No harm in getting a quote to see how much it would cost to translate into Welsh. The problem would be the ongoing work to update it in Welsh each time the user guide was updated or changed. But after the bulk of the work was done we could try recruiting a Welsh speaking volunteer to help with future additions!
@tschumilas I think the main reason for us having a local version of the user guide is language 
And also I think one thing I wanted to experiment is having a more ācommunity versionā of the user guide that enable people to ask questions if something is not clear and other people can answer, etc. So thatās why we are building up the french user guide into discourse directlyā¦ it takes a very lonnnng time to translate, Iām still not done with it, doing bits by bits 
What is the āUK entreprise guideā you are talking about?
@MyriamBoure We have a rather loose collection of documents and information relating to how to run a food hub which weāre trying to work up into an additional resource for OFN members. It doesnāt relate directly to the platform so weāre keeping it seperate from the User Guide. At the moment the plan is to encorporate this into the UK Discourse, but maybe also make PDF guides that can be emailed and printed off if need be.
@sstead I have been doing some thinking about how to move forward with the translations on wordpress.
We have a few options, and I have not sussed out all the details, but wanted to share this potential option.
The current website is using an older version of Avada. We could upgrade it and try to do it all there using wpml.org (demo video here). I would be hesitant to do so until it has been upgraded, and I can testify that Avada 5 is a dream to work with but have not gone through the process of upgrading from an older version and hear that it can sometimes cause glitches. If upgrading is not something we want to do, we could export the user guide and set up a separate install (would require a 60$US avada license and hosting) set that to a subdomain userguide.openfoodnetwork.org and link from the original site to have seamless integration in menus, as well as direct links from instances.
I have applied for a non-profit license at wmpl.org and having seen their comparisons here - think we should look at this over polylang and then decide on whether that is a better option than transifex.
The beauty of their module is that translators do not need to know how to use wordpress, and can manage the content separately see here.
You can also have an overview of the status of translations see here . When you make updates to the user guide, it seems like a reasonable method of sending segments or pages to the translation job list for us to update.
It is not a small task by any means, but looks like a good way to move forward and is scaleable. Manual changes to screen shots for the different uses is able to be done with a bit more wp knowledge.
One issue I am trying to wrap my head around, is that we are not only translating content for different languages, but for different instances. Example: English language will have a variety of different needs for tax or other instance specific requirements. Uk/Aus/USA/Canada all will need their own content in the long term. It could be managed using menus, but I will have to see if there is a better option. Anyone else who has a better idea, please let me know!
one option: making the content global with language translation and a dedicated page with each instances āinstance specificā information easily linked to the main content.
@MyriamBoure - you have mentioned that you would like a more interactive method to enable discussions. We can easily add a dedicated forum for each instance. Like a light version of discourse and does not require hosting. Super easy to set up on Avada via bbpress and will cost us nothing.
The wordpress site is also a perfect place to manage the repository of documentation that will be coming along, and @mags this would be a simple solution to include your documents - and if they are set up as pages, they too can be translated using the same solution.
I welcome feedback on this.
I support this path strongly 
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Thanks @sigmundpetersen I also just chatted with Caleb at Transifex, and he said that since we are already on the free open source plan and that this is just an extention of our content that we should just open a new project under the same account and mark it as open source. Maybe we should also look into this option and weigh the pros and cons. If anyone else has thoughts on this, feel free to pipe in with some guidance
I am not sure which will be heavier on the workload wpml or transifex, but given that we already have a system for using transifex, there is a benefit to not having to introduce new solutions.
It should still allow is to include the forums for each instance to enable discussions.
Will have to consider the user interface and see which will be the most appealing.
ping @danielle any thoughts on this?
Maybe we donāt have to choose. WPML and Transifex now works together https://www.transifex.com/blog/2016/transifex-wpml-integration/
LOVE IT! ahhā¦ thanks @sigmundpetersen
ok, it looks like we now have a good idea as to what the tools are, now we just need to plan it out (and potentially get funding - what else is new )
I am open to having a hangout if anyone else is, or we can include it in the global hangout agenda.
ping @sstead @MyriamBoure @danielle @NickWeir and anyone else - - feedback welcome
Sounds like a good solution @CynthiaReynolds, well done! Some thoughts going forward which youāve already touched onā¦
- Evada update- What kinds of glitches might we expect and how can we manage them? Will we need costly devs to help, or can wordpress amateurs like myself iron these out?
