A few questions about using Umbraco to create a help system.
Hi all,
Just to preface with an apology if this is in the wrong place!
We're looking to create a new help/software guide experience for our users, so they have more access to the stuff they need and we can implement a restructure that's been in the pipeline for a while. Currently its an old bunch of .pdfs and we want to create a system that clearly structures all the articles and tutorials and such. Initially it started as a "kind of wiki that people can't edit", but for what we want these systems don't quite seem to have the extensibility we might want in the future.
We're basically wanting to use umbraco to manage the creation of such a system, and I just had a few queries about it.
1: We're thinking of ways to get this site out to our clients. Ideally it wants to be a local site on each of our clients servers. One problem is they use a number of different database systems, so we were wondering if there was any built-in way of exporting the entire site to a local system without a copy of the database? We aren't looking to host it ourselves as our clients would often need access on systems without internet connectivity. The less work they have to do, the better (and they will be very limited with what extra infrasturcture they can use) so simply telling them all to get, say, SQL Server Express isn't a viable solution. Is this something Courier would help with?
2: From reading what little there is about it on this forum, it seems some people have at least attempted to add e-learning functionality to Umbraco. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this, and how easy it was to integrate? I'm assuming there's not much more to it than creating the module and plugging it in, but we just wanted to check the system is as flexible as it seems.
These aren't be-all-and-end-all questions, but just stuff that we want to know before we head down a particular path with this.
In point 1 do you mean you want a way of importing into Umbraco your different databases? Or do you mean integrate into the site the data stored in the database? If importing then you can use paid product CMSImport (http://our.umbraco.org/projects/developer-tools/cmsimport) if integration then that can easily be done by creating your own macros.
We are wanting to provide the site to clients so they can use it locally, without it needing a database for it to function at their end. So basically we want to create it and manage it using a database, but then provide the complete site to clients with everything (including all the content in the database) integrated into a site they can just install and use.
They use a range of database systems and fairly inflexible with what they can and can't add to them, so if we can cut that part out altogether that would be ideal.
So to hear you straight I understand your requirements as you would like to manage the content via Umbraco but distribute a version of the site to your clients to run in their local environment without the necessity of DB..
My approach to this problem would be to use umbraco to manage, but create publish events or a function that produces a static version of the database content for distribution.
There was package around a few years back that did this in older versions of Umbraco but the process is not that hard to recreate. Basically on Publish you create an event that would take the output of the page, and save it to a directory. You can then distribute that directory of static HTML along with any other assets required. The end user or company can then run that help system as a static website.
Yep, that's exactly right - your approach is what we want. Creating something ourselves so we can do that would be fine, yeah, so that's pretty much answered my question. I know it's not the ideal solution and we're still thinking about how we'd go about it but it's good to know that we could achieve it with Umbraco with a bit of effort.
For static output you could make use of fastcache i used it the other day it spits out static html works with v6 http://our.umbraco.org/projects/website-utilities/fast-cache only thing is files are renamed with guid source code is there so could be hacked as well.
A few questions about using Umbraco to create a help system.
Hi all,
Just to preface with an apology if this is in the wrong place!
We're looking to create a new help/software guide experience for our users, so they have more access to the stuff they need and we can implement a restructure that's been in the pipeline for a while. Currently its an old bunch of .pdfs and we want to create a system that clearly structures all the articles and tutorials and such. Initially it started as a "kind of wiki that people can't edit", but for what we want these systems don't quite seem to have the extensibility we might want in the future.
We're basically wanting to use umbraco to manage the creation of such a system, and I just had a few queries about it.
1: We're thinking of ways to get this site out to our clients. Ideally it wants to be a local site on each of our clients servers. One problem is they use a number of different database systems, so we were wondering if there was any built-in way of exporting the entire site to a local system without a copy of the database? We aren't looking to host it ourselves as our clients would often need access on systems without internet connectivity. The less work they have to do, the better (and they will be very limited with what extra infrasturcture they can use) so simply telling them all to get, say, SQL Server Express isn't a viable solution. Is this something Courier would help with?
2: From reading what little there is about it on this forum, it seems some people have at least attempted to add e-learning functionality to Umbraco. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this, and how easy it was to integrate? I'm assuming there's not much more to it than creating the module and plugging it in, but we just wanted to check the system is as flexible as it seems.
These aren't be-all-and-end-all questions, but just stuff that we want to know before we head down a particular path with this.
Hope you folks can help, Cheers.
Chris,
In point 1 do you mean you want a way of importing into Umbraco your different databases? Or do you mean integrate into the site the data stored in the database? If importing then you can use paid product CMSImport (http://our.umbraco.org/projects/developer-tools/cmsimport) if integration then that can easily be done by creating your own macros.
Regards
Ismail
Ismail,
Possibly the latter.
We are wanting to provide the site to clients so they can use it locally, without it needing a database for it to function at their end. So basically we want to create it and manage it using a database, but then provide the complete site to clients with everything (including all the content in the database) integrated into a site they can just install and use.
They use a range of database systems and fairly inflexible with what they can and can't add to them, so if we can cut that part out altogether that would be ideal.
Regards,
Hi Chris
So to hear you straight I understand your requirements as you would like to manage the content via Umbraco but distribute a version of the site to your clients to run in their local environment without the necessity of DB..
My approach to this problem would be to use umbraco to manage, but create publish events or a function that produces a static version of the database content for distribution.
There was package around a few years back that did this in older versions of Umbraco but the process is not that hard to recreate. Basically on Publish you create an event that would take the output of the page, and save it to a directory. You can then distribute that directory of static HTML along with any other assets required. The end user or company can then run that help system as a static website.
Is that kinda what you are looking for?
Peter,
Yep, that's exactly right - your approach is what we want. Creating something ourselves so we can do that would be fine, yeah, so that's pretty much answered my question. I know it's not the ideal solution and we're still thinking about how we'd go about it but it's good to know that we could achieve it with Umbraco with a bit of effort.
Cheers!
No problems.
This is for an older version of Umbraco but it might have some gems in it that could be updated to more current API's
http://our.umbraco.org/projects/static-html-export
Hope you find a suitable solution :)
Pete,Chris,
For static output you could make use of fastcache i used it the other day it spits out static html works with v6 http://our.umbraco.org/projects/website-utilities/fast-cache only thing is files are renamed with guid source code is there so could be hacked as well.
Regards
Ismail
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