[LRUG] [Help] Hosted Documentation Recommendations

[Alex Reis]

Hey Simon,

Not quite the canned solution you were looking for, but last time I had to
write help for a product I just stole Bootstrap's doc style and plugged it
in with a set of static pages. Anyone who can edit HTML can maintain them
quite easily, and they use a common layout so it's not hard to keep them in
sync.

Obviously, the app was also made using bootstrap, so the look/feel was
consistent all around, YMMV.

Slate is also a great option inside a rails app
https://github.com/tripit/slate , but mostly for technical docs.

Searching, if you have everything on one page, is just a matter of hitting
Cmd-F :)

Cheers,

Alex

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Simon Morley <simon at polkaspots.com> wrote:

> Hello All
>
> *What do you use for your product documentation?*
>
> We just launched a new service and our docs were foolishly / typically
> left to the last minute.
>
> Long-term we're going to use Github pages but we have no time (or people)
> to make it pretty. And add search. Or train those writing the docs.
>
> In desperation, we've chucked them on readme.io. However, words cannot
> describe how terrible readme is. Avoid. Plague. Although it is
> superficially pretty:
>
> http://docs.cucumbertony.com
>
> We already use Intercom for support so we need none of that. We have our
> api documentation on apiary (http://docs.polkaspots.apiary.io/#) which is
> awesome.
>
> We just a place for the end-user, customer facing, help-me style docs.
>
> *Stuff we tried:*
>
> - Zendesk - good support system, crap docs, terrible community aspect.
> - Freshdesk - support orientated.
> - Help Scout - ok but more about support. Ugly.
> - Help Juice - OMG VPL expensive.
> - Readme.io - genuinely made me irate.
> - Desk - seemingly all about support.
> - Atlassian - the peeps writing them couldn't understand it.
> - Github pages - fabulous but needs attention and same issue as Atlassian.
> - Userdeck - no idea what it does still.
> - HappyFox - v basic apparently, didn't try.
> - kayako - too complicated to set up.
>
> We need something simple. With basic search. And it needs to be pretty.
> And easy to use.
>
> If this magical beast doesn't exist, it should. I'd even write something
> with some of you.
>
> Great product, shoddy docs. Not cool.
>
> Help?
>
> S
>
>
> Simon Morley
> Big Chief | PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi
>
> simon at PolkaSpots.com
> Linkedin: I'm not on it, it sucks
> 020 7183 1471
>
>
>
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