During a fast-paced, productive meeting of the Documentation Team on Monday 14th of July, an initial chapter outline for the new phpList manual was decided.

The team have agreed to spend the first chapters of the manual describing very basic tasks, including logging-in, sending a simple campaign and seeing how many people opened the message. This strategy will create a pedal-to-the-metal quick start guide for those who already have a system set up, perhaps by their employer,  system-administrator or by the phpList hosted service. This introduction will also give an overview for potential new users who would like to know more about the system.

The rest of the chapters will be ordered by complexity, working though more involved usage, including using templates and placeholders, growing and managing lists and using phpList with WordPress and Prestashop. The final sections will deal with tasks such as installation and system configuration. There will also be a chapter dedicated to troubleshooting, which will cover how to find help in the phpList forums, as well as common issues.

Each chapter will be written by one or two people. Once finished, any instructions or tasks in the chapters will be “tested” by two more people, to see if the it worked for them. Then, all chapters will be proof read, and finally, translated by the phpList translators team.

No doubt the planned chapters will change and evolve over time, but the current outline is already looking jam-packed and pretty much awesome!

The outline (as of 14th July 2014) can be downloaded here.

Can you guess who will phpList be working with on their new manual?