Ask HN: Help/FAQs/documentation system, like Google's help?

9 points by apexauk 16y ago ↗ HN

Does anyone know of a system (SaaS or self-hosted) to run a help/FAQs/documentation system?

We're looking for something simple, in the style of all Google's help sites (e.g. http://mail.google.com/support/) - basically a simple CMS, with categorisation and automatic generation of multiple levels of index pages, search, "did this help" style widgets for feedback, list of most popular articles etc.

What I'm _not_ looking for is a GetSatisfaction/UserVoice -style "community-powered" support.

Not rocket science.. but surely a common problem. Anyone know of anything ready-to-go?

Cheers! -- A

9 comments

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mikexstudios 16y ago ↗

I've seen many startups use Tender App (http://www.tenderapp.com) which seems very well designed and developed (by the team at entp!).

Here's an example of their help/FAQ/doc system: https://help.tenderapp.com/faqs

apexauk 16y ago ↗

Thanks, we saw Tender - but they don't have a way of disabling the other parts of the system (forum etc) apparently.

ABrandt 16y ago ↗

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but a fellow HNer (hajrice) is working on questionify.com

They're still in private beta but I know Emil would be more than willing to offer an account. Good luck!

thaumaturgy 16y ago ↗

A lot of open source projects just use MediaWiki.

fabiandesimone 16y ago ↗

You might want to give Screen Steps a look. http://www.bluemangolearning.com/

gspyrou 16y ago ↗

If you are using ASP.NET you may take a look at Web Application Toolkit for FAQs : http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jsenior/Web-Application-Toolk...

oziumjinx 16y ago ↗

Check out http://www.helpspot.com/ and http://www.knowledgems.com/

apexauk 16y ago ↗

Look handy - thanks! I'll check these out.

gdevore 16y ago ↗

ScreenSteps Live combines a hosted documentation service with a desktop client for quickly creating screenshot based documentation. It also integrates very nicely with Zendesk. You can see an example here:

http://help.screensteps.com

Or, here is another example site we set up:

http://ipad.screensteps.com

Very simple to use and very effective. You can read a case study here:

http://www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps/case_studies/se...