Here we present topics to work on for the user documentation.
You can find a detailed list on https://github.com/joomla/documentation/issues. There you can also find discussions about a subject and background information. You can also mark there you are working on a specific article, to avoid someone else working on the same topic.
In the spotlight: content management tutorials
At the moment we'll focus on tutorials about content management. That is the management of the content in articles, menu-items, categories, modules, etcetera, ignoring building and maintaining a site (that's the subject for another series of tutorials).
- A series of tutorials that shows beginners how articles, menus and categories play together in Joomla. Targeted at new Joomla users.
- In the current user manual those topics are scattered under several headings (getting started, articles, menus). We especially need some articles that show the relation between the several parts. For instance you can set some general values in the articles options, but you can also set those values in the options-tab of an article or of a menu-item. In addition, you can also adjust the settings in the settings of a category.
- We are restructuring the content of the manual: now it is mainly an alphabetical listing, but we want to put things that belong together more together. All those things about articles, menu's and categories will be under one heading of Content management.
How those tutorials for content management are built up and what existing user manual articles you can use for it can be found in this spreadsheet (work in progress):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oBTz5hIfIJaMo3gcAWJ5oTLx0CadR_rbcKlJYM407kU/edit?usp=sharing
You can find more in all sub-items of this issue: Tutorials about content management.
The tutorials that will be made today will first be published in the left side menu on the Re-structure page. There you can see how a tutorial can look like.
For the PBF, please put your name on the spreadsheet behind the tutorial you want to create. You'll find a link to the spreadsheet on the Mattermost OR PBF channel.
About Tutorials
- A tutorial is almost never complete. It just shows a way to do something, not all the alternative possibilities to do so.
- Main goal is to show some concepts you want to teach. No long explanations. A tutorial is learning by doing.
- The tutorial offers a series of steps that the reader can repeat, leading to a reproducable result. The path however is more important than the result.
- fixed order:
- Start with an overview of prerequisites: what tutorials must be done before doing this one.
- Then a summary of what this tutorial is about (shortly describing the example).
- Then the steps to follow
- End with a conclusion: summary of the covered concepts.
Other topics you could work on:
- Custom Fields.
- How-to guides with mod_articles.
- Tutorial: Add a module to the Dashboard.
- Template overrides.
- Useful Magazine Articles.
Custom Fields
Needed:
- a tutorial explaning how to use custom fields; now: https://docs-core.sandbox.joomla.org/user-manual/fields/fields-fields-and-field-groups
- Of all the articles currently under "fields" there are 4 general articles (fields and field groups, field parameters, multilingual sites, and template overrides). They are on the same level with the 15 types of custom fields and one article about a special custom field: subform. Can you come up with a better structure instead of putting all those articles on the same level? if you need a deeper layer, don't forget the overview page.
- a how-to guide about how to repeat custom fields (using a subform).
- example of using nested subforms in custom fields (new since 5.2).
- a reference (overview) of all custom fields + short description.
- tutorial about template overrides. see https://docs-core.sandbox.joomla.org/user-manual/fields/fields-adding-custom-fields-overrides
See the series about custom fields by Marc Dechèvre in the Magazine:
- JCM March 2018, episode 1: How far can we go with Joomla! and Custom Fields?
- JCM May 2018 episode 2: how to manage your Custom Fields
- JCM October 2018 episode 3: all the parameters one can wish for
- JCM April 2020 episode 4: a step by step tutorial
- JCM July 2021 episode 5: List of Resources (no need to list them here again, but this is avery useful reference)
- JCM August 2021 episode 6: Make more with extensions
- JCM October 2021 episode 7.1: one Custom Field to rule them all
- JCM November 2021 episode 7.2: without limits
Is there anything in those articles that should be in the documentation?
How-to guides with mod_articles
- Accordion Override for Articles Module
- How to create an Advent Calendar using the new Articles Module in Joomla 5.2
Also: update https://docs-core.sandbox.joomla.org/user-manual/modules/modules-site-modules for mod_articles.
Tutorial: Add a module to the Dashboard
Template overrides and alternate view templates
- Joomla Improved Override Management
- Template Overrides - Recycle and reuse
- Managing Template Overrides in Joomla (2024-12)
- Here is a good blogpost from Viviana (in German) about template overrides for frontend editing: https://www.dr-menzel-it.de/blog/override-challenge-beitrag-einreichen-im-frontend. This should definitely be in the documentation!
Useful Magazine Articles
Some of these can be used as base for a documentation article.
Move to Developers Manual To-do List
- How to Use Event Classes for Plugin Development
- Selecting data using JDatabase
- Inserting Updating and Removing data using JDatabase