Definitely one for the How To’ section of the Codex.

Actually I have always wanted to offer popup help on the front end for this sort of thing in a similar way to the admin help) but it has always had a low priority and you just can’t do everything! But this is the sort of information a user needs – not just the person running the forum – and it is the latter who will look in the codex – not their users.

But it’s the best platform we have got so yes – a How To sounds great.

concur.

OK, I added that to the codex FAQ page along with a example of using anchor tags for the FAQs page.

I don’t know if that is how you envision the FAQ page working so it’s just an idea and can be taken from there.

For the example I just hot-linked the images because I didn’t want to upload and then not use them. (or have to remember to delete)

http://codex.simple-press.com/codex/faq/problem-with-post-edit-buttonow-to/

Thanks Brandon

Its not how I would like to see it work. I prefer the way we did it on the old wiki. But this is something the three of us have to decide between us as this is getting real important now.

can you explain further Andy?  do you really want the slide opening stuff with different sections?  or just a topic per page?

I think, at least as initial salvo, I would like to see a single faq page (could be multiple per category) with a listing of the faq topics… clicking on the faq question would take you to an individual page for that faq and its answer…

I have never liked the questions at top and all the answers on the same page.. but that could just be me…

That’s exactly what I mean. One question per page.

I would love to see all the ‘questions’ (topics) in the menu on the right but that wont really work as we should have lots of these… so yes the best alternative is an index page.

Do we need 3 different FAQ entries in the menu? Nit sure as most of the information in the ‘general’ should probably be scattered about the rest of the codex but we DO need the other two and I like the notion of keeping them separate.

think Andy and Steve are on the same page… Brandon, any thoughts?

I think it needs to be real simple so anyone can quickly create a FAQ.

Main Faq page should lists all the FAQ sub pages. (General, How-to, Troubleshooting)

Each FAQ should have it’s own page. 

Create your FAQ and choose one of the 3 pages  we have now and create link there to the new FAQ page.

At the bottom of every FAQ page create a link to the top it’s mother FAQ page and the top FAQ page.

Then just start writing. Create a FAQ page and put it under any of the three existing ones.

Once there are several of them then look into sorting, creating more groups, slide outs or whatever else.

It needs to be easy so anyone can just go in, create a FAQ and not worry too much about where it goes or if a category is perfect or whatever.

Now off to watch Aliens & Cowboys….

Updated How-To page

http://codex.simple-press.com/codex/faq/problem-with-post-edit-buttonow-to/ with link to added new page.

http://codex.simple-press.com/codex/faq/problem-with-post-edit-buttonow-to/problem-with-post-edit-buttonow-to-upload-or-attach-files-to-a-post/

Now the How-to page is looking pretty sparse.

Thanks Brandon.

Give it time…. we need to bring across the current wiki pages that are still relevant so that will beef the list up a little.

I must admit it would be nice to be able to automate the creation of the index page in some way. i wonder if there is a plugin out there that will do this… – I’ll look into that.

a couple I have heard of and some used

http://tribulant.com/plugins/view/8/wordpress-faq-plugin

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/faq-builder/

I used an earlier version of this:

http://faq-tastic.com/faqtastic-lite-free/ (with http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ajaxify-faqtastic/)

or bunch more

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/faq

Yellow Swordfish said

I must admit it would be nice to be able to automate the creation of the index page in some way. i wonder if there is a plugin out there that will do this… – I’ll look into that.

I am thinking a page list plugin or like a sitemap generator that will build only the pages in it you want to show.

Like: http://web-profile.com.ua/wordpress/plugins/page-list/

If it works as it says, you can create a FAQ home page that shows just the pages under it using their shortcode. Then any new page would be included automatically.

Yep – that looks good. Looks like you just put the shortcode in the parent page and it does the rest. Sounds perfect.

I actually wrote a plugin for WP that does this about 4 years ago but I can’t find the code anywhere!

Do you want to install it and give it a tryout?

I don’t have the juice to install anything on the codex site and probably shouldn’t anyways.

If installed I will  be glad to test.