- New URL? What will be the landing page? Can you link to the particular language, so that Australian users donāt even see the other languages (to minimise confusion)?
- Itās a shame that there isnāt potential for English x 4ā¦ UK, Aus, Canada, US? And French x 2 (canada/france)
- Weāll need to work out the best solution for instance specific content if thereās no way to create instance translationsā¦ Iām sure thereās something we can do, maybe expando collapso segments in the global guide covering the instance specific info for Tax etc?
- Will updates be handled via the initial strategy- whoever makes an update describes this in Discourse? Or can to tool flag certain parts of a page for translation? Is there automatic ānew content to be translatedā notification? If not, whatās the best way to manage updates?
- Looks like adding in translated screenshots might be a bit fiddly, each translation will need one person whoās comfortable doing this in WP.
Thanks @sstead
Re: Avada update. Not having been part of building this site, I can not really say how it will react to the upgrade nor how the other plugins will react, The Avada 5 upgrade focuses on the Fusion Builder which is great to work with, but may cause some issues based on the build of various features. I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it does seem that Avada support are very helpful with getting everyones issues taken care of during the transition, and they also have a great user group on facebook who are all very helpful with support issues. I imagine we can contact support in advance and see if they can let us know if they think our site will upgrade without issues. Should save us a lot of hassle by asking in advance and we could ask them to have someone available to help out if we need. Doubtful we would require any dedicated dev on our end unless you did some special dev on the site already that is not in line with the theme out of the box. We can of course look at a separate WP install and hosting for this which would allow us to work offline until it is ready, leaving the current functionality intact.
Re: URLs. we can set each instance as their own subdirectory or subdomain (I prefer subdomains personally) It appears that Transifex will also help us do this The ideal (I imagine) is that each instance has their own content based on the global contents and available in the languages they need.
Re: multiple languages, we may just be in luck! I was looking at the available languages (and the ability to create new languages) and they already have English (UK) English (Canada) and English (Australia) !! whoo hoo, did a little happy dance when I saw that. French is already available for Canada and France and they even have both norwegian languages (yes, we have 2 official versions) This means that we could in theory have a seperate language for each instances needs and if we need to go beyond that, we can create a new language as well. I also saw āPirate Englishā so me thinks we are good!
Re: Updates How we manage the updates is definitely to be determined. My understanding is that when content is changes on the core language that others are referenced to, they will show in transifex. If this is the case, all new updates should be made on the global core guide and trickle down to all other instances for translation as it does on the platform. If an instance wants to update their guide, we should have some sort of process to notify and update the core version to enable the spread of information. I may easily be wrong here. We may want to look at creating a global core language version which is a copy of the current AUS version, modify it to be more neutral to each instance and then enable translations from that. (hope that makes sense)
How we handle topics such as taxation etc is still an issue, more so because of screenshots etc. They need someone who understands Wordpress. Let me know what you think about that and how we could manage it. I havenāt really looked into our options yet.
We can also set up the forums - one for the userguide in general, with child forums for each instance. The forums can be added to the landing page for each instance if that is of interest.
In the long term, we will need to consider if every instance will have their own wordpress website with links to the user guide, their own ToS (which we are currently working on), mission statement, governance, by-laws, projects and other information, all of which is only pertinent to their instance; or if we want to consider truly making the .org the manager of all content and be fully multilingual.
In Scandinavia, we have a very basic WP website to provide information about our instance, due to lack of funding and other priorities, I have not been able to dedicate more time to it, but hope that at some point I will be able to.
