Any suggestions for a help system?

[firewood]

I am developing a CMS/web-building website, and I need to include a
good help system to help my customers learn how to use the features of
what my project offers. Does anyone have suggestions about what help
products I could incorporate into my site?

I want the standard outline system, with a column showing chapters, an
index, and search box.

Any leads will be greatly appreciated.

[Sander Tekelenburg]

Re: Any suggestions for a help system?

In article <ikki42h7fvruvn f6bvnpaarpd82n8 n0v4v@4ax.com>,
firewood <firewood@ironw ork.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I am developing a CMS/web-building website, and I need to include a
> good help system to help my customers learn how to use the features of
> what my project offers.[/color]

The best help system is the one that isn't needed. While it is likely
that you'll need to offer *some* help/documentation, don't be the
zilionth developer to use documentation as an excuse to not aim for a
self-explanatory UI.

I realise that's not what you asked for and I realise it's not easy to
achieve. But I do think it's the only 'right' goal to aim for.

[...]
[color=blue]
> I want the standard outline system, with a column showing chapters, an
> index, and search box.[/color]

Searchability is good to offer, but only if it produces relevant
results. Too often such systems are in practice useless. Personally I
prefer contextual help: provide a mechanism that offers help relating to
the current context, whatever it is.
[color=blue]
> Any leads will be greatly appreciated[/color]

HTH

--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

Mac user: "Macs only have 40 viruses, tops!"
PC user: "SEE! Not even the virus writers support Macs!"

[marcin.czaja@gmail.com]

Re: Any suggestions for a help system?

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[fletch]

Re: Any suggestions for a help system?

I agree with Sander, but I would add something. You can use tooltips to
help provide context help, domTT is our preferred javascript library
for such tooltips. If you want to do a bug manualy becasue your system
does require it then I would suggest looking at DocBook which is a
format that makes converting into pdfs, html, etc relatively easy.

Having said that I do like the documents that allow comments (like the
php manual).