New User Onboarding

This page describes the current and planned enhancements the process that new users go through as they register and create their default environment.

Choose Environment Type

• Default wiki. The default pages provided by MediaWiki.
• Wiki with static templates (user is asked which template pages they would like to install)
• PARA Wiki uses the Second Brain and Zettelkasten methods with dynamic content

Tasks to Accomplish

1. Set timezone (get from Google if possible to set the default); although the user can change it in their profile settings
2. Choose which of the default Areas to use and optionally add new Areas
3. Optionally create Topics
4. Optionally list Projects and assign Areas and/or Topics to each
5. Optionally choose to import template pages

Steps

Users go through an onboarding wizard. The first question ask about the type of environment they would like:

1. A blank default wiki (no further setup needed).
2. A wiki without page properties or any dynamic content. The user is shown the example demo.goalstriving.org and is then presented with a list of every template page and can check which they would like installed in their wiki by default.
3. A scheme is enforced on every page and dynamic content is used.

If the user chooses option 3, the wizard continues:

• To choose the Areas and Topics, the user clicks through multiple pages, each listing about 20 options; the user is asked to:
  • Check the Area box if it is an ongoing parts of my life that I develop or maintain
  • Check the Topic box if you typically spend less than an hour per week thinking about or doing this, but you will probably end up eventually having multiple wiki pages related to it.
• Each page has a category of: Personal, Fitness & Nutrition, Household, Family, Friends & Social Activities, Volunteering, Vehicles, Learning, Travel & Vacations, Entertainment, Hobbies, etc.
• The user is asked to list all of the projects they are actively working, and we show them examples:
  • Create family vacation photo book
  • Replace kitchen floor
  • Plan Italy vacation
  • Complete course on Python
• Users are asked to set a status for each project
  • Active for those which you typically spend > 1 hour per week
  • Inactive for others
• If the user has a combined total of > 20 active projects + areas, they are warned that they should consider setting some projects to Inactive and/or some Areas to Topics