looks good Stephen, will be interesting to see how that develops !
for plugins, a list of wordpress plugins by what they do rather than what they’re called would be useful, which I’d be happy to work on. At the moment you have to want something and then articulate this in a search. Most newcomers don’t realise what they can do with a few plugins, and a simple list would be great to stimulate the mind.
We actually pull the list of plugins using the WordPress plugin API, the good thing is that the plugin API is getting some updates this week so we should be able to include some of those enhancements into our plugin list https://bbpress.org/plugins
The following pages have just had significant updates which should help those of you looking to find areas of interest to get involved with contributing to the bbPress open source project.
Participate & Contribute
Codex Standards & Guidelines
And don’t forget our IRC channels #bbpress and #bbpress-dev, swing by and say Hi 🙂
Personally I find it lacking in UX and I find it hard to navigate to find the topics I need. I also find that the information is often lacking, which is discouraging 🙁
I sense that there are more developers than UX people around here, am I right? 😉
I sense that there are more developers than UX people around here, am I right?
I suspect you are. There are probably less than a dozen ‘helpers’ who come on here to help others, and probably only 1/2 dozen regulars. I am not a bbPress developer, but have written several plugins for it, and enjoy the challenge of answering others’ Q’s.
Most bbpress users want it as a tool, so only visit the site when they have an issue or want it to do something. Once fixed they are happy and don’t revisit, and are highly unlikely to contribute to improving documentation.
The codex is a community project, and anyone can go in and help improve it. Amongst many others I have tried to make it more UX (user experience – I had to look it up !), but I have limited time, and lots of other commitments.
If you could outline a more useful structure I’d be all for it.
I agree with and echo Robin’s sentiments above.
The plan is to update, including breaking up many of the current docs to separate sections based more along the lines of a “Table of Contents” similar to how BuddyPress have done in recent months.
You can see BuddyPress’ planned “Table of Contents” linked from https://codex.buddypress.org/ on Google Docs here.
So the plan will be for bbPress to go down a similar road as BuddyPress and WordPress with their upcoming handbooks (e.g. plugins, themes).
Again this is all a time thing and as always, contributions are always most welcome 🙂
@robin-w I know the feeling. It’s been that way for me as well and mostly it just get frustrated when I try to find answers or try to figure things out, like why do the forums and the forum index not behave the same and what do I need to do. So I just toss BBPress in the trash and get frustrated.
Documentation is always a problem and it’s not easy keeping it alive, or find the time to update it during development cycles. I know as it’s the same in any project and that is why most companies include it in the tasks as part of its progress.
I know that BBPress work with Trac, which is a system I personally find horribly lacking compared to systems such as Jira and Confluence. The fact that I have to spend time to actually find the link to it or any information on how to get involved in BBPress is a sign of the problem I Think BBPress is suffering from: It’s just not approachable or easily understod because it’s lacking UX and structure from a user perspective.
Just the fact that this site does not have breadcrumbs so I can navigate or see where in the page structure I am make my blood boil to be honest…especially in the forums.
Fortunately there are progress happening and I think everyone is doing their best, so I am sure we can improve together 🙂
Breadcrumbs are now implemented in the docs, both breadcrumbs and in page navigation, this will be added to all the docs as each is updated 😉
e.g. https://codex.bbpress.org/participate-and-contribute/
From a technical perspective bbPress is highly admired and often receives kudo’s for the actual code documentation so we are part way there. 🙂
I haven’t used many systems but Trac did indeed take a while to wrap my head around.
One of the benefits of being a ‘sister project’ of WordPress is we follow and adhere to many of the same principles as WordPress in both code and the tools we use so much of what is listed in the WordPress Core handbook is identical to bbPress so resources such as there handbook are also relevant to bbPress, we just need to link and/or copy/paste this content for our own purposes.
https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/
Of what I have seen BBPress is a tight ship when it comes to code quality and extensibility, so I have no doubt that the code is outstanding in every way. That is also one of the reasons I think it’s a shame not more people are using BBPress.
I understand the reasons behind using Trac and trust me I have been in the same situation many times 🙂 I do think it’s important not to accept a standard because its a standard, especially not one that could be improved upon. I know that it’s difficult to push for a change in WordPress, but if the tools don’t improve the workflow and encourage participation, then it should be replaced in my opinion.
Still, it’s not my call but I know some very skilled people that are discouraged from helping out with WordPress because of the lacking tools and the feeling of being back on early 2000 when they see meetings taking place on IRC 🙂
I really hope that you back up all your ideas with some actions, and that you’re not all talk.
Speaking of IRC #bbPress on Freenode 😉 Details here: https://codex.bbpress.org/participate-and-contribute/, that said I see where you are coming from though I am one who thinks this is a good thing, being able to ‘chat’ with developers is a very good thing, everything is logged for openness and transparency and everything is backed by tickets and tracing in Trac.
Onto participation, bbPress will has a presence on GitHub https://github.com/bbpress and very shortly we will have our code base synchronized there and how we utilize GitHub for participation will be no doubt an evolving thing, first we’ll get the code sync’d and then look to see how that goes and go from there.
@robin-w I will happily assist with graphic design, UX and frontend code when time permits. Not sure what you need though, but I could start with making some design suggestion for BBPress itself and something about the documentation to make it more accessible?
I also have some suggestions for the website itself if that would be of interest, but I need to understand more about the BG’s you have first and also familiarize myself better with both the websites structure and the WordPress “way” before I want to attempt that. No need to make a flashy design if it does not improve anything or goes against the standard process. Worse yet if it does not focus on your business goals and make a mess of things 🙂
@netweb I look forward to your arrival on Github. I think it’s a nice move 🙂
I am all for communication between developers, in fact I would say its a requirement for managing a development project like this with developers all over the world. I would not use IRC though, I would use something like HipChat (especially integrated in Jira and confluence so I get SVN information, ticket escalation and new documentation notices among other things). HipChat is free and it’s extendable with WordPress, Twitter, Github and more.
As to the details of a project for what UI/UX changes are install for bbPress we will continue to flesh these out and post something when we think we have both the goals of these projects and resource and requirements to help contribute ready to go at the same time.
Much of all this is core to the feedback we received from the survey and just a bit more time for us to get our ducks in a row is in order to get these up and running, but they are important to get up and running 🙂
I haven’t looked at HipChat except for a quick glance now and maybe this is something WordPress may look at in the future.
It’s been a while since one of ‘these’ conversations has occurred here on bbPress.org so it’s been fun and I do look forward to hoping we can find an area that you’d be willing to donate some of your time to help out the project. 🙂
