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SilverStripe 2.4 User Help Up & Running
You asked for it, you got it. SilverStripe has a new version of user help which is compatible with the current 2.4 version of the CMS.
It was a big job, but we had help from many of you! We put up a beta version of the user help document and asked for your feedback while we were writing it. So first off, we'd like to thank all the people who helped us make user help better: Fred Condo, Anita Graham, Nigel Vining, Stephen Metcalfe, Marcus Dalgren, and the users going by the names of Martijn, Mike, Sunnybex, Fil, and Stefdv.
Help us help you and your users with user help
We're in the middle of re-writing our user help to be compatible with SilverStripe CMS 2.4.
Well written user help documentation helps us and other SilverStripe developers save time. Every question that customers can answer themselves using user help is a question that they don't have to ask the development team. For that reason, as we shift from 2.3 to 2.4, we'd like to get away from focusing on features and more towards explaining how to accomplish tasks - shifting from "what things are" to "how to get things done." It's a massive re-write that has us practically starting from scratch.
Calling for help in documentation
The criticism we hear most often from the developer community is that, with the exception of our books, SilverStripe needs to improve its developer documentation. And it's a fair point.
We made some decisions regarding our documentation a while back that we thought would work at the time - a best guess as to how to proceed. But these turned out to limit us in ways we simply didn't foresee.
English book available for US pre-order. Preview the cover!
Work on the English SilverStripe book is steadily progressing!
Pre-orders of the book have been possible through Amazon.uk since April. As of today you can pre-order the book in US dollars from Amazon.com, too.
English book coming August. Pre-orders open!
Our first English SilverStripe book is in progress and you can now pre-order it! We anticipate it will be published by the end of August.
One of the world's largest book publishers, Wiley, has agreed to license our 450-page German SilverStripe book (pictured) from the German publisher and translate it into English. The effort of updating and translating the book is being done by our core developers, including Ingo Schommer who co-authored the initial book.
User help updated
In recent weeks, Michael and Ngoc have updated screenshots and a lot of the content at our 100+ page CMS-user help website, http://userhelp.silverstripe.com.
This brings the material up to date for our upcoming version of SilverStripe 2.3.0, and is part of our overall efforts to continually improve our documentation.
The Trials and Tribulations of a Freelancer
<p><em>Guest blogger Ryan Wachtl is an independant US-based web developer and runs the SilverStripe user group in Madison. Prior to this, Ryan wrote about <a href="http://www.silverstripe.org/silverstripe-paypal-mini-cart-integration/">SilverStripe PayPal Mini Cart Integration</a>.<br/></em></p>Want to know more about the company that brought you SilverStripe? Then check out SilverStripe.com
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