Turning phpMyFAQ into a fully fledged knowledgebase system?

[Thorsten]

Hi,

thanks for your really long and detailed posting.

what do you think?

I think you are right and this will be the way for phpMyFAQ the next years. I think we're doing a very big step with version 2.0 and preparing the technical base for new and great features. But I try to make the way from an easy FAQ system to a fully featured knowledge management system step by step and I'll always want to keep the system as simple as it can be. But this is the way like you descriped.

bye
Thorsten

[Thorsten]

Hi,

hi, thanks for your prompt response: I fully realize that this a non-trivial idea,so what I described in the above post is probably already a bit over the edge, at least for now. However, I'd like to ask you whether you would consider adding at least the possibility to provide optional meta information to FAQ entries?
Basically, this would boil down to adding the aforementioned "custom fields" and the possibility to add arbitrary custom fields to entries in certain categories, which could then be associated with attributes-for example:

custom fields:
- platform -> x86, PPC, RISC, AMD64 ...
- OS -> Win95, Win95b, Win98, Win98SE, WinME, W2k, WinXP ...
- phpMyFAQ version: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 ...

then administrators could group such into category-specific groups, so that each category may have certain OPTIONAL meta information associated with it.
While this certainly would not yet be a full KB, it would at least tremendously simplify categorizing entries-simply because arbitrary meta information (attributes) could be associated with FAQ entries.

I'm sure for many users needs, this would already be tremendously useful. One could still later on consider adding relationships and inter-dependencies for certain attributes.

I think you can use the current possibilities like putting a record into multiple categories and add tags in phpMyFAQ 2. The possibility of customized record fields is planned for the future.

Also, if you would not currently consider implementing this feature, would you at least generally consider "adding" it, that is if someone else implements it and provide a corresponding patch? Are you using any sort of SCM (CVS/SVN)? Would you optionally provide volunteers with temporary SVM priviledges or integrate potential patches yourself?

If your patches are okay, I'll add them. You can get read access to our CVS from our download page.

bye
Thorsten