Site Documentation

[wannab0133]

I am wanting to document my web application with online docs.  I have written some docs in pdf and posted them, but I would prefer to have an online version where I can update them easier.  It will be text, table of contents, screenshots, etc.  What is an easy lightweight to accomplish this?

[Adam Cameron.]

So... you want a CMS, basically? Or a wiki?

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Adam

[wannab0133]

Adam,

A CMS would probably do what I need....Any CMS suggestions?

Are wiki's typical for this?  Would you choose a wiki or CMS?

[Adam Cameron.]

Depends on your requirements. I think you can probably research the pros and cons of each, although they can perhaps be summarised by thinking that a CMS would have its content maintained by a subset of people who manage the content for a broader audience of consumers who only read the information, whereas a wiki is aimed at consumers who both read and maintain the information.

As for CMSes... nup, never had the need to use one. However if you want a CFML-based one, I believe Mura is the way to go? Or perhaps ContentBox? I've never used either.

I'll try to get the guys from both to have a chat with you...

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Adam

[bradwood.com]

As far as ColdFusion goes-- there's CodexWiki by Luis Majano, but it's not really maintained in it's old state any longer (more about that in a sec).

There's also Canvas Wiki by Ray Camden, but I've never used it and I don't think it's produces a full site for you.  (http://canvas.riaforge.org/)

Regarding CF CMS's, Mura and ContentBox are going to be your big players like Adam said.  They're both good, but I'm personally involved in ContentBox so I'll tell you to use that one although I'm totally biased   Seriously though-- if you just want to make pages which represent your docs and nest them together, both CMS's will probaly work. 

Now, back to CodexWiki-- Luis has moved it from Transfer ORM to Hibernate and turned it into a ContentBox module so you can simply create a new page in the CMS and instead of entering HTML via CKEditor, to choose Wiki markup as the renderer and you can enter Wikipedia-styled markup which is rendered into HTML when the page loads.  If this ContentBox module sounds nice, there's two catches

1. Luis hasn't gotten around to releasing it.  Bugging him and saying "hey, I'd like to use that module" might help
2. Last I heard, he was considering making it a commercial module.  That means it would cost money, but I don't think it would be much.

If you really want to use Wiki markup, but don't want to use the CodexWiki Module, write your own.  ContentBox is extremely etensible via CFML and a load of interception points in combination with rendering plugins.

If you don't care about wiki markup, and you're fine creating your documentation in good 'ole HTML, then forget the previous three paragraphs and just eeny meeny miny mo and pick a CMS (as long as it's ContentBox)

Neither CMS's allows for non-logged in users to edit which won't be an issue of you don't want a public Wiki. Both CMS do have theming support etc so you can make it look like what you want.  A plus for ContentBox, is the entire CMS is written as ColdBox modules, so if you're using a ColdBox site, you can drop them right in and map a URL path to point to the CMS.  Play with them and see what fits you well.

ContentBox

http://www.gocontentbox.org/

Mura

http://www.getmura.com/

[wannab0133]

I wasn't in need fo a full cms, so I used tinymce wysiwyg editor to create the docs.  It worked great.  Very happy with it.  Thanks for the help!