Docs Information Architecture

Welcome to the official home of the WordPress documentation team.

This team is responsible for all things documentation, including the Codex (moving to HelpHub), handbooks, developer.wordpress.org, admin help, inline docs, and other general wordsmithing across the WordPress project.

Want to get involved?

We need your help keeping content current with each WordPress release and adding new content and screenshots to:

the many Contributor handbooks.
WordPress inline docs.
developer.wordpress.org.
HelpHub which will be replacing the Codex.

Weekly Meetings

Join our discussions of documentation issues here on the blog and on Slack.

The documentation team holds bi-weekly office hours on Mondays from 15:00-16:00 UTC in the #docs Slack channel.

Individual teams have their own regular meetings – you can find details of those in the sidebar.

#information-architecture

I’ve split the types of people who’ll be approaching the content into two broad groups:

Users: anyone who uses WordPress, from amatuer bloggers to people setting up a complex multisite installation. WordPress users are a very broad group.
Developers: anyone who extends WordPress, i.e. with plugins and themes (or the JSON REST API in the future).

Below is a diagram which outlines how I envisage the content in the Codex being split up:

I’ll go through each of these sections.

Use

Knowledgebase

https://wordpress.org/support
Priority: High
Goal: to provide WordPress users with a searchable database of answers to common questions.
Target Audience: WordPress users of all levels and ability.
Example content

How do I add an image?
How do I activate multisite?
How do I add a new user?
Can I change my domain?
How do I move my plugins folder?
How do I increase my PHP memory limit?
What is a permalink?

Status: Helphub spec in draft. To be published soon.

Guides

https://wordpress.org/support
Priority: Low
Goal:To provide barebones guides to specific use-cases for WordPress
Target Audience: WordPress users of all levels and ability, though each individual guide will be tailored towards a specific user level (for example, blogging will be less advanced than the multisite guide
Example Content:

Admin Guide
Multisite Guide
Installation Guide
Blogging Guide
Troubleshooting Guide

Blog

The blog can be used for release-related documentation or guides relating to a specific event. For example, whenever we anticipate an issue with a release we will publish an article in the Codex. The blog will provide a platform for that.

Extend

http://developer.wordpress.org

Code Reference

https://developer.wordpress.org/reference
Priority: High
Goal: to provide WordPress developers with an automated code reference that includes explanations and user-submitted examples
Target Audience: WordPress developers of all levels and ability.
Example content

Function Reference
Class Reference
Hook reference

Status: Live. Still actively developed.

Handbooks

https://developer.wordpress.org/handbook-name
Priority: High
Goal: to provide WordPress developers with guides to extending the platform
Target Audience: WordPress developers of all levels and ability.
Example content

Theme Developer Handbook
Plugin Developer Handbook
Intro to developing with WP (including WordPress basics, setting up dev environment)

Status:

Plugin Developer Handbook – v1
Theme Developer Handbook – being worked on
Intro to Developing with WP Handbook – not yet started

Resources

https://developer.wordpress.org/resources
Priority: Low
Goal: to provide WordPress developers with resources
Target Audience: WordPress developers of all levels and ability.
Example content

Dashicons
Other tools

Status: Dashicons live.

Blog

A blog for publishing useful information for developers, for example information they need to know about a new release, or about changes to developer.wp.org.

#information-architecture

Mike Schinkel 5:07 pm on January 13, 2015

“In the wild” I often see people refer to themselves as “WordPress Developers” who install sites and then install and configure themes and plugins, but who do not actually write any code. So we’ve been avoiding the term “developer” and instead using the terms “WordPress Site Builders” for people who build sites and “WordPress Themers” for people who write mostly write HTML+CSS with some PHP/jQuery sprinkled in, and “WordPress Coders” for people who write PHP/MySQL/Javascript code and build plugins. Something to consider?
- Siobhan 7:48 pm on January 13, 2015
  
  That could get rather complicated when putting together an information architecture for documentation. When we’re breaking down such a large amount of data at the top level it makes sense to break it down into the broadest ways that WP is used.
  
  Besides, we already have developer.wordpress.org, and wordpress-coders.wordpress.org doesn’t work quite so well 🙂
  - Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:53 pm on January 13, 2015
    
    This.
    
    We could get really nitpicky and point out that WPCOM users are WordPress Users, but they’re user- (they can’t install plugins but they can configure them). We have to start somewhere simple if we want to have a hope of going anywhere.
Gary Jones 9:25 am on January 14, 2015

Any consideration of having the PHP (code and inline docs), JS and eventually CSS / Sass coding standards moved to developer.wordpress.org/resources? They are currently in the core handbook, but are for, and used by, plugin and theme developers too. They should be a community resource that core, as a member of the community, also try to adhere to.
- Siobhan 12:25 pm on January 14, 2015
  
  I can see the virtue in having them in both places, but obviously we don’t want to keep them in two places as we have to maintain them twice. Let me ask around and see what other people think.
  - Gary Jones 1:34 pm on January 14, 2015
    
    I’d rather see them just in the developer resources section, and a signpost left in the core handbook that expresses “Hey, core generally follows the community code standards, which you can find _here_, but core has the following differences: …”
Normalize 5:50 pm on January 14, 2015

Hi, I’m new, but I want to help. (I’m also on slack.) I’ve done a lot of tutorials for users of my own sites, so hopefully there’s a place to put that to use.

WordPress.org

Want to get involved?

Weekly Meetings

Use

Knowledgebase

Guides

Blog

Extend

Code Reference

Handbooks

Resources

Blog

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