WordPress Guides

Description

WP Guides developed to be used in projects where we needed to distribute instructional guides, documents, tutorials, and also Style Guides for ease of management of the site. We have applied many variants of the guide to industries such as Real Estate and Automotive and dozens of other types of industries and blogger sites.

WP Guides gives the end user, developer, template designer or any administrator the ability to distribute nearly any type of document in the admin panel of a WordPress site. The idea behind this was to provide a universal way for all of our own clients to have readily available documents and tutorials at their disposal in hopes of reducing the time and expenses for technical support as a result of the need for “How To” instructional guides.

Our initial attempt was to simply publish online how to guides for blogging and managing a wordPress powered site, we ran into countless limitations where specific style guides applicable to the target domain be confused with the general guides thereby causing confusion. Our answer was WP Guides. With Guides, we can publish standard tutorials along with site specific style guides to each and every client, putting the resources for good blogging practices at their finger tips.

Coupled with the ability for Realtors and other sales professionals to be able to distribute documents they commonly need right in their blog, the WP Guides project had grown to the point that we are now adding in access level support, file upload abilities, professional remote inclusion tutorials and other excellent features.

IMPORTANT UPDATES

1. Fixed the bug with file types
2. Fixed the bug with the JavaScript POPUP window.
3. Removed DEMO Files in preparation for remote folder option.

Additional Configuration Notes

Additional instructions and video tutorials can be found on the projects website. Please feel free to ask for assistance by contacting Jared Ritchey via our site, WordPress forums or by email Jared-at-JaredRitchey.com

Before Adding Documents and Guides

1. Organize documents by category and add documents specific to that category in each folder.
2. Never upload executable type files if you can avoid doing so.
3. PLACE A BLANK INDEX.PHP FILE IN EACH OF THE FOLDERS YOU ADD TO PREVENT DIRECTORY BROWSING.

• WP Guides is being updated to provide all kinds of new stuff.
• WP Guides will support some basic file management features in the next release.
• WP Guides will feature alternative themes to match WP 2.7 Admin panel settings.

WP GUIDES Professional Instructional Guides are available in three separate variations. Full 100% FREE introductory Series, Full Professional Series from our Media Partner and the same professional series in an unbranded format. The media company is currently in production of the guides for us and they will be published at https://www.wpfeatured.com in Mid March 2009.

Example tutorials and documents can be found on the project(s) site located at https://www.JaredRitchey.com or https://www.wpfeatured.com

Screenshots

Installation

1. Extract the wp-guides.zip to your local system prior to upload.
2. Upload wp-guides folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugin Panel’ in WordPress
4. While in the WordPress admin panel, simply navigate to the “SETTINGS” by clicking on the tab for “SETTINGS” then to WP Guides.
5. Upload folders containing your documents, guides and other media elements to the /wp-guides/tutorials/ directory. If you name your folder My Cool Documents, the category instance in WordPress will be titled the same. It is important to NEVER upload any type of executable file like .php, .exe, .asp and so on. By default any file ending in .php no be active in the actual documents available but can still be parsed if the name and path are known to anyone so its NOT a good idea to add those types of files to your folders.

FAQ

1. Can I distribute this to any of my clients and change the branding paragraph on the guides page in the admin panel?
   Dont change the plugin license but feel free to modify the file called vendor-include.php to add your own links for your clients! This tool was built for people like you who want to build a WordPress site for your clients and have a way to distribute your own series of how to guides and documents as an extension of your service. We have NO restrictions as far as you altering the branding in that regard.
2. Will this work with all document types?
   Alomst, it works with the most common document types used today such as DOC, PDF, TXT, RTF, HTML and soon DOCX!
3. Will this work with commercial tutorials I purchase from Lynda or other tutorial publishers?
   It can, but I cant advise you to do that considering their NO DISTRIBUTION License.
4. Will this work in WordPress Multi User?
   Yes, we have this very plugin installed on Real Estate sites where there are literally dozens of Realtor agent blogs.
5. Are there any special settings I should be aware of?
   There are a few things you should be aware of before you begin the practice of uploading files into your /tutorials/ folder. Also there are things to consider in using a WordPress MU type site with WP Guides so I have published a few tutorials to help with the configuration.s You can examine these things by visiting Jared Ritchey
6. Are there any linkback requirements?
   Linkback Requirements? NO! Would we appreciate contextual linking? Absolutely! We would love for you to wright a little post about us and link to us within your content. Nothing against the blogroll but if you dont want a link to us on every page, then a little post about the plugin would be great. ??

Reviews

Contributors & Developers