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Projects on the Codex work in tandem with discussions on the wp-docs mailing list and the IRC #wordpress-docs channel.
The tasks are generally grouped into three areas:
Before becoming a member of the dedicated group of volunteer contributors to the WordPress Codex, we recommend that you review the following:
Also, the Codex hosts many pages dedicated to other activities with WordPress. To get involved in other ways, see Contributing to WordPress.
If you would like to contribute to the Codex and WordPress Community with your editing skills, check the Needs Editing page for a list of pages on the Codex which require review and editing. Some of the editing may be minor, while other editing may require more familiarity with WordPress features and coding. Typically, the editing required involves:
If there is a question about the material you are editing or checking, post the question in the Discussion area of the article so that others can help you make a decision about the material in question. Also, check in the Discussion area of the article to see if there has been activity about the issue you wish to edit.
When a page needs revising, typically there will be a note at the top or bottom of the page that states "Needs Revision", updating, expansion, or merging with another document. Revising and adding material to such documents is encouraged by those with famililarity on the subject matter, not just those with editing skills.
Contributions to the WordPress Codex are constantly being sought as we expand the information and resources related to the use of WordPress. As a general guide, contributions to the WordPress Codex should be:
The following are different sections within the Codex and a list of tasks needing work or activity.
There are a variety of things that need to be done on the WordPress Codex. If you would like to help with these general tasks, please sign up by adding four tildes ~ as your signature, which will create a link to your user page.
Difficulty Level: EASY
There are two places in the Codex to find information about themes:
Someone needs to go through these two pages, rewrite/edit to make a decent overview that points to Theme Viewer.
This page should include at a minimum:
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Difficulty Level: EASY
There is a lot of terminology missing from the Glossary page, some of which can be found on the Glossary Discussion Page, as well as other commonly used words/terms, especially those that are unique to WordPress.
The Codex needs someone to update and maintain the glossary page by adding and defining words according to the established format which ensures that each definition within the glossary has a named anchor point allowing article writers to provide links to specific words/terms.
For instance:
This is an ongoing volunteer position, and would require a time commitment of one or two hours every week.
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1. MadLid 20:50, 1 Sept 2007 (UTC)
2. Bsulliv3 04:25, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Difficulty Level: EASY
The MediaWiki software has a built-in function that checks for missed spellings and creates a category of articles with the most common misspellings at Missed Spellings.
While it also catches articles that feature foriegn languages, which can be ignored, and the raw text of the weekly WordPress Meetings. (Well, some of those people never learned to spell ;-) so these can be ignored), it has caught some in English that need to be checked.
Volunteer spelling inspectors are needed for this ongoing task.
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1. Converting2wp 18:23, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
2. HEngel 19:18, 15 Dec 2007 (UTC)
3. Bsulliv3 04:23, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE - Mediawiki Familiarity Required
There are known validation problems with the Codex in the sidebar and with the ads, but validation errors are found on many pages throughout the Codex and need to be fixed. If you have some familiarity with Mediawiki, but little experience with WordPress, this is an ideal contribution you can make to the WordPress Community by validating the Codex articles.
The most common error comes from lists. There must be a blank line before and after each list (not list item) in order for Mediawiki to generate a clean UL or OL list. Other common validation errors come from a lack of a closing tag when using bold or italic markup.
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Difficulty Level: EASY - Familiarity with the Codex Necesssary
This is work that will help you learn more about editing and using the WordPress Codex, but it requires no special skills. We need to have any references to the Administration Panels in articles and documentation linked to the Administration Panels page such as in this example: Administration > Manage > Posts
The technique means finding the Panel Titles and putting them into a link to that page or it's subcontents. Below is an example of what this actually looks like when viewed in the editing screen. To get the link to the subsection of the page, view the page and right click on the link from the table of contents or (in this example) from within the pink boxes listing the various sections of the Administration Panels, and copy the shortcut or link location. Paste it in the appropriate place and remove the http://codex.wordpress.org/ part of the link.
[[Administration Panels|Administration]] > [[Administration_Panels#Manage_-_Change_your_content|Manage]] > [[Administration_Panels#Posts|Posts]]
Here is another example.
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1. NerdStarGamer 16:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
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Coordinator(s): Carthik
This area of the Codex includes information on how to get started with WordPress from checking program requirements, installation, upgrading, and the first steps a user may take with WordPress.
