Create pathways to find documentation

[yorkshire-pudding]

In the Documentation meeting held on 2025-03-06 at 2000 UTC we discussed the need to have pathways from the home page to help people find the information they are looking for.

We looked at the CiviCRM Documentation site as one example.

We looked at both the idea of personas and task based documentation.

• Setting up a new site
  • Setting up a brand new site without migration
  • Upgrading from Drupal 7
  • Upgrading from WordPress, or other CMS systems
• Administering your site
  • Core setup
  • Functional groups of contrib modules
• Developers guide
  • Themes
  • Layout Templates
  • Modules
    • Porting module from Drupal 7
    • Creating new modules
  • Core development
• Contributing
  • to Documentation
  • to Core issues
  • to Contrib issues

Mockup to come

[yorkshire-pudding]

Here are some first thoughts on how the pathways could work

[elisseck]

Thank you! I think the list looks good and I love the blocks.

What do you think about using a different word on the "Contribute" block like "Collaborate" or "Get Involved"? It could just be me, but I think "contribute" with the heart hand just reads "Donate monetarily to Backdrop". That's all well and good and there could even be a link to donate in there but I'd want to make sure that the documentation on how to get involved in the community isn't hidden behind that notion.

[yorkshire-pudding]

What do you think about using a different word on the "Contribute" block like "Collaborate" or "Get Involved"? It could just be me, but I think "contribute" with the heart hand just reads "Donate monetarily to Backdrop". That's all well and good and there could even be a link to donate in there but I'd want to make sure that the documentation on how to get involved in the community isn't hidden behind that notion.

That's a good point. I'm not precious about the icons (I was doing a quick mockup in Balsamiq and that seemed ok out of their list) or the text. In the context of the question, I think your suggestion of "Get Involved" works best. Here is an alternative with a different icon

[yorkshire-pudding]

I've noticed we do use "Contribute" on https://backdropcms.org/contribute

That includes donations, code, documentation and design, though I think on this site we only want to cover contributing to documentation, core, and contrib so "get involved" is probably more precise. I don't have any ideas for better icons but I'm sure someone else will.

[indigoxela]

I love the idea of pathways / personas and task based documentation! 😍 Prominently put somewhere on the start page of our docs site. 👍

[izmeez]

This is looking great. Is there an icon with maybe two hands for the Get involved block. The single hand looks like a stop signal.

[yorkshire-pudding]

This is looking great. Is there an icon with maybe two hands for the Get involved block. The single hand looks like a stop signal.

Happy to consider any icon suggestions. @izmeez - please could you perhaps post a screenshot or attach an icon image of your suggestion. This is what I see in the Icon Browser for search for 'hand' (from core and Font Awesome)

[izmeez]

@yorkshire-pudding Very helpful image, thanks. I like hands-fill icon.

[yorkshire-pudding]

Thanks @izmeez - this looks better than what I had.

[stpaultim]

Sorry for not noticing all this work earlier. This is all looking really great. Thanks!

I think we need a dev environment where we can start testing this out and experimenting with how to organize the left menus.