I sketched up a brief outline of such a manual over lunch today.
- Introduction
- Lightweight system for creating periodically-updated web pages
- Useful for journals, weblogs, announcement pages, discussion boards, ...
- "Like instant messages to the web"
- Provides excellent facilities for tracking updates to pages
- Provides visibility between departments or geographically separate offices
- Gets knowledge out of people's heads, paper notes, meetings, skimmed/deleted email, and into an organized, browseable, searchable web site
- Getting started
- Probably minimal discussion of account setup, since many employees will have their accounts created for them in advance
- Mention origin of LiveJournal software; references to www.lj.com, "paid accounts", legalese, COPPA, etc may be ignored
- How to get/change your password
- Where to edit user info later
- What we use "interests" for (if anything)
- Downloading and using the client
- Where to get it, how to install
- How to post, how to set visibility
- Where your page is located
- How to edit existing posts
- Friends
- Intro: friends are used for friends view, but also affect visibility, community posting access
- How to add friends
- How to access friends list, or others' friends lists
- How to find people for friends list
- Communities
- Intro: community == journal where multiple people can post
- How to make, meaning of setup options
- How to join and watch
- How to post (client "Select Active Journal")
- Comments
- Making comments
- Reading comments
- Email notification
- Using comments effectively
- Future improvements to comment/notification system
- Advanced features
- Intro: very powerful system, much is in flux, check most recent docs
- Styles
- Friend groups
- Poll system
- What else? I'm not a power user, I don't know what to put here
- Common uses
- Quick section with more details on different ways to use LJ effectively
- Personal work journal / scribble space
- Keeping track of other members in a project team
- Announcements page
- Discussion board / brainstorming space
