After much work and double-checking, the Simple Machines Team is proud to announce that the new Online Manual is out of its testing phase. Now, SMF documentation is kept in our Online Manual (http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Main_Page), which we maintain in a free wiki software provided by MediaWiki.org
The truth is, we've been using the new Online Manual wiki as a production service for some time now, while also refining some things. The skin has had some gradual improvements, we've improved the display of code, implemented a wiki translation tool and refined the SMF MediaWiki integration (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=461612.0) which makes your SMF login "work" on the wiki.
The wiki is still SMF online documentation that anyone can edit. If you have made at least 10 posts on the SMF forum, you can help on the wiki. If you are interested in contributing to the wiki, please see the information on the Community Portal (http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Online_Manual:Community_portal). Some parts of the wiki are being translated from English into other languages, using a wiki translation tool. So look for more information in the near future about becoming a wiki translator.
Here at SMF, we are using a bridge that allows us to use SMF logins on the wiki. If you are interested in using this bridge on your own site, or helping to develop this bridge, please read more at SMF MediaWiki integration (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=461612.0).
If you are interested in writing SMF code, we're always looking, of course. If you catch any bugs, please submit your fixes on the Bug Reports (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=137.0) board.
Many thanks to Joshua Dickerson for pushing for the wiki, to SleePy for getting things all set up, and keeping the documentation team informed about what it has needed to do to keep it moving forward, and to Labradoodle-360 for doing the work in the wiki skin. Many more thanks to Emanuele for improving the code tag, for writing a bunch of useful wiki-templates, for working around persistant problems with the translation tool, and for working with the translators and the localization team. The translators are doing a great job translating the SMF 2.0 help into many different languages. Thanks to Illori and Emanuele for moving documents from the old online help to the new wiki, and fixing them up when they got there. Thanks to
[email protected] for helping to reorganize some of the FAQ material, and for improving some of the documentation based on feedback from many SMF users. And thanks to everyone who has fixed and improved wiki documents. We couldn't do it without you.
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Edit: A little bit of explanation of Online Manual, Documentation, and the new Wiki. And clarification of some of the work that's gone into making it happen.
This can get a bit confusing. Some of you call it SMF mediawiki others call it the online manual or just the wiki, it confused me to hell looking for it (the wiki) until I noticed the wiki logo at the bottom of the online manual.
Maybe you should change the name in the menu to something like, online wiki, or wiki manual,wiki documentation, wiki help, or something along those lines to save any further confusion,or maybe its only me not been savvy enough :laugh:
Only my thoughts....
Ozzie, that is a good point. We do use "Online Manual" and "Documentation" interchangeably.
And, since our online manual is kept in a wiki, we throw that into the mix, as well.
Perhaps I could have explained that better in my original post here.
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Edit: I have made a small edit to the first paragraph of that post. I hope that helps.
I have also clarified the kind of help the wiki has received.
Thanks
Congrats! :)
Well done! :)
Well done :)
Wait, it wasn't final before? Silly me! Well, nice to see it's Gold now, should help a lot of people out. Why does it show your user name instead of display name in the sidebar, though?
Well done and great work to those who put time into this. :)
Liam -- having your username shown in the side bar is a feature of the SMF/mediawiki bridge we use.
This bridge allows the wiki to do its logins through SMF, and use SMF's cookies to maintain login sessions.
But mediawiki does not support the use of a display name separate from the username. So one or the other had to be chosen.
Since the SMF display name is free to be changed by the user, the username seems to me like a logical choice.
But I did not write the bridge.
The bridge seems to work well enough. But I am certain it could be tweaked and improved. If you are interested in experimenting, you are welcome to get a copy of the bridge and work on it. Please read more SMF MediaWiki integration released (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=461612.0).
With the new wiki the old internal help (action=help) has been wiped out. Not a problem for english speaking users, but all german wiki pages still show the dummy text:
QuoteDiese Seite enthält momentan noch keinen Text. Du kannst diesen Titel auf den anderen Seiten suchen oder in den zugehörigen Logbüchern suchen.
Already said it elsewehere, IMHO it was a big step backwards at least for germans..
This change in the help tab for SMF 2.0 was a big change.
By keeping the help information all in one place, this change was meant to make it quicker and easier to keep the help files up to date.
For action=help, you should see something like what we see here at simplemachines.org, when we select the german language.
If you are still having problems with the help action, please start a post on one of the support boards to discuss it.
There must be some solution to the problem.
