CMS-like help structure for web applications?

Question

We have a relatively large web application (> 200 pages) to which we need to start adding help screens. We were wondering if there is an application like CMS that is especially suitable for such undertakings (instead of trying to create all the editing screens for business owners, search, formatting, etc.).

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The fastest and easiest way to do this is to take something like the ScrewTurn Wiki, which is ideal as a knowledge base and simply creates help links on the help screens on your existing site.

http://www.screwturn.eu/

Answer 2

If your application is already MVC, why not add some contextual help to it ...

For example, on your layout page, add an icon that simply leads the user to the help page by passing the link page. URL will be

If you were on

YourApp/Customer/Create/ 

Then

 YourApp/Help/Customer/Create/ 

Then you can have a HelpController that looks for help for the CustomerController and, in particular, the Create action, which allows you to help in great detail, as well as return to more general help if specific help is not available.

You can even redirect to a CMS that contains information, if you do not want to write this part yourself, you just need to save the map on the CMS page that will provide help on this topic (or use a similar congress-based route for content).

Here is the routing rule for your Global.asax.cs file.

  routes.MapRoute( "Help", "Help/{controllerName}/{actionName}", new { controller = "Help", action = "Details", controllerName = UrlParameter.Optional, actionName = UrlParameter.Optional } ); 

Answer 3

Have you watched @ Orchard ? Its a CMS-based MVC (e.g. WordPress). I think you can install orchard on something like / Help in your application and create "Posts" for each of your help topics. Using the "Clean URL" features, it’s pretty easy to create relevant links from your user application. (~ / Help / Module1, for example). It also has a search, roles, and perhaps most of the other things you were looking for.

The only part that I'm not 100% on is the style, but from what I read, it looks pretty easy.