BuddyPress screencasts – what do you want to see?
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Hi all
I am going to be creating some screencasts – a video which explains or demonstrates something – in an effort to improve documentation and spread the word about BuddyPress. I was hoping to get some ideas for content.
To the newer users on these forums, what did you find hard or confusing or not clear, or didn’t you understand about BuddyPress when you started using it?
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Given that the entire “look and feel” of Buddypress can be modified via themes, how can “we” offer screencasts on how to use a Buddypress site? I’ve seen many examples of “Buddypress” sites that look and operate nothing like a bp-default themed Buddypress site.
At the same time, if the current interface is not intuitive enough then no matter how many screencasts are created users will still be confused. Facebook and Twitter didn’t have screen casts on how to use the sites. Users just figured most of it out.
I’m not trying to knock Buddypress at all – I’ve been impressed enough that I’ve gone and started submitting bug reports and even fixes when my time permits! I’m just hoping that active members like DJ Paul aren’t going to get stuck spending a lot of time creating screencasts that benefit a very small number of developers/users.
There are probably really great Buddypress specific topics that could be covered in a screen cast but I can’t come up with any. Maybe I’m just too old and come from the generation where everything wasn’t screencasted to us and we had to do something called research or trial and error.
I see your point jivany, but so far I’ve seen that about 90% of the active BP Communities use the default theme with some slight modifications. With some clever editing/focus on certain things which almost every BP site has, it could be very useful.
Think of something like http://www.wordpress.tv:
I would also rather see very specific and in-depth tutorial from BP Pro’s sooner then later, but if you look at the questions asked on these forums, you can not skip the basics here and simply presume that the “easier” stuff will be figured out as they go.
Imagine you stumbling upon BuddyPress.org and being able to get a few nice basic video instructions. You get a sense of professionalism and a clear view of what’s possible with the software, the advanced stuff we all like to see can be covered at a later point imo
And about Facebook and Twitter;
A screencast of twitter would have saved me quite some time, and don’t even start about Facebook lol.. I’ve tried 2 hours to find a feed of my status updates and after trying everything known to man I still haven’t found it. Facebook is awesome but it makes no sense whatsoever on certain aspects
The more I think about it, nig3d has the right idea. A screencast (or a couple) that showcases what BP is capable of would be a really great idea. But then you’re focusing on the developers as opposed to the potential users of a BP site.
One of my favorite examples of BP is thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/ and if you didn’t explicitly know it was running BP, you’d be hard pressed to discover it was. That user community has very easily figured out how to use BP (but again, it’s customized). Profiling some of these sites as “what you can do with BP” in a screencast would probably help “sell” BP to a larger audience.
@Bowe, as for the Facebook/Twitter stuff, both apps are almost better for not having screencasts. People have found numerous ways of using Twitter that are not the original intent. As for Facebook, they just don’t really care about anything outside their firewalls.
From a user point of view, I found BP prior to the 1.2 activity stream concept to be very confusing. Anyone who has used Facebook or Twitter will easily understand what the textbox is for.
I could go on and on but then I’d be really thread jacking.
Reiterating what Bowe posted – “a clear explanation to the users between their buddypress profile and blog dashboard would be nice” [very very very nice]
Encapsulates what could be one to two Pages of explanation of text and graphics to users into one full-width page of your screencast with full credit and link to your site
Cheers.
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