'Getting started' user guide
goob
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I've been thinking that it would be good to have an 'official' guide to Diaspora for prospective users and new users. Something along the lines of the excellent Diasporial tutorials. At present we rely on sites set up by community members, and the fragility of this has just been brought home by the fact that someone has just pointed out that the tutorials (and the rest of Diasporial, apart from the home page) have been taken down.
Would anyone be up for collaborating on writing a really simple 'how-to' guide to Diaspora, along the lines of Diasporial? If so, let's get cracking.
If anyone is in touch with Kevin Kleinman, I'd be grateful if you'd ask him (a) will he be putting the tutorials back up, and (b) may we have his copy to work from, as this would save a lot of work. We could then just update it where necessary.
goob Sun 11 Aug 2013 12:27PM
I've already put the text into some mock-ups using the project site CSS on my web space - see this link.
I'll need to transcribe them into the Ruby version of html that the project site uses first. Could certainly do with some help with that, so once I've done the donkey work and got drafts on Github, I'll ask for some help with them.
Sean Tilley Sun 11 Aug 2013 4:38PM
Goob, this looks great! Well done!
It probably wouldn't take very much at all to get these new pages put in to the current site; if you need any help doing so, I'd be happy to assist.
goob Sun 11 Aug 2013 4:44PM
Jay, thanks for your really useful comments and edits. I've added your edits and cut down the first three parts, which are now on my web space, and the PiratePad doc if you want to edit further.
goob Sun 11 Aug 2013 7:15PM
Sean, thanks a lot. I'll try to do as much of this as possible, as I know you've got a lot on your plate, but I could do with help with:
- updating some images,
- instructing me how to be able to test the Ruby version of the site on my home test server so I can check my changes are correct before uploading them to Github, and
- checking through the files I commit once I've finished, then merging them and getting them live, hopefully before the anniversary.
I'll email you about these tomorrow. Thanks again.
Flaburgan Sun 11 Aug 2013 9:31PM
Guys, just to let you know that we are currently working on "Le guide du parfait débutant" (The guide of the perfect newbie) so you can inspiring yourself / take the screenshots, even if it's in french.
goob Thu 15 Aug 2013 10:23PM
I'm working through the tutorials pages, getting them ready for the new site.
One thing which would really help me is if someone would volunteer to look through the 'tips and tricks' page and the 'other documentation' page, both of which are very out of date.
These are taken straight from Diasporial. I've just added the User Data Manifesto to the other docs page - someone mentioned it in the jd.com crisis discussion and it looks really good - but apart from that it's two-year old information.
If you could think of a few nifty tricks and tips for using Diaspora which are relevant to Diaspora now, and write a short bit about each of them, and check all the resources listed on the other docs page, weed out all the dead ones and add as many current ones as possible, that would be a huge help.
http://diaspora.goob.me.uk/tips.html
http://diaspora.goob.me.uk/other-docs.html
Thanks in advance.
goob Sun 18 Aug 2013 10:10AM
Everyone, I've pretty much completed my work on the tutorials pages.
What remains to be done is two very out-of-date pages.
One is a page of 'tips and tricks'; the other is a page of links to other sites.
http://diaspora.goob.me.uk/other-docs.html
Particularly in the case of the latter, I'd like to get up-to-date links on it, so any good links you know about Diaspora, how to use it, technical information, sites which offer support or help, and so on. Please let me know.http://diaspora.goob.me.uk/tips.html
Any if any tips for using Diaspora come to your mind, please also let me know. I'm struggling to think of any good ones at the moment.
Jason Robinson · Sun 11 Aug 2013 11:55AM
Yeah man you could easily write a book ;) I tend to be verbose too especially with work emails which sometimes makes people not read them at all. But I like details :)
I think could we maybe push this to the site if no one objects and then continue correcting it there, via Github I suppose? I don't think there is a need to keep it in a piratepad draft forever - any mistakes will be fixed as time goes on and all documents start to accumulate mistakes from the time they are released, especially Diaspora changing all the time.
The actual short guide can then be picked out of the full version - maybe using something nifty like a HTML5 presentation or something? Image + text blocks of each feature, max 5 pages etc...