1.9 Wiki - Help Is On The Way!

The Inside Scoop Banner
Volume 1, Issue 9

After announcing the beta test of our new wiki, I thought some of you might be interested in a bit of background about why we are working so hard on it, and our goals and plans for the future. Well, MediaPortal is a vast and complex application supporting a huge variety of configurations, hardware, and features.  At some point you have probably had trouble or been confused how to configure the more advanced options.  You likely tried pretty much everything, from prayer to promises, threats to temper tantrums. Well don't throw anything at your expensive HTPC. Just read on and find out the Inside Scoop on our brand new Wiki - Help Is On The Way!

Why do we need a wiki?

Probably the number one reason is to help new users. The main complaints about MediaPortal in the past were instability and complexity. We now feel MediaPortal is a very stable application, even with the multitude of hardware, configurations and options we support.

We wanted to redesign the entire process of configuring and customizing MediaPortal, but we simply do not have the resources to do that on top of everything else at present. So we are planning to do it for MediaPortal 2. In the meantime, MediaPortal can be much easier for new users to setup than most people realize. Our wiki seemed the best, and easiest, way to make that setup clearer.

Who ever reads a manual anyway?

You'd be surprised! In 2009 our wiki received over 1.5M unique visits and 5.7M page views. Surprised 

Let's face it, most of us never read the manual. We just dive in, assuming we can figure it all out in five minutes. However, a media center or a Home Theatre PC, is not a simple system. There is some pretty complex technology underlying MediaPortal. Even though we try to make it as simple as possible, we also want to allow users to customize practically every aspect to fit their system and needs.

So what happens when you get stuck, or you can't get something working the way you would like? Suddenly frustration turns into desperation and you are madly searching the wiki because you really want to figure it out on your own and impress everyone with how brilliant you are. Wink

I can tell you, even our Team members like their documentation! If our IRC bots (which list commands and wiki links) are out of date, and our Team members cannot find what they need in two minutes, there is hell to pay!

Why not use the Forums?

Based on our statistics, many users never join our forums. We often hear from new users that they are intimidated by the technical level and skills of our current forum users, and confused by the jargon and technical terminology that is quite common for us MediaPortal addicts. Our wiki is written for easy understanding by all, with links to our glossary and other websites for explanations of terminology and more complex concepts.

The main purpose of our Forums is for support, discussion and development. So, documentation entered in our forums often does not get updated, does not follow any consistent structure, or search terms, and can be hard to find. Sometimes it is not easy to determine if the information is even still valid.

Our forums are famous for the level of support they offer, but we minimize their effectiveness if we try to make them take the place of our wiki. How many times do we have to answer the same questions over and over because users cannot find the answer quickly and easily in our wiki? How many times have you had trouble finding something you know you saw in the forum, but cannot remember where it was?

So the golden rule of our new wiki is: Forum Discussion -> Wiki Documentation. Any new development, or any tips or best practices will now be documented in the wiki. Keep your eyes open for great answers to common questions and add them as well. Then we can keep the information up to date and make it easily accessible to all. We can add one sticky post to each forum with relevant links to wiki pages, but adding even just 10 sticky posts is not very effective, as we all know already.

Will skins and plugins be documented in our new wiki?

We sincerely hope so! Our wiki is fully available for the use of all extension developers. So is the assistance of our Docs Group. I can assure you our new wiki is much easier than Google Code wiki - which is pretty much a torture test! I have documented the aMPed skin in the new wiki so skin developers can use it as a sample.. Plugin developers can check out what one of our team members, marvman has done for his Intelligent Frame Correction (IFC) plugin.

Some plugins and skins have already developed an extensive wiki of their own. However, we hope they will at least enter a main page in the MP wiki, with a link to their existing wiki, so that all current extensions are represented.

It is entirely up to our extension developers to add and maintain their own documentation in the wiki. However, if they do, we will link to their page(s) in as many places as possible. 

What is the HTPC section for?

Geeks! LOL No, seriously, the HTPC section is where you can document the latest hardware and software which can benefit using MediaPortal on your HTPC. You can add tips on setting up a HTPC or show off your setup in the Showroom pages. It was intended to be cutting edge, but most of the data is very outdated. If you are interested in HTPC hardware, customization and tips, this is the place to look and add your knowledge.

