Invite to WordPress Book Jog

We invite you to join us on a book jog to update the WordPress manual hosted on en.flossmanuals.net – The existing one is here – http://en.flossmanuals.net/wordpress/

What is a Book Jog? It builds on the concept of Book Sprint but downgrades the concept somewhat (sorry about that). While a book sprint normally has a real life meet up at its core and has a solid time frame of anything from 2-5 days typically, a book jog  takes place over a longer time frame and may not have a real life meeting at its core.
For this manual there is no real meet up, we are all geographically disparate. We aim to complete it in 10 days from the 12-22nd of August 2011

We want to build on the great documentation that already exists to create a manual on flossmanuals for the following reasons:

Creating a concise introduction to WordPress

Some might say that there is already too much existing documentation on WordPress, in numerous locations. This manual will be a digest of the most vital aspects of WordPress for those creating a WordPress site. We feel that there is definitely a place for specialized manuals. This manual is aimed at audiences who are;

• new to using WordPress
• want to improve the look of their blog and learn more about design in WordPresss
• wish to extend WordPress to make it the basis for an online community

Using an Open and Flexible Documentation Platform

Unlike many manuals, Flossmanuals are written with a totally open, do-what-you-want-to-it license. This gives writers the freedom to improve and update the manuals as new software versions are released. Manuals are written collaboratively inviting alterations and improvements from readers and users. The most up-to date-version of the manual is available in several formats, including printed book, epub, html, and open office.

Working towards a book is a great focus for a documentation project.

Helping to fostering Independent Online Communities

We want to share our enthusiasm for WordPress as a great tool for sharing information, publishing all kinds of media and helping to build non-corporate online communities.

We believe that good training and follow up support is key to maximizing the involvement of people in on-line communities. With the ability to output the manual as a word document anyone can print various chapters off as supporting handouts. You can also direct your site users to specific chapters of the book online, where they will learn the tools, and perhaps encourage others.

Promoting the Open Web

Flossmanuals has a track record of supporting projects which embrace collaboration and the open web. We think that the web is best when it is open source and using open standards and decentralised. We believe that independently hosted websites and communities a key part of keeping the web open. The WordPress system is perfectly suited to this because it is intuitive to use, easy to install and keep updated and is free software.

For more information on these aspects see the following book – An Open Web
http://en.flossmanuals.net/an-open-web/

Supporting this manual

In the past this manuals been used and supported by the following groups and organisations, tactical tech, transmission video network, people’s voice media, aktivix and hacktionlab. They have supported the manual by contributing and some by paying for transport and documentation meetings.

You can support this version of the manual by giving your time to help us write it, check it, and promote it.

You can do this by joining us in irc – #booksprint of #flossmanuals in irc.freenode.net, saying hi an seeing what you can do to help.

Then to contribute you can go here – http://booki.flossmanuals.net/wordpress/_edit/ – You will need to log in or create an account.

See you there!