So there’s currently some great documentation for Discourse:
Relatively thorough installation guides on GitHub
Some rudimentary troubleshooting tips on GitHub
Developer guides on GitHub
HOWTO category here on meta
A massive slew of knowledge in the various categories on meta, that is maybe-searchable but that would have to be gleaned out.
The last item is what I’m thinking about. Is there any plan to synthesize some of the concepts and basics of Discourse into a general admin guide that ships with the software as part of the V1 release? For example, such documentation might include:
Explanations of roles (moderator vs. admin), levels, and badges
How things like categories, sub-categories, and uncategorized are designed to be used
How pins work
The ideas behind flagging and what happens when different options are chosen
General guidance on UI customization
Differences between new & unread, and the various colors & types of count badges
Differences between and explanations of starred, watched, tracked, muted, etc.
Other stuff that I surely can’t think off at the moment
Discourse is great software and I’d hate for people to be held back from implementing it because they can’t quickly/easily understand how it’s designed to work. Do others agree/disagree?
I’ll update that again now with some ideas you gave me based on the above.
There’s also the new user PM that goes out to every user after they sign up, with basic tips on how to use Discourse. We’ll be improving that a bit (adding some animated GIFs of demos) before V1.0.
We’ve only just now been able to get everything in place to the point that it wasn’t constantly changing – you can’t write “docs” on shifting sand.
Per your last set of bullets, it might be a good idea to start on some additional, focused HOWTO guides if people feel they are needed. But please, keep them small and focused, I want to avoid the TL;DR kitchen sink docs type format if we can.
The admin guide is looking pretty nice! It’s a shame that older installations can’t somehow be updated, as mine is older and missing some of that new content.
Will the new user PM content get updated by updating from master when the time comes?
Will think a bit and ask some other folks about potential HOWTO’s.
Make a link to it somewhere in your staff category so you can always get the up-to-date version!
And if they deserve to be part of the larger admin or user guide narrative, then perhaps add them as links within those docs (as you’ll notice the Admin guide currently does link to a number of HOWTO’s).
