Links to Help and Manuals for Plugins and Themes

[TfTHacker]

I see more and more help sites being made for plugins and themes. This is a very good thing for Obsidian. While we can often find links to these help sites at GitHub repositories, not all users understand or even enjoy GitHub. For non-developers, it can be confusing.

This feature request promotes an easier way for users to find the end-user documentation of plugins or themes. I suggest adding a button to the Community Plugins listing that is a link to open the help site of a plugin or theme. Basically, it builds on the fundingUrl key in manifest.json. It could look something like this:

Developers could then include in their manifest a key called “helpUrl” with the link to their help site. I have already started adding this to my plugins with the optimistic hope this could be added:

This would make it easier for users to find the help and manuals written by the author for their plugin or theme.

Thank you for considering this feature request, which I think would be relatively easy to add and hopefully improve the Obsidian learning experience.

[Jopp]

I voted for a similar request :

A button to go back to plugin documentation from plugin options

Use case or problem I’m often dealing with plugins and their options and it’s inconvenient that there is a button to go from a Community plugin to its options (via the Options button or Cog), but not the other way around. Proposed solution A button / method on each plugin’s options page which jumps the plugin’s page (which shows its README, and Options, Enable, Hotkeys buttons, etc). Thanks.

Well, at this point let’s add a pop-up menu/ expand on hover for all these buttons except for the on - off toggle. Things are getting messy.

[AnthonyBaker]

Love this idea.

[Daveb08]

‘Loving/Hearting’ this is a No Brainer! Thanks for posting!!

[CawlinTeffid]

I would prefer a standard button to link to the plugin’s description page, as in the request that Jopp linked. Every plugin has one, and it’s often the only documentation. When it’s not, it includes a link to the full documentation. (This is similar to how in the Settings > Community Plugins list of installed plugins, the plugin names link to their description pages.)

Related request (to which I said the same thing):

Include the github repo link in the plugin settings page

Use case or problem When you are looking at the options page of a plugin, such as this: [Screen Shot 2023-01-01 at 12.38.28 PM] often questions come up that require going to the repo page for that plugin. However, that means to the community plugins, then typing the name of the plugin then finding the plugin, then clicking the link. If there are several changes to be made, this is cumbersome. Proposed solution Automatically include the url to the link somewhere in the options page. The na…

[TfTHacker]

I see where you are coming from, but my point is GitHub pages, by there nature, are not so user-friendly. I am suggesting it is better to go to the actual help site. I have four active plugins and see many times users get lost in GitHub, no matter how hard I try to clarify that the documentation is referred to from the site.

[CawlinTeffid]

I’m not suggesting it link to GitHub, but to the description page in the plugin store (“as in the request that Jopp linked”). I only linked to the GitHub request because it’s related; I responded to that one the same with the same alternative.

[TfTHacker]

I have built a plugin to demonstrate how this feature would work. Check out my tweet on the subject:

https://x.com/TfTHacker/status/1728518673089073282