Processwire site owner's guide?

[PhotoWebMax]

I think I am graduating from a total PW newbie to some murky status that would announce "I know just enough to be dangerous..."

I currently have four PW sites under development. Things are going well for the most part. The more I spend with the system the more I like it.

Anyways, to the topic at hand. Have any of you produced a guide for your clients on how to manage their Processwire sites? Not looking for a site building guide or how to develop stuff in Processwire, rather just some clear explanation/tutorial/guide for site owners on how the admin works, how to edit page content, how to use the CKEditor, working with images, etc, etc.

Of course each developer's sites are going to be different. But I bet the majority of this information would be common to most Processwire sites. Any video screencasts on this topic? Love to see what others have produced.

If this is an area that is lacking for the Processwire community then I would gladly contribute to any combined effort here. I am far from a Processwire expert but there might be value in a guy like me who has writing experience. Sort of like taking well intended "geek speak" and helping to translate it into plain english that new site owners would appreciate...

Thanks,

Max

[Joss]

I tend to do something different each time. But i use Soma's notes module to write halp for each template. That keeps it in context

[PhotoWebMax]

I will have to check out that module...

One of the things I have done recently (with a client) is introduce some of the PW and content editing concepts during the email exchange that happens naturally during the site construction process. This is even before they have even seen the PW admin backend.

One curve ball I received recently is that the person who will be managing one of these sites has changed. The new person has almost no experience with CMS platforms. Communication then becomes "interesting". You don't want to assume too much or too little.

I think I will create my own "how to guide" that is focused on this particular site. I am sure any efforts in creating this content can be reused and improved over time. I can post my efforts at the appropriate time if anyone is interested. Showing this to the forum might be beneficial in several ways. It would be interesting to see what folks are thinking in this "here are the keys to your new site" arena...

[Macrura]

this is always the hardest part of delivering a site...

people will not want to look dumb and consequently will gloss over things they don't understand (and maybe complain later when they get stuck...)

to prevent possible issues and allay confusion, I try and provide tons of inline help, and i sometime use the (joss mentioned) help tab module;

I've now become accustomed to fairly verbose descriptions on all fields, and users do tend to notice/read those before inputting/selecting/checking stuff..

Another recent development that was discussed here is about showing additional description for things like selects, using an added data-description field on the select page:

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/419-extending-inputfields/?p=76861

Delivering PW sites always feels better than on any other CMS, because at least you have really good control over things and you can make it relatively hard for the site to break.. contrast this will WP.. just worked on a site where the owner broke the homepage in 1 day (can't even remember what they did...)

[PhotoWebMax]

Well, one of the main things that attracted me to Processwire in the first place was how to sell the backend admin to clients. I have explored several CMS platforms over the years but I have always focused on how smooth and workable the system would be for the end site owners. PW delivers in this regard...

[totoff]

Anyways, to the topic at hand. Have any of you produced a guide for your clients on how to manage their Processwire sites?

Yes, I do this every time I deliver a new site. I record a few very short screen casts explaining how to accomplish specific tasks. I publish it via Google Sites and keep it online for their reference "forever". Thus, I don't have to do time consuming trainings and they can repeat as often as they want.

Unfortunately all this tutorials are confidential as they refer to the clients admin, can't show it here.

[Joss]

Ha! I used to use Google Site too! Great resource for anything like that. For a game I had a little bit of involvement with I used it all the time for tech documentation and discussion with the developers.