Using Documentation

Using Documentation Guides and Reference

Audience

The primary audience for this documentation is customers of Hostfurl and their support.

This documentation does not make assumptions that an audience is experienced.

For example we expect individuals to take on a support role for an organisation with limited experience of that role.

We also expect that some individuals will have limited access to peer support.

Hence we provide information following below and elsewhere that in some contexts would be considered excessive.

Clicking on the top left will bring you back to the documentation main page which contains links and some getting started cards.

On the left column are links to various guides and references.

On the right are links to sections within a guide or reference

Getting started

Please see Getting Started Guide and Edit New Site

Guides

Guides are focussed on achieving specific results through series of steps to be actioned. There is no focus on explanation. It is not necessary to understand why particular steps are taken.

Reference

References provide definition, lists, tables, standards and further references. They can help with terminology, specifications, agreed standards and further external references and so assist with decision making and planning. Usually there is no focus on specific actions.

References are usually terse and are not designed to be understood without contextual hands on experience

It is not practical to provide full reference and there is no need to, because where standard practices and terminology is used there is plenty of external references.

Achieving Understanding

Achieving understanding requires continuous hands on experience with the help of guides and references.

Online resources

Using online resources, such as with web searches and forums, is a massive help but must not be considered authoritative, reliable and as helpful as presented.

Online question and answers resource stackoverflow is considered to be a high quality resource for developers. It is common to include the word stackoverflow in web searches to limit results to those from stackoverflow.

Books, classes, tutorials

Almost always disappointing because they over promise on what you will achieve for the time and money invested and make it appear it is your fault when you don’t. There is really no substitute for hands on real experience.

The best outcome is that you gain exposure to language or terminology, learn expectations about how things are done, learn about algorithmic approaches and widen your general knowledge. Do not expect to achieve competency.

Completeness

The documentation is incomplete