[wp-docs] Overwhelming?

[Sheryl Coe - Reportica]

The Codex is Fabulous, WordPress is fabulous and it's very user-friendly. 
Don't get me wrong. I love Codex and need it myself. 

But about 1/2 my clients are not at that level and if you want support 
material that assumes the user will never leave the user interface, that's a 
different animal. 

The trouble is if you provide it at that level, YOU can be confused with the 
person who can bring the mysql database up when it goes down, or make files 
writable. At the level, they don't know which problems you cover and which 
you don't. So it's important to provide the materials, not directly, but for 
support people to give to their users at that level. I'm speaking from 
experience here, but your experience and goals for the codex may be 
different. That's OK.

Is this clear? I'm new here, I don't want you to think I don't love the 
codex. I'm responding to the guy who was asking for something for his mom.

I have stuff at that level if you want it. I'd have to go through it to 
remove references to Reportica before sending it on, I"m thinking Wednesday 
night. We're talking about people who don't know that they can copy the 
address of a website from their browser's address bar and paste it into 
wordpress (URI: field) when they add a link. Really b a s i c.

Sheryl


On 4/25/05, James Huff <james at macmerc.com> wrote:
> 
> The general standpoint is that WordPress is very easy to get the hang
> of if you just spend 30 minutes getting to know it. The general point
> of the WordPress Lessons are to provide you with every last tiny
> detail, just in case you missed something. Think of them as those
> books like, "Microsoft Office for Dummies", or "Internet Explorer: The
> Missing Manual". Those are two programs that you shouldn't need a
> manual for, yet they still manage to turn out 200-300 page books that
> do come in handy for some users.
> 
> 
> On Apr 25, 2005, at 5:47 AM, Scott Merrill wrote:
> 
> > I started at the WordPress Lessons page:
> > http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons
> > which is chock-full of information. I hadn't read "First Steps with
> > WordPress" in a while, so I clicked there:
> > http://codex.wordpress.org/First_Steps_With_WordPress
> > also chock-full of information. Reading all of these two pages (which
> > I
> > didn't do) would take me a fair amount of time.
> >
> >> From First Steps, I clicked on "how all of this works", which takes
> >> me to:
> > http://codex.wordpress.org/Working_with_WordPress
> >
> > I've been using WordPress for about a year now, and feel fully
> > comfortable with it. But I feel overwhelmed trying to follow the
> > documentation. I've no idea what to suggest as a starting point for my
> > mom, a fledgling WordPress user and a person entirely too busy to read
> > all of this stuff.
> >
> > Don't get me wrong: it's _fantastic_ that we have such a wealth of
> > information. I wonder, though, if we can find a slightly more linear
> > presentation method so as not to inundate the fledgling bloggers with
> > too many links to too much information?
> > Maybe we could tease out some of the information from Codex into a
> > (PDF?
> > HTML?) "WordPress Guidebook", which users could read offline (or
> > print).
> >
> > _Huge kudos_ to Carthik, Lorelle, and all the codex contributors. I am
> > simply amazed at the quality and quantity of the information.
> >
> > --
> > skippy at skippy.net | http://skippy.net/
> >
> > gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu <http://pgp.mit.edu> --recv-keys 9CFA4B35
> > 506C F8BB 17AE 8A05 0B49 3544 476A 7DEC 9CFA 4B35
> > _______________________________________________
> > wp-docs mailing list
> > wp-docs at lists.automattic.com
> > http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-docs
> >
> >
> James Huff (MacManX)
> MacMerc Contributing Editor
> http://www.macmerc.com
> http://www.macmanx.com
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> wp-docs mailing list
> wp-docs at lists.automattic.com
> http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-docs
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 

Sheryl Coe
web at reportica.net

Reportica
www.Reportica.net <http://www.Reportica.net>
______________________
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-docs/attachments/20050425/e5d0c74a/attachment.html