[wp-docs] August 2005 Update

Tue Sep 6 12:25:46 GMT 2005

While the Codex was down for most of the month, there was still a lot of 
action behind the scenes.

1. The Support Forum volunteer mailing list took off and there have been 
extensive discussions on how to "do" things on the Forum. Discussions of 
policies, protections, dealing with spammers, and so on have been 
discussed and we need someone from that group to help write up some of 
these for....posterity to the Codex. I understand that rules and regs 
are something unpopular here, but think of them as guidelines for the 
Forum. Discussion archives are at 
http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-forums/

2. On a similar vein, http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Policies was 
started and need expansion, fixing, editing, condensing, and legal 
review. Anyone interested? There are also some other policy, copyright 
and such pages that need some legalese review and fixing, which should 
be listed on the Task List.

3. Podz implemented an interesting addition to the Codex by providing 
PDF versions of the articles. They are available at 
http://www.zen77857.zen.co.uk/docs/ and an example of one of the "looks" 
we may use on the Codex to highlight access to these documents may be 
found at http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Podz. Podz is working on a plan 
on how to include these in the Codex and he will need volunteers to help 
keep these maintained. Please contact him as soon as possible to help 
with this neat new feature.

4. Screencasts were discussed earlier this year and are still desired 
for inclusion in the Codex. If you are still interested in participating 
and volunteering your time towards such inclusion, see 
http://codex.wordpress.org/Codex:Screencasts and leave a note on the 
discussion page. We will start putting a team together on this very soon.

5. Now that the Codex is back and running, if you were working on any 
articles, please complete them and/or let us know the status. We'd like 
to get these cleaned up and finished and into the main documentation as 
soon as possible.

6. There is still a lot to do on the Codex, so check out the 
http://codex.wordpress.org/Codex:Tasks list and dig in.

7. Merger of Forum and Codex - The merger of the Forum and Codex 
continues. Linking in the Forum is now available with the same mediawiki 
feature of using [[WordPress Lessons]] to link to documents instead of 
the full URL. Not all links work such as [[Site Architecture 1.5]] and 
more work needs to be done to identify which work and which won't, and 
the Forums team is working on that. The docs team needs to be aware of 
these "irregularities" and take them into consideration when naming 
articles. The merger will basically put Codex "on the map" via the DOCS 
link at the top of the wordpress.org menu. The Codex will "look" like 
the wordpress.org layout, except that all of that will be changing from 
its current look to probably match the new logo. The table of contents 
will be changing to reflect a more "manual" approach and we'll let you 
know what is happening with that when we know more ourselves.

8. WordPressMU and wordpress.com - WordPressMU runs wordpress.com which 
runs on 1.6 ALPHA-DO-NOT-INSTALL. This means that it is a constantly 
changing look and feature version. Documentation on MU will soon be 
available on the http://mu.wordpress.org site and also in the Codex. For 
the most part, it will include installation and troubleshooting 
installations, and then an article section for users, which should be 
very small since the actual control over a WordPressMU site for users is 
fairly limited to admin panels and content.

A summary article has been started at 
http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPressMU. I've written a series of 
articles that will help understand some of what is involved and 
different between the two versions of WordPress. Some of these will be 
cleaned up and moved into the Codex. I'll list them below. For the most 
part, WordPressMU "is" WordPress 1.6, other than installation and host 
maintenance. So there is a lot of overlap. Those on the docs team who 
have wordpress.com sites can see the difference between 1.5 and 1.6 and 
should begin to study the surface elements and think about articles that 
will enhance or replace the Administration Panels articles for the new 
look and features.

For now, other than the current summary and a few articles on using the 
admin panels, designing Themes for WordPressMU (will be posted within a 
few days), and articles such as the needs-editing 
http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Lorelle/Customizing_The_Content as this 
is the most control MU users will have over their site.

CAUTION: Remember, 1.6 Alpha is changing constantly and currently is in 
a lot of transition - to say it nicely. Avoid screenshots or extensive 
"conclusions" as they might be different tomorrow. Still, we need to 
start on the documentation, so start thinking about it.

Here are some articles discussing the differences and related documentation:

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/08/22/what-can-you-do-with-wordpresscom/
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/08/30/getting-help-with-wordpresscom/
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/08/26/attention-wordpress-theme-designers-designing-themes-for-wordpressmu/
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/08/27/wordpress-versions-how-many-and-whats-the-diff/
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/08/24/growing-up-with-wordpress/

Coming Soon:
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/09/08/the-latest-news-on-wordpress-16-status-and-development/
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/09/11/adding-technorati-tags-to-wordpressmu-sites/

If you are interested in writing about 1.6 and MU, please let us know so 
we can put a good team together for the first documents. Soon, we will 
need extensive documentation on features and plugins related to 1.6 and 
more development and advanced level docs, so we need some lists, ideas, 
and brainstorming on what is needed and who is willing to do it.

9. The next couple of months will be really busy for the Forum and 
Codex. With wordpress.com and other WordPressMU sites popping up as part 
of the fanfare, people have already started coming to the Forum and 
Codex for help. For the most part, the help they need is there. The 
Forum software is being upgraded and improved with many volunteer 
requested changes, and the Codex is slowly starting to improve, too. 
There is now a TOC menu of the main areas of interest in the sidebar.

There is an extensive list of requested changes, fixes, and improvements 
at http://codex.wordpress.org/Codex:State_of_Codex that hopefully will 
get attention and action soon. The search for the Codex is now driven by 
Yahoo, and the Codex is now hosted by Yahoo, which saves on cost and 
wear and tear. There are a lot of requests to add improved functionality 
to the search capabilities, such as options to limit the search to Forum 
or Codex, and we hope they will be implemented soon. If you have 
suggestions, please share them.

10. Thanks again to everyone who hung in there during the recent 
problems with the Codex. Everything seems to be back working and we need 
to get to work again and updating and adding new documentation. Thanks 
for all your efforts and patience.

Lorelle and the mysterious "we" of the documentation team who fed me all 
of this information to summarize. ;-)