Documentation and Help Initiative

Last updated on
9 March 2024

The goal of the Documentation and Help initiative is to improve the Drupal evaluator, developer, and site builder experiences through improved documentation on Drupal.org, and improve in-application help via a new topic-based help system.

Current Goals and Projects

Help Topics in Core

  • Goal: A better system in Drupal core for in-site help, including help topics for common administrative tasks and all of the core modules in Drupal core.
  • Status: (8 Mar 2024) All Help Topics module code has been merged into the main Help module in Drupal 10.2.0. A BC layer remains in core/help_topics. The experimental Help Topics module should no longer be enabled; use Help module instead. Topics for core modules have been into their respective module's help_topics directory. Remaining core.* and help.* topics live in core/help/help_topics.
  • Issues: Search the Drupal project issue for keywords, "topic", using the component, "help.module" to find issues related to improving Help topics.
  • How you can help: Write help topics for your modules or the modules you use. In a module's .module file, find the hook_help() implementation. This function contains the "Module overview". Extract the text from it and create one or more help topics for the module. See the documentation, Help Topic Standards for guidance. Join the #documentation channel in Slack to ask questions or discuss issues.

Contributor Guide

User Guide

  • Goal: A tutorial to learn to use the main features of Drupal to build web sites.
  • Status: (8 Mar 2024) The completed User Guide is available on drupal.org; you can also download PDFs and other ebooks. Translations into over 10 languages are in various stages of completion, and can also be viewed/downloaded from those same pages.
  • Project page: https://www.drupal.org/project/user_guide
  • How you can help: There are occasionally issues to update the content of the User Guide (as Drupal evolves, to fix problems, or to add information). You can participate by providing "patches" to update the User Guide, or reviewing patches. If you can translate from English into another language, you can join a translation team to translate the User Guide into your language, or start a team if there isn't already one for your language. See links on the project page for more information.

Past Goals

The information below is being evaluated to see what is current and what isn't, as of March 2024. Focus on the part above!

What are we working on?

Efforts within this initiative focus on these goals:

  1. Make usability improvements to Documentation on Drupal.org.
  2. Improve existing Community Documentation by consolidating, re-organizing, and revising it.
  3. [OUTDATED] Create a new Getting Involved Guide, where new and experienced contributors can find fulfilling ways to get involved or deepen their involvement with the project.
  4. [DONE] Introduce a new system for topic-based help within a Drupal site, and create topics for this system.
  5. Maintain and translate the Drupal User Guide.
  6. Introduce a new class of “Official” documentation for drupal.org that will be version controlled and subject to a review process that will enforce documentation standards. Strong efforts will be made to clearly define the standards and scope of this documentation, and to prevent duplication of existing content.

More details for each of these goals

Make usability improvements to Documentation on Drupal.org.

Improve existing Community Documentation by consolidating, re-organizing, and revising it.

Create a new Getting Involved Guide, where new and experienced contributors can find fulfilling ways to get involved or deepen their involvement with the project.

The existing Getting Involved guide on drupal.org is difficult for people to navigate in order to find ways to get involved. So, there is an initiative to make a better guide. Links and information:

Introduce a new system for topic-based help within a Drupal site, and create topics for this system.

In Drupal Core 8.8, the new core Help Topics module will be introduced, at "Beta - Experimental" status. We are now working on moving this module and its topics from Beta to Stable status, at which point it will be merged into the existing core Help module. Links:

Maintain and translate the Drupal User Guide.

The User guide is updated as Drupal Core evolves. It is also being translated into at least 10 languages, with 2 translations finished and others in progress. Links:

Introduce a new class of “Official” documentation.

Who are we?

The Documentation Working Group is driving this, and the initiative members include:

Interested in becoming a Documentation Initiative team member? Contact @grasmash via the #documentation channel on Drupal Slack. Team members are asked to make a commitment to attend meetings and contribute to the initiative regularly.

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