Welcome Authors
Thanks for joining the effort to document the progress of Tiki!
Getting Started as an Author
- Register at tiki.org, then login here.
- Read About the Tiki Documentation.
- Read the page on our Documentation Lifecycle.
- Learn How to Tag documentation pages effectively.
- Browse the Documentation Status page.
- Choose a page to improve (likely something you need help with yourself!, or look for them at stub, for instance).
- If content exists on tiki.org (tw.o), transfer the content to documentation page. Be sure to:
- Correctly format the page (based on the How to Tag information).
- Link the documentation page to/from the tw.o page.
- Learn by doing. Newbies are welcome.
- If in doubt, ask in the comments area of each page once you become a contributor to the site
Sources of wisdom
In order to improve the documentation, you need wisdom about how the software works. Here are places to look.
- tiki.org — If you can't find it here, do a search there first. Tiki.org was formerly the main center for documentation, but much of it is now out of date.
- Tiki.org forums — Post a question in the appropriate forum.
- The 1.9 documentation — Check the last comprehensive publication of Tiki documentation, which still provides a good overview and information on many features.
- dev.tiki.org — Search the Tiki developers site.
- irc.tiki.org — Developers and other users can often be found on IRC chat, but activity varies according to time of day, etc., so please be patient if you ask a question.
Becoming an expert
If you have read and understand the following pages, you will be well on your way to becoming an expert.
See also
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Please read (and follow) these standards. You should also read about our documentation goals.
Basic Tiki concepts
- Page: In the Tiki documentation, the term page is synonymous with wiki page.
- Feature: A feature is a Tiki component that has a distinctive function, such as image galleries, file galleries, FAQs, banners, forums, or blogs. See Features for an overview of Tiki features.
- Terminology: Review the Tiki Glossary for additional standard Tiki terminology.
Documentation integration
All documentation pages are integrated into a wiki structure.
- Standards
For examples, see Documentation Templates.
Every page should uniformly follow the Tiki Manual of Style as applied in Requirements, for example.
- Status
The Documentation Status is the hardcoded and commented version of the structure. If you add new pages, please add them with a visible indication TO CREATE so they can be added to the structure. Cleaning and page moving will occur frequently.
Required pages
Each feature requires at least four pages of documentation.
- Main Page
Example Main Page: Blog
This is the primary page for the feature and should be named based on the feature. It defines and provides a brief overview of the feature. The page should link to any related resources (internal or external).
- User Help
Example User Page: Blog User
This page is for end-users of the feature, this also includes Admins who use their own sites. Organize the User page by tasks — what the user wants to accomplish (such as "Creating a New Blog" or "Preventing Other Users From Posting"). Use lots of screenshots and graphics to convey the information.
- Admin Configuration
Example Admin Page: Blog Config
This page provides information that Admins need in order to enable, configure, maintain, and troubleshoot the feature. Include system requirements information, potential impact to other features, or anything else useful to a system administrator.
- Reference
Example Reference Page: Blog Ref
This is page is for additional reference documentation. It includes the following information:
- Permissions relevant to the feature
- Pertinent database tables
- Administrative configuration options
- User options
ML: This idea can be ok for certain large features, but it's overkill for the vast majority of features that should fit on one page. Let's not create pages artificially to try to fit the content into a structure.
Getting started
If you're registered and logged in, you can get started:
- Choose a topic or feature
From the Documentation Status page, choose a feature to document.
- Find existing content
Review http://tiki.org to see if documentation exists for the feature. If so, copy it to this site and reformat it, as necessary.
You may also want to review the old 1.6 TikiWiki documentation for additional information.
- Write what is missing
Create or update the page so that it conforms to the formatting standards. Review the documentation examples for additional information, including sample pages.
- Work collaboratively
Update Documentation Status so that other contributors know what you're working on (and what still needs to be done).