Quote from: AngelinaBelle on February 16, 2012, 02:11:05 PM
For action=help, you should see something like what we see here at simplemachines.org, when we select the german language.
yes I do, but all links in that list point to a non-existant wiki page: http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Registering/de
Quote from: AngelinaBelle on February 16, 2012, 02:11:05 PM
There must be some solution to the problem.
yep, someone needs to re-write the old action=help (the german version, which was ~95% complete) as wiki-pages.
Well your welcome to start translating TE :D
I understand what you mean now. It is the untranslated page on the wiki which gives the problem.
It could be described as a bug. SMF can check for the page. And the page is there. But we would really rather see the base (English) text if the translated text is not available, not the notice that the text has not been translated.
I think we should discuss this in bugs. I do not know what would be required to fix this problem.
Quote from: SleePy on February 16, 2012, 02:27:07 PM
Well your welcome to start translating TE :D
You're joking, right? ;) Well, I have quite a bit of spare time but let's be honest, the german help was
~95% complete and has been totally wiped out by a team decision. You can't expect from someone to do the entire work (again)...
I agree - the change to the new help is a big hassle for the translations.
It would be possible to copy the strings out of the language editor into the wiki translation tool, because the pages on the wiki are > 95% identical to what was in the language editor at the time.
But even this will take time, as you can see by the fact that the German wiki translation has not been done.
We did not have a tool to automate the proces.
At this time, a few changes have been made to the base (English) pages. These changes were mostly made at the request of translators. This means that, after copying strings from the LE, the translator would need to check if the original had changed, and update the translated string.
Well done guys. :)
Congrats guys, reading this announcement brought back a lot of the fond memories of my time on the Doc Helpers team. :)
Awesome! This is going to be extremely helpful, especially the option to allow others to modify and improve the articles.
Quote from: AngelinaBelle on February 16, 2012, 03:07:43 PM
I agree - the change to the new help is a big hassle for the translations.
It would be possible to copy the strings out of the language editor into the wiki translation tool, because the pages on the wiki are > 95% identical to what was in the language editor at the time.
But even this will take time, as you can see by the fact that the German wiki translation has not been done.
We did not have a tool to automate the proces.
At this time, a few changes have been made to the base (English) pages. These changes were mostly made at the request of translators. This means that, after copying strings from the LE, the translator would need to check if the original had changed, and update the translated string.
+1
congrats, really helpful
thanks, you all did a great job :)
Thanks for the good job!
/me wonders if it might be an idea to remove the "Docs site" link from the menu, now, or not...
Quote from: TE on February 16, 2012, 02:54:32 PM
Quote from: SleePy on February 16, 2012, 02:27:07 PM
Well your welcome to start translating TE :D
You're joking, right? ;) Well, I have quite a bit of spare time but let's be honest, the german help was ~95% complete and has been totally wiped out by a team decision. You can't expect from someone to do the entire work (again)...
There have been several changes from the help that was distributed with SMF in the past, but it's not forbidden to open a language file and do a bit of copy&paste.
I would do it by myself, but not having any knowledge of many of the different languages I can't be sure of what I'm putting into the wiki...
Good job. Alot of work goes into these manuals which doesn't always get the attention it deserves.
Quote from: TE on February 16, 2012, 02:54:32 PM
You can't expect from someone to do the entire work (again)...
I did! ;D
http://hilfe.smfportal.de (can be installed as modification, changes the help link in navigation)
Quote from: [email protected] on February 26, 2012, 03:55:18 PM
/me wonders if it might be an idea to remove the "Docs site" link from the menu, now, or not...
Or at least label it "old, outdated help files", for the moment, I suppose...
Quote from: AngelinaBelle on April 17, 2012, 10:47:41 AM
Quote from: [email protected] on February 26, 2012, 03:55:18 PM
/me wonders if it might be an idea to remove the "Docs site" link from the menu, now, or not...
Or at least label it "old, outdated help files", for the moment, I suppose...
Shall we wave at someone? ;)
Any one of us can do that at any time.
I've started with a site comment: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=474434.0
I've also followed up with more private note to the site team, to bring this to their attention.
Good finkin', Batman! :)
Well done to everyone who has contributed to it.
Please join the discussion on the documentation helpers board: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=202.0
Good work guys, it's great to see it go gold!
This infomation is great for me to support correctly to my customers !!! :D
Great!
great job, well done 8)
Quote from: GravuTrad on February 18, 2012, 08:19:10 PM
Quote from: AngelinaBelle on February 16, 2012, 03:07:43 PM
I agree - the change to the new help is a big hassle for the translations.
It would be possible to copy the strings out of the language editor into the wiki translation tool, because the pages on the wiki are > 95% identical to what was in the language editor at the time.
