Joomla! Documentation™

Suggestions

Suggest to rename Users to Administrators and introduce Visitors. More and more features will become available to front-end users. Expect that documentation to be different from the back-end. Sovainfo (talk) 07:17, 8 September 2013 (CDT)

Suggestions - changes made. Perhaps Front-End users? Editors and Publishers, but we need to watch how far in we go with this. The big changes in the future will eliminate the admin back-end and everything will be done from the front-end. At least this is the future plan. Tom Hutchison (talk) 08:33, 8 September 2013 (CDT)

Wouldn't go as far as Editors and Publishers. The introduction of Visitors was meant for Front-End users. No matter whether they are logged in or not. Regardless their roll. Sovainfo (talk) 17:31, 8 September 2013 (CDT)

And my god what a crazy and bonkers idea :P (the moving everything to the frontend idea that is). Back to point I'd be interested to know why you think front-end users would be visiting the Joomla docs. Few-None will hopefully even realise it's Joomla - unless they already know something about a CMS system

Actually I support that idea. Think the back-end will disappear. At this moment site visitors are on their own. Unless a help menu is provided. Probably showing articles to assist them. Or a self built help system. Don't think site visitors will visit Joomla docs. Those docs should be made available to them through the site they are visiting. Site builders will probably visit the Joomla docs and possibly copy the usefull text to their system. Sovainfo (talk) 19:44, 8 September 2013 (CDT)

I should clarify, "The big changes in the future will eliminate the admin back-end and everything will be done from the front-end. At least this is the future plan." There has been talk and it is a requested feature, nothing is set in stone or on the "burner" right now.

Next, Sovainfo, could you clarify the front-end help a bit more? Examples? I'm a little fuzzy on what type of help a site builder would provide to his site visitors beyond providing a sitemap and organising the content with a good menu structure which is intuitive. How to log in perhaps? Or regisitering? Most of this information would be specific to the site. --Thanks! Tom Hutchison (talk) 06:32, 10 September 2013 (CDT)

As with any application, the help system should be your electronic user guide. And offcourse that is specific to the website and the applications you provide. Not to be confused with the FAQ or the product feature guides. Most of the time they are not really helpfull. The help should contain two abstraction levels: What and How.Sovainfo (talk) 12:39, 10 September 2013 (CDT)

The changes are in Joomla's roadmap so I'd assume their not too far away Tom - even if they are not being actively coded at the moment! I agree with you Sovainfo in respect that most users (for the frontend) will not visit this site. So any help should be built into Joomla with tooltips etc. I'm not sure how the documentation should be dealing with that. If the user cannot navigate the front end then that's an issue for the UX team (in my opnion) - as it needs to be intuitive! However can you give an example of what you mean. I'm still not 100% clear to be honest --Wilsonge (talk) 13:11, 11 September 2013 (CDT)

Yes #9 on the Roadmap but the only discussions were 7 months ago in early Feb to my knowledge. Maybe by 4? This of course is dependent on coders adding this feature. I guess it could be rolled into "along the same lines" anyway as UX improvements. At the point when this occurs, I would think the best course is still administrators, just with Front-End views of new administration interactions. Tom Hutchison (talk) 15:50, 11 September 2013 (CDT)