We don’t see what are hopefully the successful ones. We see the ‘Will this Pi3 work with a docker or VM’ kind of weird stuff and they have no idea what any of that is, saw in on YT or reddit or random forum posts stuff.
My thought on what the cookbook is about is that they run across a link or one of the posts and that gives them a curated list of things we thing they might run into. There they get advice and links to the actual docs.
I just had a thought. Maybe add a sentence to the cookbook index link to more invite people to see the whole list if they find one of the linked topics. It hangs there like a link, named OK, but I don’t assume that people are knowing what that link to the index will get them.
This would be a good one if someone wants to test this out and get some screenshots of it. Apparently if you are installing, or loading a backup, long running things like that, you can go to the CLI and do this to watch what is happening, I haven’t tried it, but hate it when installing and it tells you nothing. I’ve left mine sit a few hours so I wouldn’t mess up the install or backup recovery because I didn’t know this was possible… Discord.
Someone that can spool up instances easy would have to write it up, I don’t have the hardware or run a VM
I have seen lots of questions like is it still doing something, how long does this take, when can I open the webpage, it’s broken, etc…
I was thinking either in troubleshooting, like the context in the post, or installation aid so you can watch what the install is doing, know when it is done (If not this process, I have heard there is a process where you can do that), or watching a restore to make sure it is running.
It seemed useful to me, so I brought it up to see if someone wanted to tackle it, if not for the cookbook than just to have available I guess.
This is a jump link to the Zigbee section. I don’t think it shows as intended. The OP was pretty green so wanted a link with the words instead of just the title.
Damn it, I tested all the links in the Cookbook, but I didn’t think of the preview-for-links feature…
I think we can safely take the current TOC out. As I wrote above, I talked to @MissyQ and she’s looking into it in the next weeks. For the time being, we should simply wait, I’m quite sure, the TOC functionality from Discourse will come rather sooner than later.
It’s an obscure use case, but just letting us know. I’m not going to change the link I dropped on them, it looks fine if they don’t click the link in the link.
I asked TheFes if he could write up in a fresh post his global variable template so I could reference it better and then he asked if it could be in the cookbook. So He did and I did…
The reason why I added it to the top of the section is because I think a section should go from beginner/basic stuff to advanced/obscure. Adding a (core) integration is pretty basic.
I suggest to reorder the section to:
integration
frontend
automation
blueprint
templating / yaml
system (including database)
Notifications can be moved to integration or system maybe?
It’s just my 2 cents. I don’t want to force my opinion.
The main added value of the weather integration guide is to help new users select the integration which fits their needs.
I’m planning to expend it with links to weather cards, supplementery integrations such as air quality and weather related blueprints.
My intent of these very specific guides is to complement this Cookbook.
I have always felt a fair amount of the documentation on the website is from an advanced user’s perspective. I would suspect it’s intimidating for a new user.
I guess what I was saying i I don’t know how the docs are set-up or the hierarchy really. It has never made a lot of sense to me. I just google everything picking out integration keywords or describe some thing I want to do (or the customer wants to do) and find it that way.
When I’m looking a template Jinja2 thing, I pull up the page and word search it because it’s one document. I don’t get that one either. But this is me.
I don’t think a post would have me doing something different to see if there is an integration, for instance. Maybe others, don’t know.
You are not alone, I do the same thing. Although, I start with the forum then move to Google if I am running in circles. My thought process being, someone else most likely asked the same question at some point.
Then I have my own notes because as I have gotten older I forget a lot.
It took me quite some time to find that out until Tom made me aware of this.
My idea was that integrations were 3rd party services, devices and didn’t think I would find something like the basic media player info amongst the integrations - now I do.
For newcomers, it’s not that obvious where to look for information.
Things have gotten better, but maybe that’s also my perception* because of being a regular.
Having more ‘upfront’ guidance in what do to, where to search, what to post when asking a question can be helpful.
It took me while to figure this out too. I only clicked it when I developed my own integration.
I think a cookbook is a good idea.
What I’m also thinking is whether one could reach out to the dev team to make a bigger change to the docs by creating a new top bar menu item called domains (for example). All these building blocks can then be put there.
I too find it odd that it’s under integrations when it’s not something you can directly use or configure. I know those pages typically call it out and that specific integrations will often link back to these building block pages, but the penny may not drop immediately.
@123
Just added this to the cookbook. It would be awesome if you did an edit to that to pull in your version of how to do this like you did in How do I create a unique name for scene within a blueprint? - #2 by 123. or however you want to present it. I did a header on my section in anticipation that you would add your section.
