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Subject:Re: Hosted Help - server specs? From:Julie Stickler <jstickler -at- gmail -dot- com> To:Technical Writing <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 5 Dec 2013 10:41:35 -0500
I've argued for having the Help visible to everyone, especially since
several of my former employers have all of their doc available online. The
last thing I wanted to do was restrict our Help to a limited number of
users (one of the suggestions was to host on SalesForce, but not all of our
customers have access to our Support site).
It needs to be locked down because one of our products is just
transitioning from beta to GA, and I got the "we don't want the competition
to be able to see it" when I tried to argue for opening the docs to
everyone. Which I can kinda understand, since that product is all new
features at this point. So we're looking at ways to pass the license
information or the user authentication with the Help call.
On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>wrote:
> There's no architecture, really. Web help is just HTML and JavaScript.
> You dump the files in a directory. You don't need anything but Apache
> or some other standard web server. Send the IT manager some sample
> output. Here's the information on making the help calls:
>
>
>http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare7/Content/CSH/WebHelp_CSH_Calls/CSH_Calls_WH_WHP.htm
>
> I strongly recommend using alias files rather than letting developers
> hard-code calls to specific pages.
>
> If you want to limit the help to registered users (what's the
> marketing case for not letting prospective customers see it?) then
> just put the help files in the application, or if for some reason you
> want to use a separate server, use the same authentication method you
> use for access to the application. If the help is password-protected,
> then I don't think you can use Google Analytics.
>
> On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Julie Stickler <jstickler -at- gmail -dot- com>
> wrote:
> > The subject line says "server specs" because our IT manager replied to my
> > initial inquiry with "We may have to build a new server for it. It all
> > depends on how this thing is architected." I've usually had to maintain
> > help that was already coded into the product, so being asked "how this is
> > going to be architected" rather baffled me. The application makes a call
> > to the Help URL (Welcome.html or some such). The call might include some
> > sort of token or password if we're locking down the Help to registered
> > users only. What else am I missing here?
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com
> >wrote:
> >
> >> The subject line says "server specs." Hosting web help generally
> >> requires relatively little additional horsepower from a web server
> >> that's already handling a SaaS application.
> >>
> >> You might look into replacing Flare's default web help search with
> >> something more robust, such as Google or a Google Appliance.
> >>
> >> You'll probably want to use Google Analytics or something similar for
> >> metrics.
> >>
> >> On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 11:43 AM, Julie Stickler <jstickler -at- gmail -dot- com>
> >> wrote:
> >> >>Web help is not very resource-intensive as web applications go.
> >> >
> >> > Not sure what you mean by this?
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Julie Stickler
> > http://heratech.wordpress.com/
> > Blogging about Agile and technical writing
> >
> >
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> authoring.
> >
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> >
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