Help system

Events happening in the community are now at Drupal community events on www.drupal.org.
This group should probably have more organizers. See documentation on this recommendation.

This group is intended to discuss possible improvements to Drupal's Help system, and collaboratively write the documentation(as help topics) for Drupal 7. Feel free to post feature request or initiate a discussion regarding help mechanism in other web software. But the best is to contribute to the documentation task!! :) Ongoing help system issue is over there.

Introduction

The poll module can be used to create simple polls for site users. A poll is a simple, multiple choice questionnaire which displays the cumulative results of the answers to the poll. Having polls on the site is a good way to receive feedback from community members.

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Introduction

The path module allows you to specify aliases for Drupal URLs. Such aliases improve readability of URLs for your users and may help internet search engines to index your content more effectively. More than one alias may be created for a given page.

Some examples of URL aliases are:

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Introduction

The content translation module allows content to be translated into different languages. Working with the locale module (which manages enabled languages and provides translation for the site interface), the content translation module is key to creating and maintaining translated site content.

Configuring content translation and translation-enabled content types:

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Introduction

The locale module allows your Drupal site to be presented in languages other than the default English, a defining feature of multi-lingual websites. The locale module works by examining text as it is about to be displayed: when a translation of the text is available in the language to be displayed, the translation is displayed rather than the original text. When a translation is unavailable, the original text is displayed, and then stored for later review by a translator.

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Introduction

The dblog module monitors your system, capturing system events in a log to be reviewed by an authorized individual at a later time. This is useful for site administrators who want a quick overview of activities on their site. The logs also record the sequence of events, so it can be useful for debugging site errors.

The dblog log is simply a list of recorded events containing usage data, performance data, errors, warnings and operational information. Administrators should check the dblog report on a regular basis to ensure their site is working properly.

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Introduction

The contact module facilitates communication via e-mail, by allowing your site's visitors to contact one another (personal contact forms), and by providing a simple way to direct messages to a set of administrator-defined recipients (the contact page). With either form, users specify a subject, write their message, and (optionally) have a copy of their message sent to their own e-mail address.

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Introduction

The comment module allows visitors to comment on your posts, creating ad hoc discussion boards. Any content type may have its Default comment setting set to Read/Write to allow comments, or Disabled, to prevent comments. Comment display settings and other controls may also be customized for each content type (some display settings are customizable by individual users).

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Introduction

The color module allows a site administrator to quickly and easily change the color scheme of certain themes. Although not all themes support color module, both Garland (the default theme) and Minnelli were designed to take advantage of its features. By using color module with a compatible theme, you can easily change the color of links, backgrounds, text, and other theme elements. Color module requires that your file download method be set to public.

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Introduction

The book module is suited for creating structured, multi-page hypertexts such as site resource guides, manuals, and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). It permits a document to have chapters, sections, subsections, etc. Authors with suitable permissions can add pages to a collaborative book, placing them into the existing document by adding them to a table of contents menu.

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Introduction

The Blog API module allows your site's users to access and post to their blogs from external blogging clients. External blogging clients are available for a wide range of desktop operating systems, and generally provide a feature-rich graphical environment for creating and editing posts.

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Introduction

The blog module allows registered users to maintain an online journal, or blog. Blogs are made up of individual blog entries, and the blog entries are most often displayed in descending order by creation time.

There is an (optional) Blogs menu item added to the Navigation menu, which displays all blogs available on your site, and a My blog item displaying the current user's blog entries. The Blog entry menu item under Create content allows new blog entries to be created.

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Introduction

Blocks are boxes of content rendered into an area, or region, of a web page. The default theme Garland, for example, implements the regions "left sidebar", "right sidebar", "content", "header", and "footer", and a block may appear in any one of these areas. The blocks administration page provides a drag-and-drop interface for assigning a block to a region, and for controlling the order of blocks within regions.

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Arrange Blocks

  1. Go to Site Building and click Blocks
  2. In the list find the block you would like to move.
  3. Click the cross and drag the block up or down to where you would like it to go.
  4. Click Save Blocks
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Introduction

The menu module provides an interface to control and customize Drupal's powerful menu system. Menus are a hierarchical collection of links, or menu items, used to navigate a website, and are positioned and displayed using Drupal's flexible block system. By default, three menus are created during installation: Navigation, Primary links, and Secondary links. The Navigation menu contains most links necessary for working with and navigating your site, and is often displayed in either the left or right sidebar.

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Change Menu Title and Description

  1. In the navigation menu click Administer -> Site Building -> Menus
  2. Click on the menu you would like to edit
  3. At the top click on Edit menu
  4. Make your changes to the menu.
  5. Click Save
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Add a New Menu

  1. In the navigation menu click Administer -> Site Building -> Menus
  2. At the top click Add Menu
  3. Under Menu name enter the machine-readable name of this menu. This text will be used for constructing the URL of the menu overview page for this menu. This name must contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens, and must be unique.
  4. Under Title enter the title you would like the menu to have. This can contain spaces and uppercase characters.
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Add an External Link to a Menu

  1. In the navigation menu click Administer -> Site Building -> Menus
  2. Choose the menu you would like to add the external link to
  3. At the top click Add Item
  4. Under Path enter the url of the site you would like to link to.
  5. Under Menu link title enter the name that is to be shown on the menu.
  6. You may enter a description for the menu item
  7. Choose it's parent
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Arrange Menu Items

  1. In the navigation menu click Administer -> Site Building -> Menus
  2. Click on the menu you would like to change
  3. Click the cross next to the menu you would like to move and drag it to the
    location you would like to move it to. You can drag it left and right
    to either make it a sub menu of another menu or remove it from a submenu
    of another menu.
  4. Click Save Configuration
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redndahead's picture

Style Guidelines for Help System

We should start to create a style guideline for the help system. This would help to make the help files consistent in look and feel. I have started a wiki page here http://groups.drupal.org/node/17300

Hopefully we can discuss how each part should look here and lay it out on the wiki.

Edit: Wiki page removed look at the other pages posted below.

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Gurpartap Singh's picture

Interested in contributing to core documentation?

Drupal 7 will (hopefully) see the introduction of a new and completely overhauled help system (read: starting from scratch).
However, this mean that all documentation must be re-written.

This is not a job for one person! We need everyone to pitch in and help (no pun intended). If everyone can write two (2) pages, then we'll be very well off.

The kind people at the Help System group on groups.drupal.org have assembled a workflow for you to take part in. Here's how to write a help page for a module:

  1. Log in here. If you don't already have an account, you can log in with YOUR_DRUPAL.ORG_USERNAME@drupal.org as your usename and your drupal.org password as your password
  2. Navigate your browser here to start your new wiki page.
  3. Choose "Drupal Documentation Task" for the "Group categories" vocabulary; and
  4. Choose the name of the module for which you are writing documentation for the "Help topic module" vocabulary.
  5. Fill in the title and the body to those that you wish to appear on your help page
  6. Be sure to adhere to the guidelines

If everyone can do two (2) of these, we'll have all the help pages in core done in a matter of days. And guess who it starts with? You!

If you would like to edit an existing page, simply go to the Help System group, find the page along the left, click on it, and click the edit tab.

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