KB Design

[Jason]

I need to create a an internal system that allows developers to post papers
(articles, whitepapers, how to, etc.) and knowledge base articles to an
intranet site. Basically it is a Developer Resource Center. I am unsure of
how to architect the application.

The critical points (as I see it) would be:

* Should be able to generate a list (directory) of recently added/updated
content.
* Should be able to generate a list of ALL articles.
* Should be able to search content.
* Should be able to maintain a consistant look across all articles.
* Should be able to associate images with articles.
* Should have separation between article content and look of website (for
when website changes -- nobody wants to rebuild all the pages)

Solutions:

1) Individual static (.html or .aspx) pages for each article. Then, any
table of contents type pages would also have to be updated.

Points: * Very inflexible -- multiple pages need to be
created/updated
* Very manually intensive
* Requires web developer to be involved
* Does not address all points

2) Single page that loads content from a file. Each article would have its
own file. Filename would be passed to webpage. (Example:
ViewArticle.aspx?file=article1.txt or ViewArticle.aspx?file=article2.txt)

Points: * File format - text or xml (not sure if that would
be usable) -- should probably have basic formatting (bold, italics, bullets,
images)
* Does separate content from website look
* Still not searchable
* Still need to manually update article list
pages.

3) Putting content in the database.

Seems to be best solution. Search, can create index, separation
of content and look.

Anybody know how Microsoft does it? MSDN has a huge collection of articles
but they seem to follow none of the above. They seem to follow indivudal web
pages for each article - yet they have a listing of articles (treeview on
left). Their content is also searchable. Oddly, if you look at some of their
URL's it seems to do a redirect to another url yet you cannot seem to call
the second url directly. (Example:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnanchor/html/anchoraspdotnet.asp -
- notice the default.asp and anchoraspdotnet.asp. Yet if I call
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnanchor/html/anchoraspdotnet.asp
directly it takes me back to default.asp)

Any ideas or articles I could read to get me started on the proper
architecture?

Thank you for any help you could provide.

- Jason

 

[Steve C. Orr [MVP, MCSD]]

I suggest you tinker with a few of these starter kits to give you some ideas
about the best practices for similar systems.
http://www.asp.net/Default.aspx?tabindex=8&tabid=47

 

[John Dolinka]

Why, buy one. Microsoft has one (I thinks it's called Sharepoint), there
are gazillians more as well.

John Dolinka

I need to create a an internal system that allows developers to post papers
(articles, whitepapers, how to, etc.) and knowledge base articles to an
intranet site. Basically it is a Developer Resource Center. I am unsure of
how to architect the application.

The critical points (as I see it) would be:

* Should be able to generate a list (directory) of recently added/updated
content.
* Should be able to generate a list of ALL articles.
* Should be able to search content.
* Should be able to maintain a consistant look across all articles.
* Should be able to associate images with articles.
* Should have separation between article content and look of website (for
when website changes -- nobody wants to rebuild all the pages)

Solutions:

1) Individual static (.html or .aspx) pages for each article. Then, any
table of contents type pages would also have to be updated.

Points: * Very inflexible -- multiple pages need to be
created/updated
* Very manually intensive
* Requires web developer to be involved
* Does not address all points

2) Single page that loads content from a file. Each article would have its
own file. Filename would be passed to webpage. (Example:
ViewArticle.aspx?file=article1.txt or ViewArticle.aspx?file=article2.txt)

Points: * File format - text or xml (not sure if that would
be usable) -- should probably have basic formatting (bold, italics, bullets,
images)
* Does separate content from website look
* Still not searchable
* Still need to manually update article list
pages.

3) Putting content in the database.

Seems to be best solution. Search, can create index, separation
of content and look.

Anybody know how Microsoft does it? MSDN has a huge collection of articles
but they seem to follow none of the above. They seem to follow indivudal web
pages for each article - yet they have a listing of articles (treeview on
left). Their content is also searchable. Oddly, if you look at some of their
URL's it seems to do a redirect to another url yet you cannot seem to call
the second url directly. (Example:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnanchor/html/anchoraspdotnet.asp -

 

[John Morgan]

Thats something close to what I need as well except that I wish to
publish on the internet.

There may be gazillians on the web but can anyone point me to a low
cost solution based on NET ? Or any other low cost or shareware
solution?

Best wishes, John Morgan

 

[Tod1d]

Hi John,

Check out MyKB Knowledge Base : http://www.mykb.com/

Tod Birdsall, MCP
http://tod1d.blogspot.com