'Getting started' user guide

@Goob I could set up a "John Doe" account on my localhost if you'd like. :)

@seantilleycommunit that would be really helpful. But thinking about it it might be best to decide what graphics we actually need to save you some work. It may be that we don't need as many graphics as there are on Diasporial. Let's discuss.

I'll try to get at least the first couple of parts up by this evening so you can have a look and see what you think.

I've placed Part I in this PiratePad document. I'll add to it over the next 24 hours.

Please, anyone who wants to help, read it and either suggest additions, corrections, and changes, or make your own changes to the PiratePad document.

(I notice it has added multiple spaces between some words when I pasted it in there, I think we'll just have to ignore those as removing them all will be a lot of work. I'll remove them all when we're finished editing.)

Thanks in advance for your help.

OK, I've finished the document, and the complete draft is on PiratePad. Please have a look at it and make your edits or make suggestions to me on this discussion.

One thing where there is potential confusion is that the term 'sharing' is used both for making connections (ie adding someone to your aspects) and for publishing content. Can you think of a good way to avoid any confusion over this?

Another question is: are there areas which are covered in too much detail in this getting started guide? If so, I could cut those down to make them more simple and place the more detailed information in a separate tutorial.

start sharing == adding to an aspect. You can put that if you want.

I've placed some mock-ups here with some draft images in place. See what you think, and let me know if any of it is not likely to be clear to a novice user, or if you spot any errors.

OK made some edits to the piratepad doc - mainly correcting some spelling stuff, some sentences I rewrote.

Excellent work except I have one issue maybe - it's just too long. A normal user will not read it. They might read the first section - but I'd bet only the most patient users will ever read the whole document. I think the point of a Getting Started guide is to be very, very brief, not going into details. A user manual goes into details and I think this is excellent work towards a proper user manual that is missing from Diaspora. However, this is not a getting started guide we should point users to when they sign up. We should have something very short - maybe even a video, explaining just a few core functionalities in brief and then telling them to find more details in the manual if they are interested.

I got almost to section 3 - will try to continue tomorrow :)

Thanks a lot, Jay. That's really useful feedback. I did wonder about how long it was getting... and I think you're right. It's probably worth editing/correcting what I've done, and then trying to extract the minimum information needed to get someone started, and the rest in a more detailed user manual which can be referred to later.

And it may be that my style is a little verbose...

Yeah man you could easily write a book ;) I tend to be verbose too especially with work emails which sometimes makes people not read them at all. But I like details :)

I think could we maybe push this to the site if no one objects and then continue correcting it there, via Github I suppose? I don't think there is a need to keep it in a piratepad draft forever - any mistakes will be fixed as time goes on and all documents start to accumulate mistakes from the time they are released, especially Diaspora changing all the time.

The actual short guide can then be picked out of the full version - maybe using something nifty like a HTML5 presentation or something? Image + text blocks of each feature, max 5 pages etc...

I've already put the text into some mock-ups using the project site CSS on my web space - see this link.

I'll need to transcribe them into the Ruby version of html that the project site uses first. Could certainly do with some help with that, so once I've done the donkey work and got drafts on Github, I'll ask for some help with them.

Goob, this looks great! Well done!

It probably wouldn't take very much at all to get these new pages put in to the current site; if you need any help doing so, I'd be happy to assist.

Jay, thanks for your really useful comments and edits. I've added your edits and cut down the first three parts, which are now on my web space, and the PiratePad doc if you want to edit further.

Sean, thanks a lot. I'll try to do as much of this as possible, as I know you've got a lot on your plate, but I could do with help with:

1. updating some images,
2. instructing me how to be able to test the Ruby version of the site on my home test server so I can check my changes are correct before uploading them to Github, and
3. checking through the files I commit once I've finished, then merging them and getting them live, hopefully before the anniversary.

I'll email you about these tomorrow. Thanks again.

Guys, just to let you know that we are currently working on "Le guide du parfait débutant" (The guide of the perfect newbie) so you can inspiring yourself / take the screenshots, even if it's in french.

I'm working through the tutorials pages, getting them ready for the new site.

One thing which would really help me is if someone would volunteer to look through the 'tips and tricks' page and the 'other documentation' page, both of which are very out of date.

These are taken straight from Diasporial. I've just added the User Data Manifesto to the other docs page - someone mentioned it in the jd.com crisis discussion and it looks really good - but apart from that it's two-year old information.

If you could think of a few nifty tricks and tips for using Diaspora which are relevant to Diaspora now, and write a short bit about each of them, and check all the resources listed on the other docs page, weed out all the dead ones and add as many current ones as possible, that would be a huge help.

http://diaspora.goob.me.uk/tips.html
http://diaspora.goob.me.uk/other-docs.html

Thanks in advance.

Everyone, I've pretty much completed my work on the tutorials pages.

What remains to be done is two very out-of-date pages.

One is a page of 'tips and tricks'; the other is a page of links to other sites.

1. http://diaspora.goob.me.uk/other-docs.html
   Particularly in the case of the latter, I'd like to get up-to-date links on it, so any good links you know about Diaspora, how to use it, technical information, sites which offer support or help, and so on. Please let me know.

2. http://diaspora.goob.me.uk/tips.html
   Any if any tips for using Diaspora come to your mind, please also let me know. I'm struggling to think of any good ones at the moment.

Tutorials files now on Github - PR here.

If anyone would like to improve the 'tips and tricks' page and the 'other documentation' page, links to the issues are here and here.

Okay, now that the new awesome guides by @goob are online, should we redirect all requests to diasporial.com to diasporafoundation.org/tutorials?

maybe we can leave a "moved" page there for like a month or so, and then after that just redirect ...?