Given that each instance will develop differently due to funding, focus and features (thinking about examples like the Thrive project Connect & Learn) we may want to lean in that direction. (Interesting concept: setting up a basic structure WP theme for new instances to help get them over the hump)
@NickWeir @lin_d_hop would love to hear your thoughts on this.
thanks for all the work on this. Having a Welsh language version of the user guide is a lower priority for OFN UK but it is still on the list! I am happy to talk this through in the global hangout on 13th Dec. will this be soon enough?
hi all - slight aside to this thread but related to user guide
I am not sure if the proposal above is going ahead, but I just want to raise a concern about the current structure . .
in responding to this post about buying groups, it made clear to me that we might need to revisit the user guide structure / platform. Itās full of utterly awesome content thanks to @sstead, but its hard for me to find things even when I know that theyāre there somewhere. It would be pretty amazing to have something with smaller linked pages that could be tagged or searchable. I know that the balance between book-like structure (with next / previous) and loose taggable has always been a problem, but I just wonder if it would be worth another look before a major overhaul of the wordpress. If this is not a problem for others just ignore me. Perhaps it could be resolved by breaking things into smaller nested pages and making it searchable?
Iām just going to throw this out there, but might using something like Gitbook be worth considering? The benefits I could see are:
- Content is versioned so could be setup to match with versions of OFN.
- Its Markdown which is plain text and the same format as Discourse.
- It offers a great clean interface with a ToC and quick searching. See https://handbook.enspiral.com/ and https://loomio.coop/ for examples.
- Multilingual versions are supported.
- There is a plugin that could support tagging.
- There is an editor app that can run locally for content creation.
All that said, I completely appreciate it isnt WP, which may be a strong āproā for content editors. Just a thought.
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wow yeah, thatās really nice and clean - I think it should be a consideration . .
Iāve been thinking a lot about the user guide and related tools/help for new users - and my comments come from the perspective of getting Sallyās help to to first train myself, and now orient/train others - as a non-technical person. First - the guide is awesome - and any time Iāve taken the time to go through it step by step, it has worked like a charm. BUT I very seldom did take that time (sorry @sstead) - and Iām finding people I am now āon-boardingā donāt take that time - instead asking āOh - yeah, I saw that there, do I need to go through that?ā. I was the same. I expect that something is intuitive enough that I shouldnāt have to read a guide. (likely not a reasonable expectation, but nonetheless, it seems to be the user expectation here in Canada anyway.)
So - Iāve wondered about a set of ātip sheetsā - that basically extract from and link to the user guide - but that are also āstand aloneā. They would be focused on different user cases. So for example: 1. a farm shop where you only sell your own goods, 2. a farm shop where you also sell a few other products, 3. an online market/hub where you have many suppliers but only one pick-up point, 4. an online market/hub where you have many suppliers and multiple delivery sites or days, 5. a buying club where a group of consumers are collating orders ā¦ Each ācaseā would have screenshots and step by steps (again - drawing from and linking to the user guide - but supplementing with more screenshots.) So - it is like a user guide pulled apart into use cases.
I also wonder if peopleās logical process occurs in reverse of how the user guide is layed out. (I"m not sure - wondering what others experience is). I have found that people think about the shop front and the order cycle first - and so I get new users without fees and payment methods set up who canāt figure out why their shop isnāt working. On my calls/emails to them, I find myself working backwards from an order cycle.
All this to say that the user guide is amazing - it covers everything - but I canāt seem to get people to use it.
As a next step - I thought I"d prepare some of these 2 pager āuse casesā and share them just to see if they might be helpful.
A common pattern with docs like this might be to have a Reference Guide that covers lots of detail (mostly what there is currently) and then there could be a set of Tutorials or Quick Start guides for different user groups as you suggest.
BTW, Gitbook also supports comments from others, so that opens up a means for feedback, etc.
@Kirsten if it would be helpful Iām happy to setup a test book, if others think worth exploring.
Hey all I agree with critiques of the user guide and am open to exploring Gitbook
I think Gitbook is a brilliant idea and much better than overhauling WP
note: the free version of Gitbook for open source projects has a limit of 5 collaborators
Perhaps one key decision if Gitbook is used is whether the book content is stored in a GH repo inside Open Food Foundation Ā· GitHub. If that was done, anyone who has permission to commit to that repo could add content. Gitbook will sync changes and also push changes back to GH that were committed direct to the book. See Welcome - GitBook Documentation. So the 5 person limit is not too serious.
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So if we used github for this - would this still appear seamless to the new user in OFN? I mean would it still basically be a link to the user guide as it is now? (apologies for the obvious question again - but I just want to make sure new users donāt have to go to a different platform for the user guide - because they wonāt bother.)