Did you miss our June session of Developer Office Hours? Our last session was focus was on discussing various aspects of documentation. In this session, we addressed the current state of documentation at WooCommerce and the plans we have for the near future. You can learn more about those here in our roadmap page dedicated to the documentation efforts.
Centralization
We recognize, and also heard from the community, that one of the frustrations with documentation is that it’s spread across multiple locations such as woo.com, developer.woo.com, and GitHub repositories. Our primary objective is to centralize developer documentation into one place, aiming to enhance discoverability, accessibility, and fill major gaps in the existing resources.
Plugin Docs
Developers participating in the session expressed their desire for more comprehensive documentation on specific topics, particularly plugin documentation. One example given was the challenge faced in locating relevant information for the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin, including simplified subscription querying and dynamic payment options. Participants highlighted the need for enhanced developer documentation from these plugins and the associated challenges in locating and accessing such resources. While our current focus is on core documentation, we acknowledge the future need to improve third-party plugin documentation and will pass this feedback on to the right teams.
Technical considerations
The conversation also delved into choosing the appropriate platform for hosting the documentation. Suggestions were made to leverage tools like Docus due to its speed and developer-friendly features. However, we acknowledged that we are biased toward using WordPress as a preferred CMS, but we also recognize the necessity of balancing developer convenience with the advantages of utilizing WP. Our goal is to create a documentation experience that offers features like code previews, syntax highlighting, robust search capabilities, and potentially AI-driven functionalities. The decision of which technologies to use is still something we are evaluating, and having these conversations with the community helps us immensely.
Until next time…
Overall, this session underscored the significance of centralizing documentation, enhancing its accessibility and discoverability, addressing documentation gaps, and delivering an improved developer experience. As always, we appreciate the voices of all our participants, and hope to see you in our next office hours!
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