I love discovering new cool WordPress plugins / solutions and I love it even more if the developer has taken the effort to create a demo video of the plugin in action.
However:
Demo videos showing something in the WordPress Dashboard and there's updates and notices there?
I have an opinion about that.
— Remkus de Vries (@DeFries) July 8, 2016
So, let’s address that. What is my opinion about that? I think it comes across unprofessional and sloppy. There, I said it.
Now, it’s very easy to criticize something, but it takes effort to actually come up with a solution. Or rather, in this case, steps to take to prevent sloppy demo videos. On that note, I’d like to share with you the steps that I take before I start recoding a demo.
Demo preparation steps
- Close all non related apps
- If possible, use a dedicated Demo Desktop screen (in Mac OS X for example) or create an actual separate demo account.
- Kill all notifications.
- Set up a fresh demo installation (on your local dev with DesktopServer for instance) with domain name that reflects the purpose.
- Update all the things. WordPress, plugins, themes and translations. Yes, all the things.
- Clear all notices in the Dashboard. Perhaps even use a clever way to hide and combine all those notices, but that’s a different subject 😉
- Hide the toolbar, bookmarks in your browser
- Hide all the browser extensions and plugins
- Make sure you have a fitting desktop wallpaper if you have the possibility it might be shown when clicking around
That’s my demo preparation checklist. Obviously there are some things to consider when actually recording as well:
- Use a storyboard if it’s a long demo with lots of steps
- Do a proper introduction starting at the beginning
- Explain your steps while you’re doing them. Don’t assume the audience knows why you click somewhere
- Get a proper microphone that records something that’s actually similar to your voice
- Do a proper recap
So there you have it. Problem and solution. I’m sure there tons of smart stuff you guys do as well when creating demo videos and I’d love for you to share them in the comments!
Looks like there’s a super handy way to just remove all admin notices in one line of code:
remove_all_actions( 'admin_notices' );That assumes that all notices were added using the correct hook, so if a dev rolled their own notice loader then it won’t work of course. It’s probably handy just to load that code before doing a screencast to prevent any unwanted notices appearing.
Thanks Hugh! Great addition if your demo doesn’t depend on displaying any notices in the process 😉
Very timely post, as I recently recorded my first screencast. My biggest win would probably to get a better microphone but when it comes to clearing up admin clutter, I found the WordPress Database Reset plugin to be of great help.
It allows you to quickly revert a site to just after the installation process, the entire process takes 20 second tops.
Anyway, great tips, fully agree. Thanks Remkus!
That’s a great plugin / solution as well. Thanks for sharing!