Announcing The New DonationCoder.com Help Desk

[mouser]

I am incredibly happy to announce that our new Help Desk / FAQ is now open and filled with content:

http://www.donationcoder.com/Help

It's built using KnowledgeBasePublisher and I couldn't be happier with it.

I hope it can serve as a resource for frequently asked questions and answers and as a place where we can organize all the various tips and tricks and trivia about the site, and it includes an easy question/comment submission form when you need more guidance.

You can get to the Help Desk at any time by clicking on the HELP link at the top of all of our pages.

And if you have any suggestions for Q&A subjects to add to the Help Desk please do let us know.

[urlwolf]

Wow! Looks really good, good work Mouser!

How did you pick KnowledgeBasePublisher out of the million FAQ manager frameworks out there? What makes you so happy? How easy is it to work with? (e.g., is it as simple as say wordPress? Did you have to muck around much with the code?

Also, does it make it possible for users to add their own FAQs?

[mouser]

Ok first things first, credit goes to DC member Veign - I read about it first on his blog, Unhandled Perception.

Anderson (wordzilla) and I checked out a ton of Help Desk and FAQ tools, both open source and commercial, before going with this kbp.

There are some serious Help Desk tools that support tickets and assigning tasks to support personel, etc.  If you need that kind of stuff then kbp is definitely not for you.  Although I call it a help desk, it's really a FAQ system but with some functionality for users to leave comments and submit contact forms, etc.

Like many open source projects, it is a bit uneven.  It has almost no documentation and there are small things missing. 

I did a solid days work customizing and writing php code to improve the contact submission forms and do other stuff like add translation buttons, and tweak the look and feel.

However I just love the clean feel of it, and the administration panel is suprisingly rich.  It is extremely easy to work with and works well and looks good right out of the box even without any modifications.

Normal users cannot add their own FAQ entries BUT it does have a full role management system so you can add editors who are allowed to add entries, etc.  It would be easy to give editing permission to a whole bunch of people.

[mouser]

By the way, DC Member sri knows a lot about these web script things and wrote about kbp on his blog as well:
http://www.sridhareena.com/2007/01/27/how-to-install-knowledgebasepublisher-on-your-web-site/

[AndyM]

That is very cool!!!

[mouser]

Also:
Thanks to Wordzilla (anderson/mobysaurus author) for all the help with the HelpDesk and being the person who came up with the idea in the first place.  And also to Nudone for of course making another great Cody pic to go on the page

[crono]

Hi Mouser and stuff,

the new Helpdesk is _really_ cool. I know other systems for FAQ management but this looks really fantastic
BTW: I didn't know about the consulting thing how long is this going?

[mouser]

consulting thing has been going on for a very long time.. about 30 hours or so.. 

(dc dont quite pay enough to foot the bills so i'm preparing to more actively seek out some part time freelance work; if anyone knows any businesses looking to contract out some coding stuff, please drop them my email)