Guidelines For Submitting Best Practice Tips

Background

There are many different avenues that people take to submit ideas to the Foswiki community, such as the mailing lists, support web, development web etc.. However, there has been no central area where best practice ideas could be submitted. The BestPracticeTips Wiki application was created to fill this void and put some structure around how people are using Foswiki, especially in the following areas:

• Developing Wiki Applications - We know that users of Foswiki (and TWiki) have created Wiki applications by using either the core of Foswiki or by using a number of extensions. This application provides a mechanism where people can share ideas about how to best approach this activity, simplifying understanding of the process, and providing proven frameworks that all users can avail of to quickly deploy Wiki apps to their Foswiki deployment.

• Using Extensions - There are a large number of extensions available for the Foswiki platform that are regularly used together to achieve a stated aim. Information on how best to solve particular problems by using a number of extensions is highly valuable to the community as a whole.

• ....... (To finish)

Aim

The aim of the BestPracticeTips application is to continue to build on the hard work by the community to make Foswiki an intuitive, dependable, and extensible platform. The application should be used to provide proven, repeatable, non-intuitive solutions to problems which we as a community run into while working with Foswiki on a daily basis.

The format of the tip topics is loosely derived from software design patterns used in the software development community, but can be applicable to a large number of subject domains.

Tip Topic Breakdown

Each tip will have the following breakdown:

Problem

What is the problem that the tip provides a solution to?

Context

In what context would this tip be used

Solution

The bones of the tip.. How it works

Known Uses

Provide some details of where the tip has been used successfully, how the solution has helped users of the tip, etc...

Known Limitations

Provides some details of the limitations of the tip. e.g.

• Requires at least version XXX of Extension...
• Needs JavaScript enabled

See Also

Provide links to similar topics/web resources/articles etc..

Tip Submission

Before submitting a tip, keep the following in mind:

• Has a similar tip already been submitted? If one has, would it be possible to extend this tip instead?
• Is the tip something that could feasibly be used by another community member in their environment? If the tip is specific to your deployment, could it be abstracted to make it useful to others?
• The tip must be reproducible on a standard Foswiki platform, using the core Foswiki framework and known extensions.