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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...How do you document your sites?How do you document your sites?
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4/9/2006 2:12 AM
 

I am curious what you all do for documenting your sites. 

I've been in the process of setting up four different instances of DNN.  Two are pretty simple and the other two are fairly complex (custom modules, sub-portals, etc).  As I move forward I will probably add new sites, upgrade these with new versions, etc. and I would like to be able to maintain some consistent and usefull documentation on the sites.

I started preparing word documents as templates but it's occured to me that I'll run into several problems in the long term.  First, if I want to add something new I will need to add it X times across X number of documents for each site.  Plus I'm doing a serious duplication of effort (I change something in the DNN site, then I have to go to the documentation and update what I did). 

So the next logical extension would be to build a database driven app, perhaps using Access.  On one hand I could maintain multiple site information in one resource.  If I add a new field in a table/form it would then show up for all sites.  Plus if I allow it to connect to the principal DNN DB, I can write code that will automate dumping site data so after I made changes in the DNN site and am satisfied, I can automatically update my documentation with the click of a button.   I can also have other entries for notes, backup documentation, planned enhancements, how much modules cost, etc.  As well as creating nice reports. 

If something like the above exists already, then I'd be interested in hearing more.  Otherwise I may end up coding something up.

Chris

 
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4/9/2006 9:04 AM
 

The way I over come this problem is to change the help link in the modules to call a page passing the friendly name of the module ( from the dnn database) - the page then in my case loads the correct robohelp file for that module. You could have it load the docs from a database if required-

I place all docs on my hosting server so only one copy is required - all that is added to the client site is the simple aspx that calls the help server with the friendly name of the module or the help key - You could bypass this and go straight to the help server itself but in my case some clients have their own help docs that they maintain.I added a further key to Host setting table - the url of the help server - generally this is the same for most clients except those that maintain their own help docs.

Using this system I can create a help doc be it a word,pdf,ppt or robohelp for any module and callit by its friendly module name and all clients have access to it via the help item in the module menu without any changes to the client site.

John

 

Problems with this approach is that you need the source for the modules as the url to the help files is hard coded in most modules.

 
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