[wp-docs] Lessons: Opinions Welcome...maybe

[lorelle at cameraontheroad.com]

I've started the WordPress Lessons section on my user page at 
http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Lorelle#Articles_for_Lesson_Tutorials and 
started to group them together by category.  In doing so, I'm having some 
trouble figuring out where to put things and what categories should be 
included.  I talk about this on my user page and have opened up a debate on 
my discussions page about this.  Chime in, please.

I've done roughs of a bunch of the proposed lessons and posted them.  Please 
review, slash, and burn, but remember, I haven't even had a chance to do 
much of a second or third go around with these.

I talked with Carthik for a few minutes this weekend about the title of the 
WordPress Lessons and I really like calling them WordPress Lessons.  If you 
have an opinion on that, let us know, but I like the idea of that name and 
then using the linking technique of calling them "Lesson: How to dn 
Something" when linked to from other pages on the codex that require an 
article title.  Stands out, says what it is, differentiates it from 
technical documentation as a how-to, and...well, what do you think?

And he mentioned listing this on the Main Page as a separate section. I 
think that is wise since it is of benefit to the majority of WordPress 
Users.  WordPress is so EASY to use, a lot of people are embracing it and 
then wanting to dig in to find out more, so I think this is a good thing. 
It will lead people to dig deeper into the Codex to the rest of the 
documentation by giving them a non-lethal, non-tech intro with links to the 
lethal tech material...ah ha! BURN!  ;-)

Now, about those Lesson articles.

Please review the Lessons very carefully.  On the more technical issues 
involving some template tags, I've test driven most of the, but not all of 
them, so double check that I didn't screw up a tag or code example. 
Remember - I still very much a newbie at how WordPress works and a tired 
stip of the hinger and dah code ez messed upped. And remember again, I 
haven't even gone through them since cleaning them up enough to post.  I'm 
sure I screwed up in places.

About Lessons Guidelines and Purpose:
I've also added a very rough draft and start to some guidelines for 
submission to the Lesson section.  This is NOT meant to turn into official 
guidelines but to help me (and all you wonderful and worthy Codex helpers) 
process what we want and don't want out of these lessons.

PLEASE chime in on these.

The basic goal of the Lessons in the Codex is to help people learn how to 
use WordPress, especially how to use the tags, process the overwhelming 
information and technology that goes into the WordPress features, and how to 
maximize these features on their own WordPress site.

The number one criteria for inclusion in Lessons, IMHO, is that the lesson 
must benefit the MAJORITY of WordPress users, not the minority.

I am not qualified to write on techie how to topics for WordPress, but I'd 
love to have people submit Lessons on techie topics such as how to change 
the excerpt and post content text area in the Admin to make it larger or 
smaller; understanding more about how pingbacks, trackbacks, and RSS works 
in relationship to a WordPress site.  For example, do these help your link 
popularity and rise in the search engines? Does the user have to "turn it 
on" or is it on by default?  Can they turn them off? What good do they do? 
How can they be customized to do what you want?  Sure, the tags and glossary 
and a few pages list some of this information, but a how-to-use on these 
would be great.

I'm sure there are plenty of other techie topics that I would absolutely 
love to see added, but I'm tired out from Weekend Wikiness and I'll post 
suggestions on my user page later.

So go through the Lessons and take a look.  If the link is red - obviously I 
haven't added anything yet.  Still working on them.  Sorry that they are 
"empty" pages, but this is MY USER PAGE and not for the general public.  The 
red link reminds/haunts/guilts/encourages me to get the article done.

:::As a reminder to those new on the discussion group, these Lessons started 
out as a cover for when the Codex was down for an extended period and v1.5 
had just come out and people were going nuts on how to use it.  We posted 
"Lesson: title of lesson" on the WordPress forum and they were a big hit. 
Requests came in to preserve this information and to add such information to 
the Codex to benefit all WordPress users.  From there...avalanche.

Lorelle