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Both you and the client undoubtedly have more important things to do, and besides, having to teach every individual client that you work with would probably drive you nuts. Instead, you can create your own comprehensive WordPress user manual<\/a> (or even pay someone else to create it for you) so that your clients can have peace of mind knowing that they are in control of their site.<\/p>\n Here some essential tips you should consider in your approach to drafting your first WordPress instruction manual:<\/p>\n Before you do anything, you have to really put yourself in the mindset of a complete WordPress beginner \u2013 ideally someone\u00a0who struggles with the technical side of the web. The scope will depend on the types of clients you work with, so\u00a0you may want to spend some time writing down exactly what your client needs from the manual. Asking them is the easiest way to get this information, and then you\u00a0can tailor your manual to the needs of your clients as closely as possible. The more thorough you can be with regard to your specific client base, the more your\u00a0clients will be able to get out of your manual.<\/p>\n A good way to go about easing people into WordPress is to start off with introducing the extreme basics. Try briefly covering topics like:<\/p>\n Keep it simple. You want to establish the right tone of voice here in order to reassure that your clients\u00a0will be able\u00a0to follow along easily. It may even be more appropriate to tackle this introductory part after you\u2019ve finished drafting out the main part of the content so you\u2019ll be able to provide a better summary of everything here.<\/p>\n Proper arrangement of all the content included in your manual is not only essential to avoid confusing the user, but also necessary to cover more detailed points and flow into related sections in a way that makes the most sense. For example, you wouldn\u2019t start with showing users how to publish a post, then move on to talking about comment management, then go back to showing users how to publish pages. Although posts do flow into commenting, keeping all publishing content together would provide a better flow.<\/p>\n Ask yourself, where would the user start? What order of instructions would make the most sense? From here, you can start building an outline of your main sections.<\/p>\n In fact, you can use the order of the sections displayed in the Dashboard Menu as inspiration and adjust it accordingly to what you want to teach your users.<\/p>\n As an example, your main sections might include:<\/p>\n Could this be improved? Sure it could. Posts and pages are quite similar, so it might make sense to combine the two into one section, although making sure to provide explanations on the difference between posts and pages, and using separate subsections for pages or posts when necessary. But that’s all up to you.<\/p>\n Alternatively, you might want to even leave out entire sections like Users, Tools, and Settings if you want to just provide the very basics of content publishing and editing for your users. You could also add in more advanced or customizable sections for\u00a0anything pertaining to specific plugins or theme options.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot to learn about WordPress, so breaking up your big sections into subsections is the smart thing to do. Some sections will naturally have more subsections than others. For example, Logging in is pretty straightforward, but still requires a few areas to be covered:<\/p>\n That\u2019s about as much as you need in terms of the very basics of logging in, and you could even condense it all into one or two subsections if you wanted. In contrast, the main section affiliated with publishing content is likely going to be your biggest section to tackle. It might look something like this:<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lot of stuff, and some of these could be broken up and elaborated on even further with more detail.<\/p>\n Remember to keep your main sections and subsections in line with the needs of your ideal user. Regularly referring to the user profile you wrote up in the beginning can help with this.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t overwhelm your users\u00a0with information or functions you know they don\u2019t necessarily need to know or use, but also make sure you\u2019re not skimping on areas that are important and essential to the content publishing, customization, and maintenance of their site.<\/p>\n A big\u00a0chunk of your user manual is likely going to be screenshots, and you should aim to show every consecutive step that a WordPress beginner would need to see in order to seamlessly follow along and avoid missing a step or getting confused. When you\u2019re planning out how to display your screenshots, consider the following:<\/p>\n Visuals are crucial, but they can still create a lot of confusion without appropriate explanations. Before delving\u00a0straight into the step-by-step process of a particular WordPress activity, first explain what the user is trying to accomplish and why it should be accomplished. Any functions included in the process should also have an explanation so the user knows what they\u2019re used for \u2013 not just how to use them. When writing out your text, you should aim to:<\/p>\n Obviously, the instructions are the meat of your user manual, and it\u2019s what matters most. But there are lots of additional\u00a0sections you can add to the beginning and the end of your manual for a more complete and well-rounded user experience.<\/p>\n Table of Contents:<\/strong> Your manual is going to have a lot of sections and subsections of instructions, and you want to make it as easy as possible for users to find the instruction set they need for any particular problem. Having a complete table of contests of all sections and subsections and their corresponding pages is absolutely crucial.<\/p>\n Section Summaries:<\/strong> At the end of every section, or even every subsection if you so choose, you can include a brief summary of what the user learned and the main points that were covered.<\/p>\n Site Maintenance Section:<\/strong> An optional main section to have is one that goes into deeper detail about maintaining the site and updating existing posts, pages, widgets, categories, menus, appearance components, and anything else. You could explain what should be regularly updated, how often it should be updated, and how to go about doing it if the user wants to do it himself.<\/p>\n FAQ Section:<\/strong>\u00a0Users love FAQ sections, and it’s one of the best places to present solutions to the most common problems. If you need ideas for your FAQs, try looking around at what people are asking about in the WPMU DEV forums<\/a> or any other WordPress forums.<\/p>\n\n
1. Begin with an Introductory Overview<\/h2>\n
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2. Break up the Main WordPress Components into Sections<\/h2>\n
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3. Add Subsections to the Main Sections<\/h2>\n
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4. Use a Visual Step-By-Step Process<\/h2>\n
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5. Support the Visuals with Descriptive Explanations<\/h2>\n
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6. Include Helpful Extras<\/h2>\n
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