But even this will take time, as you can see by the fact that the German wiki translation has not been done.
We did not have a tool to automate the proces.
At this time, a few changes have been made to the base (English) pages. These changes were mostly made at the request of translators. This means that, after copying strings from the LE, the translator would need to check if the original had changed, and update the translated string.
+1
+1*2
I appreciate your work. All those put good efforts.
it's helpful thanks
Good job! Keep up the good work!
Someone should update the Online Manual menu button at top of forum. It still says "Old Docs Site (Deprecated)".
And the main OM button points to the wiki, while the dropdown points to the old manual just in case there's something there that's useful. IOW, it's just fine as it is.
It is the system that is not natural. We are naturally inclined to click in the dropdown menu instead of the title of the menu...
Even though the main SMF navigation works in exactly same way?
It's using the same paradigm as the menu a couple of inches lower down the page... and if you were to change it, you should change that to be the same too!
Yes of course. I just say that it's misleading for those who are not accustomed. But me i am lol...
It's confusing (it confused me :P). The OM is most likely to be used by new users, not devs or support staff, and the link should be clearer than mud.
So click on 'online manual'. Just like you'd click on 'Customize' or 'Admin' or 'Members'.
No disrespect to the contributors to the OM, but who ever reads it? If new users actually read it, I'd say there would be a decrease in topics in support areas. :) I wish more people would read it, including me.
Then use the Useful Manual Links to link to the relevant pages as and when it comes up ;)
Quote from: mashby on March 24, 2013, 12:01:43 AM
No disrespect to the contributors to the OM, but who ever reads it?
I've read a few bits of it now and again. The irony is that I'm not an admin though, so I don't actually need to read it.
Quote from: Arantor on March 23, 2013, 09:32:46 AM
Even though the main SMF navigation works in exactly same way?
It's using the same paradigm as the menu a couple of inches lower down the page... and if you were to change it, you should change that to be the same too!
I know several people that didn't know (imagine) that you can click on the "main" button and that were using just the dropdowns.
Anyway there is some inconsistency in SMF, because in all the "other" menus (i.e. admin, moderation, profile, etc.) the main button is (was) just a dead end.
I don't think it's ideal, but I'm also not sure what's best. What I'm sure of is that many are not using SMF's menu(s) at its "full potential".
Quote from: Krash. on March 23, 2013, 12:02:08 AM
Someone should update the Online Manual menu button at top of forum. It still says "Old Docs Site (Deprecated)".
Thanks for pointing that out! I've never ever clicked on that button because it said it was deprecated, so there seemed no point. It's useful to know it leads right to the Wiki - cool! 8)
Even though I realise now that the Deprecated bit is just a submenu, it doesn't look like that, it looks like a comment on the OM button.....
The main forum menu displays the main category as a submenu, so it's obvious that the button label is one of the choices - you can click on either one. If you make the OM button consistent with the forum menu, you'd have two items in the submenu, the new wiki, and the old docs. I think that would be clearer, especially to new users.
It's useful to bear in mind that anything's obvious if you already know how it works.
No, it doesn't. The admin menu does not have any sub items that link to the admin front page, the profile menu's first item does not intimate it is the same as the profile menu item (Profile vs Summary)
Well, as pointed out, it's inconsistent. If you look at 'My Messages' or 'Members', you'll see that the button and the first submenu item are the same link.
It is - but only by accident to a point. It doesn't make it clear from the titles that it's the same thing.
The whole menu behaviour is actually inconsistent and has been for years... :/
Note that the "dead-end links" thing has been "fixed" in 2.1 (for instance, in 2.1 if you click "Profile Info" from anywhere in your profile, it will take you to the main page of your profile).
Thanks for the comments on the site menu.
I am also in favor of a little fix.
I think it is long enough, anyway, that we can drop the "deprected" link entirely by now.
(http://www.katzy.dsl.pipex.com/Smileys/nodding.gif)
In a matter of irony that would leave you with the top level link and nothing else.
Kind of like the "Home" button. Or the "community" button.
A little bit inconsistent, but probably less confusing than what we've got.
I will make a note of the inconsistency.
Well done guys! This is amazing! :D
Indeed. A lot of quality work from the doc guys.
2.0 beta 3.1 is many years old. Use 2.0.4 instead, you will find all the language files in Themes/default/languages - if you are still using 2.0b3.1 you should definitely upgrade due to dozens of security issues found in the years since it came out.
Also note that http://download.simplemachines.org/?smflanguages contains a Vietnamese entry.
great post and well done :)