HM-like software to run online?

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Martin Wynne
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HM-like software to run online?

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

I'm looking for some software which would be very similar to H&M, but would run online and accept input from any registered user. For perhaps 1,000 registered users with perhaps 25 online at once.

I don't mean a Wiki -- or maybe I do? :?

I envisage software which would present a web page on which any user could create and submit a discrete topic, with a simple editor, keywords, and TOC entry details just like H&M. The software would build a new public Webhelp-like site from the submitted topics, perhaps once daily. I'm expecting this would be a php-based system for my server. It may perhaps be a plug-in for a web forum or BB package.

Any suggestions? I've tried looking, but I'm not sure what such a thing would be called? The most important part would be the keyword indexing from the submitted keywords, a fully working TOC is not so important, nor searching, although nice to have.

Many thanks for any help,

Martin.
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Tim Green
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Re: HM-like software to run online?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Martin,

I think you're either looking for a wiki like MediaWiki, for which there seem to be quite a few alternative front ends, or a content management system (CMS). A CMS essentially amounts to the same thing, but with more controlled user access and registration, and probably more power available to users to do things and mess things up once they have the access. I don't have all that much experience with CMSs but on balance by guess would be that you'd probably find more ready-to-use options in the wiki area. Even so, you might want to have a look at CMSs like Drupal and Joomla, which do have a huge number of tools and plugins for all sorts of different use case scenarios.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Martin Wynne
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Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: HM-like software to run online?

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi Tim,

Many thanks for your thoughts.

I have looked at Wikis and Drupal/Joomla plug-ins, but I can't seem to find quite what I'm looking for. I can't find anything which will generate a separate web site similar to H&M's Webhelp output. I suspect one of the many plug-ins probably could do this, but without delving deeply into every single one it's difficult to know. I'm hoping someone already knows. :)

I have already written a Windows executable which does most of what I want, which I have sent to several users. It provides an editor, creates an H&M topic in XML format from the user input, and FTPs it to my server. I then pull it into H&M, compile and publish a fresh Webhelp build.

I was hoping to find something which would run online to replace all of that. I may have to settle for a half-way house by rewriting my executable in php for a web page, and do the rest here via some automation of H&M. Unfortunately my php skills are a bit limited compared with what I can do in Windows, which is why I was hoping to find something similar already available and more scalable.

Thanks again for any help.

regards,

Martin.
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Aitch
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Re: HM-like software to run online?

Unread post by Aitch »

Hi Martin,

Don't know if it will be of any help and you probably know more about this than me, but we use Sharepoint at our company. And quite a lot of users are on there (thousands), where they have access to one document.. that's an 'online' repository.

We also have Subversion, but I don't think that's what you're after.

I hope you do find what you're looking for.

Heidi
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