Coordinator(s):
Difficulty Level: EXPERT
The article Integrating_Wordpress_with_Your_Website is not an "article" but links to external sites with information. This needs to be written up as an article, including these links at the bottom for "more resources".
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1. Moshu
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
A task-based article on how to upload files to WordPress is needed. It should include various file types as well as methods of transfer.
A good place to start would be the Using Image and File Attachments page. Information relating to uploading images and files is listed under subheadings Inserting Files and Inserting Images. See also Using_Images
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Difficulty Level: Varied
Articles needed for WordPress Lessons. For information on contributing to these tutorials, see guidelines for WordPress Lessons.
Coordinator(s): Lorelle 17:25, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
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1. Madlid 22:19, 7 Sep 2007 (UTC)
2. Craiger 04:52, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
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Designing Your WordPress Site
Template Tags
Features and Functons
Templates
WordPress Tech
Lessons from Forum
The following need to be edited into articles from the WordPress Forum:
This area of the Codex features basic information on how to work with WordPress including managing users, administrating the site through WordPress, using Permalinks and Plugins, dealing with comment spam, and the core basic features of the program.
Coordinator(s):
Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
We get a lot of questions on the forum about WordPress Categories. See: http://wordpress.org/tags/category and http://wordpress.org/tags/categories. We need one or more articles that deal with the issues of categories. It should include step-by-step instructions on how to list categories in the sidebar and the issues of parent and child categories, using images to replace or along with category listings, creating custom-look category pages, how to show 1 post on the front page but 10 posts per page on a category view, sorting and ordering how the categories are displayed, and...you get the picture.
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
While the Users and Authors Levels helps people understand what happens at which level, we need an article that discusses more about what happens at the different levels and address the many questions we get about user levels. For instance, how do I prevent visitors from seeing specific categories or posts? How do I keep users from seeing specific categories or posts? How do I stop users from making changes in some parts of the templates and not others? I want users to be able to edit and release their own documents but only edit some other user's documents not all. An indepth look at how the user and author levels work and any ways they can be customized.
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Difficulty Level: EASY
We need an article on why and how to test pingbacks and trackbacks in WordPress. Needs to include resources for where to test pingbacks and trackbacks, such as http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/TestTrack/index.php.
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This section features introductory articles and information on how to customize a WordPress Theme, CSS resources and information, and other subjects related to understanding how WordPress uses CSS for layout and presentation.
Coordinator(s):
Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
Article needed on adding a heat map or tag cloud to WordPress, matching tags to post keywords to increase navigation and "search" capabilities. Information needed on inclusion on front page only or only categories or all posts.
Start by looking at Template_Tags/wp_tag_cloud
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
Article wanted on designing a photoblog in WordPress. Needs to include information on accommodating images, uploading and organizing the images, navigation, categorizing, and other topics that define the difference between a photoblog and a normal WordPress site.
Note: this has been started at Photoblogs_and_Galleries
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Difficulty Level: EASY
The article Dynamic Menu Highlighting is in desperate need of some screen shots showing examples of what is being discussed.
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
Foldable Page Lists seems to be a hot topic. We need an article about it.
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This section of the Codex takes WordPress users beyond the basics into more advanced techniques of using WordPress.
Coordinator(s):
Difficulty Level: EASY - Familiarity with Codex
WordPress_Files needs to be gone over and have links in the comments under each file to the article(s) that provide more information on what the file does or is used for. Check Administration Panels for some potential links, if applicable.
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
Without targetting specific advertisers, we need an article that discusses how to add ads to your WordPress site. Needs to include information on fitting the ads within the templates; avoiding conflicts with javascripts, PHP code, and WordPress functions; options for putting ads between alternate or every X many posts on the front page; inserting ads between paragraphs in a post; and any other uses of ads within a WordPress site that means the structure or functions need to be altered to accomodate them.
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
Article needed on how to feature or integrate feeds into your WordPress site.
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Difficulty Level: EXPERT
We need an article that addresses some of the problems and issues that would make someone want to get into their WordPress database. These might include global search and replace of text (example: web page name or address change), modifying or deleting tables or information...etc. NOT major changes, just things that answer a lot of the questions found here: http://wordpress.org/tags/mysql
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Difficulty Level: EXPERT
Article wanted on the basics of htaccess for redirecting (moving servers) and understanding the permalink rewrites, and possibly blocking spammers or spiders. Very basic introduction of how WordPress uses these and how you can use it.
