v4.6 User and administrator guide published on GitBook

Find out how to use all the new 4.6 features and read the re-vamped Events chapter at http://gitbook.civicrm.org/.

First the formalities...

Thank you to the people who contributed to this update including Joanne Chester, Maya Gibb, Roshani Kothari, Michael McAndrew, Joe Murray, Kate Sneed, Galata Tona and any others I have forgotten to mention.

Now for an explanation...

As Michael outlined in a recent blog we have been looking for a new home for our User and administrator guide with GitBook and Read The Docs being the strong contenders.  Reading Michael's blog you should have gained the impression that we were near the start of an evaluation phase with various issues still to resolve, and that we were looking for input from the rest of the Civi community; two weeks later we have published on GitBook.

What happened to the investigation/consultation phase? Well, it is still to come, but our old publishing engine has stopped working, so we needed to do something in a hurry. Michael had already migrated an almost-finished 4.6 version to GitBook, so getting that ready to publish was the quickest interim solution.  It isn't a full solution however. In Civicrm the documentation links still point to the old 4.5 version of the book. We don't intend updating them until we have made a final decision about the new home for our documentation.  This isn't ideal, but will have to do for now. 

And a word of warning...

The GitBook version of the book is now the authoritative version of the User and administrator guide.  So documenters, please don't make any changes on Booki.  If you know how to use GitHub you can create your own account on GitBook, but please don't do that just yet as there are a few issues we need to think through first. I will post again when they are resolved.  If you don't know how to use GitHub, either create an issue on jira (with Component set to User and administrator documentation, Affects Version set to 4.6 and Documentation Required set to None.) or keep a personal record of the changes you want to make.   Making it easy for you to contribute is a high priority for us, but first we need to work out what software we will be using.