Codex

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Codex:Tasks

If you have a question about this list, please post it on the discussion page.

The WordPress Docs Team manages its projects at the Make WordPress Docs blog and the IRC #wordpress-sfd channel.

The tasks are generally grouped into three areas:

  • Editing: Clean up and minor fixing
  • Revision: Revising and updating articles to reflect new information or changes in the software.
  • Contribution: Contributing new articles to expand the WordPress Documentation.

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.

Editing

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:

  • Correcting spelling and grammar
  • Styling the page to meet the general look of the Codex's layout
  • Checking and testing demonstration code for validity

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.

Revision

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

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:

  • Related to WordPress usage and customization
  • Of interest to the majority of WordPress users
  • Be of an informative, educational manner
  • Meet the criteria established by the WordPress Codex documentation team
  • See the Contributing to the Codex guidelines and instructions before contributing.

Things to Do by Codex Section

The following are different sections within the Codex and a list of tasks needing work or activity.

General Codex Cleanup

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.


Clean Out The Old 2010

Difficulty Level: EASY to EXPERT

It's time to clean out all of the deprecated code that no longer applies to clean up the Codex and make it applicable to the current version.

There are several ways to do this.

EASY: If you are not an expert at handling the Codex, please help by following the instructions in the Codex:Maintenance to mark out of date content as deprecated, old pages, or request for deletion. The Codex administrators will go through the list and take action on these.

EXPERT: If you are a documentation and WordPress expert, decisions will have to be made on a case-by-case basis as to whether to remove out-dated content or pages or merge them with other documentation. If in doubt, bring it up on the Docs Mailing list, or otherwise, use your best judgment.

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1. mrmist 19:28, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
2. wet

Glossary - Terminology

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:

A page on the Codex may link to the word "Blogosphere" in the glossary.
When someone clicks on the link, they will be taken directly to the word at URL: codex.wordpress.org/Glossary#Blogosphere
instead of URL: codex.wordpress.org/Glossary - (which would take them to the top of the glossary page).

This is an ongoing volunteer position, and would require a time commitment of one or two hours every week.


Mizzed Spellings

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 (broken link).

While it also catches articles that feature foreign 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. Eherman24 15:20, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
2. HEngel 19:18, 15 Dec 2007 (UTC)
3. Bsulliv3 04:23, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
4. Matroschka 12:33, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
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Article Validation

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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Links to Administration Panels Page

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 its 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.

To allow comments on a post already written, from the Administration Panels choose Manage > Posts and choose Edit and change the setting for Allow Comments.

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1. NerdStarGamer 16:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
2. wet 19:34, 01 March 2011 (UTC)
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About WordPress

Coordinator(s): Carthik


Getting Started with WordPress

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): Rokus 23:31,6 october 2013 (UTC)

Integrating WordPress into your Website

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
2. --steveydoteu 18:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
3. Rokus 23:31,6 october 2013 (UTC)

Uploading Files

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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1. Priceofsalt 22:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
2. tinym 23:36, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
3.

WordPress Lessons

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)
3. tinym 13:32, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
4. Cam5 18:01, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Lesson Articles Wanted

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Designing Your WordPress Site

  • Designing Your Calendar
  • Rotating Images

Template Tags

  • Using the Archives Tag

Features and Functons

  • Auto-Approving Administrator Comments
  • Permalinks Explored
  • Power Search on Your Site
  • Using and Publicizing Your Feeds
  • Managing Blogrolls
  • Uploading files through WordPress

Templates

  • Comments Layout
  • Working With Includes
  • Create Custom Template Files
  • Using if_single
  • Display Your Plugins
  • Creating a Site Map
  • Customizing the Footer
  • Customizing the Content (simple ways of styling the content area and using tags within it)

WordPress Tech

  • Checking Server Logs - how to track down problems in WordPress through Server Logs

Lessons from Forum
The following need to be edited into articles from the WordPress Forum:

Working with WordPress

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):

Users/Authors

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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1. Rokus 23:31,6 october 2013 (UTC)
2.

Advanced Topics

This section of the Codex takes WordPress users beyond the basics into more advanced techniques of using WordPress.

Coordinator(s):

Troubleshooting

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):

Developer Documentation

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.


Forum Posts to Articles

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.

Maintenance Tasks

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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See Documentation_team for active contributors

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