I've made a few posts here in the Documentation group on groups.drupal.org over the past few years about the Help Topics experimental module. Today, I have a very brief update on the project, and a call for help in editing/reviewing the topics for the new Help Topics system!
Status update: The Help Topics module has achieved "Beta test" status, which means that when you download Drupal 8.x or 9.x, the module is included in the "Experimental" section. We are working towards getting it to "Stable" status, so that it can move out of the Experimental section; the plan is to merge it into the existing core Help module, so that people installing Drupal with the Standard profile will get the new Help Topics by default.
Call for help: One of the things we need to do to get Help Topics to Stable status is to finish writing help topics covering all of the Drupal core modules. We are well on our way to having that done... The main need right now is for people to review the topics that have been written. Here are the steps:
- You need to be logged in to drupal.org, and I recommend using a desktop or laptop sized browser. You'll need some knowledge of how to use the Drupal administrative interface, as these instructions are not too detailed. Also this doesn't go into much detail about how to use issues in the Drupal project. But you don't need to know any programming! We're looking for review of the text of the topics here.
- Go to the "Meta" issue that lists all of the issues about writing new help topics:
https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3041924 - Look in the issue summary at the top of the page, in the section called "Modules and groups of modules to be converted", for an issue whose status is Needs Review (yellow background). [Other issues in that section have status Needs Work (red background), meaning they are not yet ready for review, or Reviewed and Tested by the Community (light green background), meaning that they have already been reviewed.]
- Click the link to open the issue. If the status of the issue (shown in the right sidebar) is not actually Needs Review, return to the previous step and find a different issue (the issue summary is not always up-to-the-minute updated on issue status for the child issues).
- Locate the latest "patch" file on the issue, which should be shown at the bottom of the issue summary, just before the Comments section starts. Copy the link to the patch file into your clipboard.
- In a new browser tab or window, go to https://simplytest.me/ and create a new Drupal testing site with the following parameters:
- Project name -- Drupal core
- Version -- 8.9 or 9.0 branch (branches are listed at the bottom of the version list)
- Advanced options > Add a patch -- paste in the link to the patch file from your clipboard - Once those parameters are set, click "Launch sandbox" and wait for the site to be created.
- Log in to the site with user name "admin" and password "admin" (which is standard for simplytest.me sites).
- Go to admin/modules and turn on the experimental Help Topics module, plus all of the modules for the help topics issue you are reviewing (they should be listed in the issue title by short name).
- Go to admin/help and review the topics. There are instructions in the issue summary about what to look for in the review (under Remaining Tasks in the issue summary). To figure out what topics are being created or modified in the issue, click the link for the patch file and look for lines that look like this:
+++ b/core/modules/help_topics/help_topics/breakpoint.overview.html.twig
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+label: 'Managing height, width, and resolution breakpoints'
That means that if you go to
admin/help/topic/breakpoint.overview
in your test site, you should see the topic. - When you are finished reviewing all of the topics in the patch file, add a comment to the issue about what you found in your review. If you found problems, set the issue status to Needs Work. If it all looked good, set it to Reviewed and Tested by the Community.
Thanks!!