s still on the back burner as far as my time allows. Idea sketches are welcome if anybody is antsy to move forward on that.
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Re: [wiki] User docs are one thing, but what about Txp content in general?
hi,
i’ve just started my first project with txp and find it very hard to get familiar with it. what from my point of view is missing most is a working demo installation featuring different szenarios of what one can do with txp. i used to work with contao before and learned a lot from their demo installation which is accessible to everybody and comes with the system if you download it. maybe this would ease the learning process of txp too.
best regards
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#5 2011-04-29 12:20:55
- redbot
- Plugin Author
- Registered: 2006-02-14
- Posts: 1,410
Re: [wiki] User docs are one thing, but what about Txp content in general?
Hi,
you can try a functional demo here, on the opensourcecms site
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Re: [wiki] User docs are one thing, but what about Txp content in general?
totoff: Do a search for “fuel your coding textpattern” and you’ll find a few nice tutorials for different types of websites.
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Re: [wiki] User docs are one thing, but what about Txp content in general?
Or perhaps use this link: http://fuelyourcoding.com/?s=textpattern
I had never seen those before.
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