Comments on: Client instructions through the WordPress admin

By: Shelly

Shelly — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:23:37 +0000

Haha John – too funny. Honestly, most clients I have are fine – they LOVE how easy and intuitive (and yes, they’ve used that very word a gazillion times) it is to write content for WordPress. I think it’s a personality thing though – because this guy…oh boy. Put it this way, he once described himself as a person who has to have what he wants immediately, without any effort on his part. He literally wants the site to read his mind.

Needless to say, i do not work with this guy anymore but the plugin has been very helpful for those clients who tend to forget thigns that I tell them – I’m now working on making this a sort of “expand/collapse reminder” section instead of a huge block at the top of the screen – which is something I used to do for clients a long time ago.

By: John Uy

John Uy — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:25:57 +0000

I couldn’t help but laugh when I read this post. I have just started designing websites for ‘clients’, am using wordpress as a CMS, and all of my current clients (all 3 of them, lol) go straight to me for editing.

I have written, emails, text files, private instruction pages with a link to each page right on the dashboard (top right where it says ‘howdy, user’), and none of them can do a simple edit job despite my countless efforts to teach them. I even redirect them after login straight to the edit posts page so every page of their websites are right in front of them to begin with.

Maybe my instructions (with screenshots) are just not clear enough or maybe wordpress isn’t simple enough to use but it certainly is getting frustrating.

I wish there was a CMS that allows them to log in, click on their desired page, edit the necessary content, and, with a click of a button, update the website. Wait, that is what wordpress does. Weird.

P.S. Sorry for the rant.

By: Philip Downer

Philip Downer — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:46:26 +0000

Definitely bookmarked. I’m interested to see where you go with this plugin as I can certainly relate to client’s not reading anything I prepare to help them!

Screencasts seem like a great way to go, but I have a feeling that once a major version of WordPress is released I’d be updating those all over again…

By: Shelly

Shelly — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:40:42 +0000

Here’s another notation: for the “widgets” page, you’ll have to use “add_action(‘admin_head-widgets.php’, ‘widgets2_help’); – as it turns out, using “widgets_help’ conflicts with something else (I guess there’s already a function with this name – whoops!) so adding the “2″ helps alleviate the pain there.

By: Shelly

Shelly — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:13:14 +0000

So here’s a little update (already): it doesn’t work for plugins yet. I’m still trying to figure out if I can (or if it’s even possible) to add instructions for plugins you have added in to the site.

For example, I have Userextra/Usermeta installed on the site I’m writing this for (so I can add some custom user information) and the URL for that page is “sitename/wp-admin/edit.php?page=userextra.php” Unfortunately, I can “admin_head-edit.php” but I can’t “admin_head-edit.php?page=userextra.php”, nor can I “admin_head-userextra.php”. So here’s my first conundrum. (The good news, though, is that this plugin is mega-old, and hasn’t been upgraded in forever – mainly because it doesn’t need to be, it works just fine – so I can add the stuff directly to the plugin files.) But it’s now on the list to see if I can somehow supply custom info for plugins as well.

I just wish there were some kind of conditional commenting system for the admin area – that would make it a lot easier!

By: Jesse Friedman

Jesse Friedman — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:49:39 +0000

I was just gearing up to write something like this for myself. Now I don’t have to. Although I’m going to be adding a link to a lightboxed video screencast.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

By: Heather

Heather — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:57:59 +0000

Aaaahh. Very clever.