### Interface discovery

#### First steps

In addition to the global help pages, several administration pages have an online help. If javascript is enabled on your browser, you can see online help at the upper-right position of the page, by clicking on the Need Help? link. If Javascript is disabled, the help is displayed at the bottom of the page.

Each administration page will display the same top heading, main menu and footer. (The order given here is what is shown on a computer screen. For mobile devices or tablets, it may vary according to the space available.)

#### Top heading

The top heading is composed of three elements:

##### Logo

By default, this logo is the Dotclear logo and links to the administration landing page. However, a platform manager can choose another logo and redirect towards something else (generally, the service landing page).

##### Blog(s)

The first element located after the logo shows the active blog, i.e. the blog on which you are acting. If your installation is composed of several blogs, these informations are available in a combo menu, which lets you switch to another blog.

The link following the blog name opens your current blog in another window or another tab.

##### User

The link My dashboard gets you back to the blog administration landing page.

The link My preferences leads to the page where you can modify your personal informations, setup the dashboard and choose your interface and editing options.

Surprisingly, the link Disconnect [your login] disconnects you from the administration of your blog (at Dotclear's, we are ergonomy champions!).

#### Main menu

The main menu is located on the left side of the screen. It can be collapsed by clicking on its right border (and then uncollapsed by clicking again on it).

It leads to the different administration pages, according to your permissions on the current blog. It is composed of four blocks:

- My favorites lists the pages that you have selected as favorites in the My preferences/My Dashboard tab. If you have not selected any favorite yet, this list will contain the default Dotclear set, or the set that has been defined by the platform manager. If you do not want to display this block, you can uncheck the matching checkbox in your dashboard options.
- Blog lists all the pages that enable to feed and setup the current blog, from editing an entry, managing media, choosing the blog appearance or other parameters.
  If you do not have administrator rights on the current blog, there will be no other block below that one in the main menu.
- System settings links to the pages that allow you to manage the Dotclear installation: blogs management, users and available languages, plugins installation, system settings. If you have rights on several blogs, but no superadministrator rights, you will only see the Blogs entry.
- Plugins enables you to setup the installed plugins. If the plugin settings only impact one blog at a time, its administration page is available from the Blog block, but if they impact the whole installation, they are located here, and only available for super-admin users.

#### Footer

A free version of Dotclear will be offered to any user who will discover the secret hidden in the footer.

### Help for great beginners

If you are not familiar with blogs, we recommend that you have a look at our documentation (the whole table of contents is available in the Documentation tab of this page) as well as tutorials such as:

- My first entry, step by step.

The Dotclear forum is a welcoming place where there is no such thing as a stupid question. Don't hesitate to participate if you need help and, why not, to help people in return.

We try our best to use a vocabulary that is easy to understand without specific knowledge. However, if we end up using a technical term, you will probably find its definition in the glossary of our online documentation.

### User manual

#### Managing the content

- Entries
  - Creating and editing
  - Entry details
  - Entry-related actions
  - Comments and trackbacks
  - Batch management of entries
- Comments and trackbacks
  - Follow-up
  - Management
- Categories
  - Creating a category
  - Editing a category
  - Deleting a category
  - Sotring the category list
- Tags (keywords)
  - Adding tags
  - Tag management
- Media and attachments
  - Creating a sub-directory
  - Adding files
  - Downloading a zip archive of the current directory
  - Change of fill in file details
  - Adding files directly
  - Special file types
  - Attachments
- Blog menu content (widgets)
  - Navigation sidebar, Extra sidebar
  - Default widgets
  - Adding/removing a widget
  - Widgets options
- Blogroll
  - Blogroll
  - Adding a link
  - Adding a category
  - XFN
  - Importing links from an OPML or XBEL file

#### Settings and customization

- Blog settings
  - Blog details
  - Blog configuration
  - Comments and trackbacks
  - Blog presentation
  - Media and images
  - Search engine robot policy
  - Antispam
  - LightBox
  - Save
- User preferences
  - My profile
  - My options
  - My dashboard
- Blog appearance
  - Choose a theme
  - Install a theme
  - Personnalize a theme
  - Theme editor

#### Additional readings

##### Glossary

- All these mysterious words used on the Web and in Dotclear

##### Input syntaxes

- Wiki syntax and HTML equivalent
- To go further

##### Subscription (RSS, Atom...)

- What's that?
- How do I make it available on my blog?
- How do I subscribe to a feed?
- To go further

#### Help

- The Dotclear forum
- Frequently Asked Questions

### Documentation for administrators

#### Installation and update

- Installation
  - Prerequisites
  - Automatic installation
  - Standard installation
  - Installing using the wizard
  - Installing from the config.php file
  - Completing the installation process
  - Next steps
- Updating
  - Preparing for the update
  - Automatic upgrade
  - Updating the program
  - Updating the database
  - Appendix: updating a mercurial copy
- Configuration File (config.php) Parameters
  - Introduction
  - Parameters
  - Adding information to the file
- Upgrading from Dotclear 1.2 to Dotclear 2
- Migrating from another blogging software to Dotclear
- Local installation
  - Windows
  - Mac OS X
  - Linux
- Installing Dotclear with IIS7

##### Hosting Annex

- Hosting

#### Administration

- Managing users
  - Existing user list
  - Creating a user
  - Modifying a user
  - User permissions
- Clean installation
- Multiblog Installation
- Managing plugins
  - Installing a plugin
  - Configuring plugins
  - Removing a plugin
  - Updating a plugin
- The default theme Blowup
- Blog Themes
  - Choosing a theme
  - Installing a theme
  - Customizing a theme
  - Theme editor
- Advanced configuration

#### Maintenance

- Backup and restore
  - Import/Export
  - Files
  - Database
- Spam comment filters
  - Filter organization
  - Filter configuration

#### Help

- The Dotclear forum
- Frequently Asked Questions (Administrators)

### Developer and Designer resources

#### Design & Themes

- Themes
  - User guide for themes
  - The template tags
  - Appendix
- Themes inheritance
  - Principle
  - Limitations
  - Set up
- Template tags
  - Generalities / utilities
  - Blog
  - Entries
  - Entries pagination
  - Comments
  - Comment preview
  - Pings
  - Attachments
  - Categories
  - Tags
  - Archives
  - Languages
  - System
  - Widgets

#### Code & Plugins

- Creation of a tpl tag for a plugin or a theme
  - Introduction
  - Values
  - Instructions blocks
  - Demonstration of the template cache influence
- Plugins
  - Writing a plugin
  - Appendix
- Building the plugin contextual help
- External authentication
  - Preamble
  - A new authentication class
  - Scenario
  - Application
- XML/RPC interface
- API documentation

#### Contribution & Support

- Contribute
  - Edit this documentation
  - Share your creations
  - Report bugs or suggest new features
  - Localization
- Dotclear source code repository
- Dotclear forum

#### Conventions

- Coding standards
- Administration pages chart

### Accessibility and ergonomy

The Dotclear interface fulfills almost all the WCAG 2.0 criterion. We are working towards making Dotclear compatible with ATAG 2.0 guidelines.

Accessibility and ergonomy are one of our main concern. We regularly run analysis with the help of experts and continuously provide fixes and enhancements.

You can help us by opening tickets or by participating on the forum. You can also participate in user testing or join our team!