Will you be documenting MediaPortal 2?

Yes, of course!  Albert has been meticulously documenting MediaPortal 2 already. Since MediaPortal 2 is still in development, most of the documentation is related to the development process so far. However, as soon as we can get MediaPortal 1 well documented, we plan to start documenting the skinning process for MediaPortal 2 and adding user documentation before the alpha release.

In fact, most of the work we are doing in our new wiki is to prepare for MediaPortal 2. We felt it was better to start now, develop the process and features we need in the wiki, so that we have everything in place for the launch of MP 2 - the media center of the future!

What is the main goal for the wiki?

There are two main goals:·

  1. To attract new users by making it easier for them to start using MediaPortal
  2. One stop shopping! It is so tiring to look through 100 forum threads, Mantis issues, etc to find the information you need. Our wiki should link to relevant Forum discussions, Mantis issues, previous development changes, etc. Thus, whether you are a new user, an advanced 'tweaker', a community developer or even a team member, you have everything you need at your finger tips, all in one place. No one believes it is possible, but we intend to try! MindTouch gives us some pretty powerful tools to work with, so let's see what we can do with them.

How many people are working on the wiki?

Presently we have only two, very exhausted, Docs Group members. Cry

For the first few months I was the only one. Then we invited DieBagger who agreed to join and has been a huge, I mean HUGE, asset to our Team. He has very different skills and interests than I do because he is a developer. Yes a developer who loves documentation - a rare find! Wink  He really wants to ensure our wiki helps other developers, as well as our Team development process. He also loves creating videos as demonstrations and tutorials, which is wonderful content to add to our wiki. Sometimes you cannot demonstrate a feature properly with screenshots alone. Check out his video on the new Cover flow layout!

Luckily we have had a lot of help from our Team:

  • Deda - has written superb documentation on the new Videos enhancements for MP 1.2.0
  • te3hpurp - with help from many of our team members, wrote an awesome guide on troubleshooting Stuttering Playback
  • arion_p, jameson_uk, Migue and ajp8164 - have been working to update all the new Skin Related Changes pages on the new skin features
  • infinite.loop - has written an excellent Codecs Guide on top of trying to keep our wiki updated. for the past two years.
  • hwahrmann - has been writing some of our best documentation for years - see MPTagThat as an example.
  • marvman - created an excellent example of plugin documentation for Intelligent Frame Correction (IFC).

Of course, without our web admin high nothing could happen at all.  He takes care of all the technical details of the wiki, along with every other system we use.  He developed our new wiki skin, and patiently answers my 101 questions daily. His favorite answers are "Pfft" "Pah" "Grmpf" "Learn HTML", "Please refresh" "Use a browser you can manage" and "Clear your cache and cookies". We are not entirely sure if he is human or AI. Laughing

One of our team members, chefkoch, took pity on me when I was trying to transfer (copy and paste) over 1,000 pages from the old wiki manually. Without his help transferring many of the pages, we would not be anywhere near ready yet. He has also developed a new process so we can easily link the Help button in MediaPortal configuration screens to our new wiki pages.  In fact, chefkoch was a key player in identifying and documenting the requirements for our new wiki, and helping in its development.

Offbyone, the developer of Online Videos, has started to help us write a custom authentication provider so when you log into the wiki using your forum user name it will automatically add your forum email address and group permissions. We are not sure yet if we can get it working the way we want, but we are trying!

We still need more help... desperately! Even if you just contribute content and updates, that allows us time to implement more new features which will benefit us all. Of course, anyone who can write well in English, knows MediaPortal thoroughly, and cares about having a great wiki should contact me about joining the Docs Group. It is a great way to join and contribute to our Team, even if you are not an expert developer.

Our wiki belongs to all MediaPortal users. It is a collaborative effort. So it is up to us to develop it into a powerful tool to share the vast knowledge and talent we all have. Just imagine what our wiki could become in the next few months!   Cool

Stay tuned!  We will be providing regular blogs and tweets on new wiki features and great content that has been added or updated.

About The Project

The vision of the MediaPortal project is to create a free open source media centre application, which supports all advanced media centre functions, and is accessible to all Windows users.

In reaching this goal we are working every day to make sure our software is one of the best.

         

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