[documentation] Hitchhikers guide to Drupal

[Mark Jordan]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 09:25:03AM -0800, Kim P. Werker wrote:
> 
> That's what we want to do with newbie documentation -- pick and  
> choose, move stuff around, scratch our heads, trim down, flesh out,  
> and all the while play with how the visual presentation and  
> navigation affect the reader's experience. Then take what we've got,  
> words and experience and all, and bring it back to drupal.org for  
> more hashing out.
> 

For a fairly daunting and vertical open source application that we support at Simon
Fraser University (Open Journal Systems), we developed an "In an Hour" guide that has
been a big hit with our users. If anyone wants to take a look, it's at
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/OJSinanHour.pdf . Of course, amongst ourselves we call it "OJS in a
Weekend". The point is, it gets users going and has dramatically decreased the amount of
post-install support we have to provide.

As a Drupal user who at first struggled with learning just enough to get going, but then
once over the hump had very few problems, I think that most people could probably do a
lot in a single hour (or two) with Drupal, provided they had a very simple guide to help 
them climb the hump.


Mark


Mark Jordan
Head of Library Systems
W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada
Phone (604) 291 5753 / Fax (604) 291 3023                 
mjordan at sfu.ca / http://www.sfu.ca/~mjordan/