Hi there!
I am new to PHP and I am sure I am not alone. Most plug-ins come with extremely little instructions and most of what is there is written for those that know exactly what they are doing. And more often than not a person gets reffered to some other site for support where a person has to register before they can even ask a question. It's hard to keep track of all those sites. I already have membership in about 200 sites that are really important. Anyways what I am suggesting is that developers think in terms of regular users and write the instructions accordingly. Please.
better instructions for plug-ins
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detoam
InactivePosted: 9 years ago # -
teambiff
MemberNice plea but you get what you pay for with open source stuff. The WP forums would probably help you best.
Posted: 9 years ago # -
Justin Tadlock
WordPress GodPart of maintaining your own blog means, especially with open source software, learning a little about how things work. Sure, better instructions would be great, but that's not always going to happen.
Voting down because I believe this isn't really something for the Ideas forum.
Posted: 9 years ago # -
InactiveFirstly Open source does not mean free things. open source simply means that the software isn't encoded.
Secondly as a crator of free to use software I take pride in knowing that people who use my work have a full understanding of how they can use it.
I don't mean to flame on your parade, but the attitude that creating free to use software means that one can do a shotty work is extremely wrong. part of creating something that is free to use is trying to make it so people who have little knoweledge can fully understand. Therefore it is an idea. An idea to improve a great product. As the statement "Code is poetry" states. Poetry is for everyone and therefore should be simple enough for a fresh person to be understood. Just like the works of E.A.Poe.Posted: 9 years ago # -
WordPress GodTherefore it is an idea.
Yes, it's an idea; I never said it wasn't. I only proposed that it wasn't a good idea for the ideas forum.
From the front page of the Extend section of this site:
http://wordpress.org/extend/WordPress Ideas
Our ideas forum is where you can suggest and vote on ideas for where WordPress should go next. We're implementing the most popular features from the suggested ideas. The future is in your hands.
This has also been pretty much extended to ideas for new plugins. I suspect most plugin authors don't read this. The WordPress development team has no control over how well instructions are written.
...but the attitude that creating free to use software means that one can do a shotty work is extremely wrong.
Agreed. Sometimes, people make crappy things in both the free and paid software world.
The ideas forum isn't going to change how plugin authors post instructions. If it's too hard for a beginner to figure out with the instructions given, then it might not be worth using.
Posted: 9 years ago # -
InactiveThank you. I think You are right that if it is too hard to understand how to use something it isn't worth using. Sadly I am one of those people who just can't stand not knowing how things work.
Posted: 9 years ago # -
danielwalters6
MemberHi - fairly new to PHP and all this - however with a very limited Visual Basic knowledge (ie what's going on in an IF statement) I've managed to work out what's happening throughout most of the plugins that I've created.
I don't think instructions are the key to solving this issue, I believe COMMENTS is what are required more in the source code - Instructions to install are brilliant, instructiosn on where to get more help is also great. - No one can provide you with instructions on how to expand on a plugin - or the mod would have already been made!
PHP Comments are required - infact 50% of my programs I build are comments!!!
Posted: 9 years ago #
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