Question Administration manual?

Hello,

I have just installed Kunema 1.6.3 this morning, all seems work. Now I want to learn how to administrate the forum and the meaning of all of that options.
So I'have started searching for the "official" manual, but... where is it??? :dry:

Yes, in the Kunema Wiki there is the FAQ section, but it covers only a small part of the settings available through the Kunema Control Panel in the backend...

There is no PDF official guide or something like that? :blush:

(I have a small reminescence when I have createad a forum with SMF three years ago, but Kunena is different... )

Hello,

The only doc available is here : docs.kunena.org/ and the forums too :)

Yes, we've written a few dozen pages in the Wiki but when one spends several hours every day answering 50 questions or more it's hard to make time to write Wiki articles. Also, when I started to write about the Kunena Control Panel options we were using K 1.5 ... and then K 1.6 was released and everything I'd written changed. So, you see, it's difficult to keep the Wiki up-to-date when the design of the product that you're writing about is changing, too.

That's why I would like other people to help in this job instead of leaving most of the work to the developers and the moderators. If more people were willing to give their time to writing articles for the Wiki we would have this "administration manual" written in no time. Unfortunately everyone seems to have the convenient excuse that (a) they do not have the time or (b) they do not have the know-how.

xillibit wrote: The only doc available is here : docs.kunena.org/ and the forums too :)

oh... only that?
Ok, I will do my best to understad all of the functionalities of Kunena collecting infos from the wiki and the forum...
I hope that in future a pdf manual will be available... all of the people that has never administrated a forum will be happy of this.

Anyway, I like Kunena! :woohoo:

sozzled wrote: Yes, we've written a few dozen pages in the Wiki but when one spends several hours every day answering 50 questions or more it's hard to make time to write Wiki articles. Also, when I started to write about the Kunena Control Panel options we were using K 1.5 ... and then K 1.6 was released and everything I'd written changed. So, you see, it's difficult to keep the Wiki up-to-date when the design of the product that you're writing about is changing, too.

Yes, I understand your point. Absolutely.
About kunena upgrades... well it is a "natural" process for every kind of software.
May I try to change your point of view? May I? Ok, here I go.
Maybe, if an online manual would be available, you could greatlyreduce the number of question received every day. Maybe the number could be reduce from 50 to 10 or less, this 'casue users could find their ansers in the manual itself. So, spending time on the manual will save you much time in future. Again, maybe, the most part of your anser will be changed in something like "check the manual page here http:blablabla". More easy for you too!
What you think about it?

sozzled wrote: That's why I would like other people to help in this job instead of leaving most of the work to the developers and the moderators. If more people were willing to give their time to writing articles for the Wiki we would have this "administration manual" written in no time. Unfortunately everyone seems to have the convenient excuse that (a) they do not have the time or (b) they do not have the know-how.

eheheheh... I fall in the [a] category :lol:
If you read above, maybe you cold do something for the process of the "autocompletation" of the manual could start. I mean... I see no section called "K 1.6 manual" in the wiki. And there is no evidence on how people could collaborate. My idea is what follows: why you don't prepare a "skeleton", of a basic three-structure of the manual and put it online on the wiki? More than this, you should enable users to contribute by filling every one a specific part of the manual. I'm thinking to the mechanism used in wikipedia, where everyone can contribute. I don't know the technical details about it, but... it would be possible to build something like that?
In my mind I have a manual structure recalling what you see on the left side of the screen when you enter in the "kunena control panel":
1. Forum configuration
2. Category manager
.
.
.
.
.
x. Report Configuration settings

Finally, I would list something like:

x+1. How-to
x+2. Problems and solutions

What you think? I'm.... just dreaming? :lol:

As I said earlier, people are unable to help in the documentation task either because (a) they do not have the time or (b) they do not have the know-how. That's just the way things go. No-one needs to convince me that we could reduce the number of questions asked if all possible questions could be summarised, analysed, diagnosed and dealt with in a comprehensive one-size-fits-all packaged solution.

Let me give you an example of what I mean: [Merged topic]The great Mootools/Javascript conflict discussion . This problem is basically not really caused by Kunena. Even though the same problem-solution strategy was repeated over and over again, this topic grew to nearly 1000 messages. Eventually we agreed that we needed a new Wiki approach and I think we took about three days off-line, away from answering questions, to write Common causes of Mootools (Javascript library) issues and Kunena . That was three whole days where I did not answer any questions on the forum at all! And this also included one even more valuable day of a developer's time to assist me in the task.

But, even though we have this important article written in the Wiki, and this article is referred to in the K1.6 Technical Requirements , the K 1.6 Installation Guide and the K 1.6 Upgrade Guide , this still has not stopped people who do not look for the information in the Wiki. After we spent days of time working on this one issues (and, as I wrote earlier, the issue is not even caused by Kunena) the number of questions about the problem did go down. See what I mean by looking at If you are having problems with K 1.6, please read this first .

So, you do not have to convince us of the benefits of writing such documentation.

Writing documentation is not a very rewarding job and it's a job that no-one pays you for and even fewer people actually thank you for it. Writing documentation takes time - time that other people will not appreciate because you are not there to help with testing, answering their questions on the forum, running your business or spending time with the family.

If more people were prepared to put some effort into the job we would not have these problems with managing our time and balancing our lives. Until more people are prepared to put into this activity (people could, for example, donate money so that we could employ a team of professional writers to do the work) this "administration manual" will have to develop at its own slow pace.