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e:strip newbie guide

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So, the other day I was complaining about all the work for the site and trying to think about what would make it easier. Then e:ucnutsaniflush had the brilliant idea to write a newbie guide to get new people started. This is the perfect kind of task for other people to work on, because it involves no programming or technical savvy, just a little time investment for your fellow estripppers.

Maybe @theecarey because she has excellent writing skills and she seems to be good at breaking stuff down. If anyone else is interested in working on it, you are all invited.

It would definately make it easier on the newbies and easier on me because it would answer many of the questions that people ask all the time.

The help files have lots of info, but I don't keep up with them, and I am not sure if @uncutsaniflush (help admin) did either. A newbie guide would be an excellent supplement to that.

How should we do it? You can leave comments here. I guess the first task would be identifying what belongs in the help and what belongs in a newbie guide. I would like it one simple searchable, printable document. Does anyone else have ideas?
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💬 4 comments

  1. theecarey ·

    excellent idea..will be beneficial *thinking*
    I will sleep on it and get back.. it is past my bedtime!

  2. uncutsaniflush ·

    alas, I got frustrated by the whole help thing. e-strip is very much a moving target and sometimes the help entry end up being obsolete almost as soon as they are written.

    Another frustrating thing is that I kept finding errors and things not working so I couldn't write a help for something that didn't work at the time. And, after you had fixed it or finalized the new improved api, I never went back to write a help item for whatever it was that wasn't working.

    Speaking of things that don't work, here's some error messages from journal dots:

    "Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /opt/lampp/htdocs/elmwood/elmwood/classes/publish_data.php on line 20

    Warning: mysql_fetch_assoc(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /opt/lampp/htdocs/elmwood/elmwood/classes/publish_data.php on line 21"

    This error is repeatable using Firefox 1.5 in both osX and Linux.

    So I guess in the end, when all is said and done, I just haven't done a very good job of being a help admin because I give up too easy and don't have follow-through.

    When I try to do the help files, I end up feeling more like a beta-tester filing bug reports than anything else when I want to write a help item and it turns out that feature temporarily is not working because it is broken or being upgraded.

    And that frustrates me and sometimes makes me throw my hands in the air like the little drama queen that I am and say "the hell with this; i'll write the help when it is working again." Except that I never get around to writing the help item even when things are working again.

    Sorry abut that.

  3. kara ·

    I am willing to put together an outline and start writing the technical documentation new members (e:newbie?). I'll have to start next week, though, as I'm on a superslow internet connection for the rest of the weekend, and I have some skiing to do!

  4. metalpeter ·

    I don't really have any suggestions my self. But I do think it is a good idea for the help and newbie area. There are some features that people don't use that often or havn't used in some time so they may change and having a good way to look them up would be good. The best example I think think of the inlink nobody had really used it in months and I forgot how to use but once i remembered it was no big deal. Or here is another example now that there are differant themes you can change the background of blogs but can you change the text and what is the color picker I have no idea. But with a newbie page I (or anyone) who is new or dosn't remember how to use those features could look them up.

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