FAQhere

FAQhere is a small and simple system to provide context sensitive answers to your users.

The idea behind

It is a general problem to teach users how to use a web site or - even worse - a web bases software service.

Most users have very few time to do tutorials and read manuals (well, we all know they should RTFM) and they prefer learning by doing which often costs the developers a lot of time for support.

Here FAQhere follows the following idea:

1. You only give the user a minimum introduction where to begin
2. FAQ here tells how to continue when the user gets stuck

The feature to allow this is called context sensitivity. That means: The user can always find all FAQs you stored for him or her, but by default he will see a list of questions that are usually asked in the current context.

A context is defined each time the button is placed on a page - so usually it's the web page or a function within a web service.

How it looks like.

Users see a small FAQ icon on the site. As the mouse moves over it a list of FAQs for the current context is provided.

You may view this at the online survey software oFb - der onlineFragebogen however only two contexts are implemented at the moment. As the next major software update of oFb will be in beta phase (autumn 2008) the feature cen be viewed within a running web service.

How it works

FAQhere implements a very simple matrix model (also known as artificial network intelligence). That means that each time a user reads a FAQ in a given context (after searching for it via full text), the system learns that this question might be importent in this context. The next time a user uses the FAQ button in the same context he or she will see the question listed higher in the FAQ listing.

Technical requirements

FAQhere is AJAX based which means the the user needs JavaScript turned on. Currently FAQhere requires PHP 4 or 5 and MySQL server side.

Installation & Download

The software can be downloaded as SourceForge.net - Project FAQhere.

1. Download ZIP package, unzip locally
2. Change faq.config.php
   Insert MySQL connection data and a (free) administration password into the file, you need to create a database before using FAQhere
3. Upload the files to the server
4. Call faq.admin.php and insert FAQs
5. Place the following code into your web site or web project:
   • A reference to the CSS file faq.css,
     either by inserting this to the HTML head:
     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="faq.css">
     or by copying the CSS content to a CSS file already used by the project.
   • A reference to the JavaSciprt file, usually by
     <script src="faq.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
   • The following JavaScript snipped whereever the FAQ button should be inserted on the page:
     <script type="text/javascript">faq = new miniFAQ("context","faq.php");</script>
     Here you also define the current context by providing a identification string (context in this case).

   You may refer to the dummy.html to copy the code.

   If you prefer to place the FAQhere files in s subdirectory, you only have to change the path to faq.js respective faq.php in the both JavaScript commands. But be careful: The faq.php file must be at the same server as the HTML file or the browsers will detect a security violation due to cross site scripting. So use a subdirectory, but no other domain for the FAQ contents.

That's it. This software is just new and may contain bugs (although its very small, so bugs shall quickly be found).

This package is distributed under the General Public Licence (GPL).