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
Article wanted on how to use WordPress as a Content Management System. Article should cover the issues of structure and organization, use of Pages, working with or against the chronological order, accomodating users/authors, controlling what people can see if they are registered or not, customizing the Administration Panels to accommodate CMS needs and provide panel instructions for users, plugins/hacks for other CMS features...and so on.
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1. --AndreSC 20:47, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE to EXPERT
Many times a volunteer on the Forum will say, "Oh, just use a $posts > query $variable..blah blah", which can totally intimidate the average user. We need an article that simply, and clearly, explains WordPress queries which can be used within the template files to get specific information.
Question: do these articles solve this?
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
Article wanted on how to customize and change the Write Post Quicktag buttons, possibly adding more, etc. See also: http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/quicktags/ we have permission to use anything from here.
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1. Lorelle 23:02, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
2. Westi 15:52, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC) - I have a plugin in progress to do this without hacking core code.
Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
There are a lot of WordPress users who don't mind using the English interface, but want to write their blogs in their own languages, possibly two languages. We need a simple how-to article on setting the character set within a WordPress site to permit foreign language character alphabets to be readable on the screen.
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Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE
We have an article on Podcasting with WordPress, but more and more people want to include multimedia in their WordPress site. We need an expert in this to discuss how to include multimedia in a WordPress site, especially if the WordPress Loop must call that media as opposed to post text, and how best to incorporate it.
See: Vlogging Craze Starting to Emerge, Sci Fi Channel Launches Video Blogs, RocketBoom Vlog Receives 25,000 Downloads Per Day, Director Blogs Popular With Movie Fans.
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Difficulty Level: EXPERT
Every once in a while someone comes into the forum and goes on about a security issue. While the Codex cannot tackle every security concern, it can address the general issue of how WordPress offers a secure program and how to increase your "safety" or security concerns. We need an article that looks at security protection in WordPress and step-by-step instructions on how to:
See also: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/32764
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The Troubleshooting section of the Codex is packed with the answers to common questions related to installation, Themes, server and database issues, and how to get more help.
Coordinator(s):
Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE - EXPERT
Extensive cleanup and reorganization is underway with the FAQs. If you would like to be assigned to an area of the FAQ to clean up during the Codex Cleanup Week or before or after, please sign up. There is a lot to do and we will be assigning tasks to avoid conflicts and to cover the many different topics covered by the FAQs.
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1. Lorelle 14:39, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
2. MichaelH
3. Spirit892
4. Amory 02:00, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
5. HEngel
Difficulty Level: EXPERT
Article needed with a list of the most common errors and fixes for the Troubleshooting section. These include PHP, MySQL, and WordPress errors.
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The Developer Documentation section takes advanced users deeper into the core functions of WordPress including writing a WordPress plugin, understanding WordPress code functions and tags, how to help with testing and debugging, and more.
Coordinator(s): JHodgdon
This section of the Task List is more currently maintained in JHodgdon/Dev_Doc_To_Dos for the moment, until the list gets down to a manageable size.
Difficulty Level: INTERMEDIATE - EXPERT
Per this Forum post request: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/33788 - The article would involve documenting the architecture and "flow" of WordPress such as "I am looking for a schematic that details a system design, information flows, use cases etc with technology elements included in it.".
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Following the format below, please post any Support Forum posts you feel are worthy of inclusion in the Codex. Please specify if this would be good in the FAQs {FAQ), as an addition to a particular article (Addition), or a stand alone article (Article). If you are willing to turn this post thread into an article, please sign up for it. If more than one thread is related to the topic, please include them with a brief description of the subject.
Article Material
In this post, the user is requesting how to install WordPress as the blog in a non-WordPress site, and include posts from the WordPress blog onto a non-WordPress page. This is not the first time this has come up. We need an article about including WordPress posts off-site.
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Difficulty Level: Wiki-Intermediate
Maintaining Organization on the Codex, and checking pages for correctness, completeness and clarity. Codex:Maintenance has a list of Maintenance Tasks, and resources to get started. Contact the Coordinators should you need help getting started with the tasks, or if you have suggestions for more tasks related to Maintenance.
Coordinator(s): Carthik ‹ ℂ › Talk 23:56, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
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