Creating online help / online users guide
Asked by Michel Michales:

What kind of artefacts (plugins, templates, best practices) is there for creating online help / online users guide with confluence ?


Answers:
author: Ellen Feaheny [AppFusions]
body: Hi @Michel777

First - congrats on this bold (and not so bold - logical and smart) step.

Here's a few more..

**\* Buy this [Book](http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/about-my-book/#link1) from [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Confluence-Tech-Chocolate-Sarah-Maddox/dp/1937434001)** - Here's the ["cliffnotes"](http://blogs.atlassian.com/2012/04/technical-writers-guide-to-technical-documentation-in-a-wiki/) on Atlassian blogs. But ***buy the book*** - worth every penny for your purposes, and thousands more.

\* **Watch this [Webinar](http://blogs.atlassian.com/2012/04/wiki-software-for-technical-documentation-webinar/)**- Still relevant on process, strategy, approaches.

**\* Review the plugins by [K15t](http://www.k15t.com/)** - - one of two likely will become critical to your new Confluence Product Doc process.

**\* Become a fan of [this blog](http://ffeathers.wordpress.com)** by [@sarahmaddox](http://twitter.com/sarahmaddox) -

**\* Consider maybe a theme plugin** - here's two great ones: [Zen Foundation](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.zenfoundation) and [Refined Wiki](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.refinedwiki.confluence.plugins.theme.original)

**\* Convince of single purpose license, maybe** - though not mandatory, having a Confluence system dedicated to your product doc allows you alot more control over your process, plugin conflicts, or even collaboration conflicts.

**\* Product Doc Translation needs, in Confluence -** For the moment, follow [](http://twitter.com/appfusions)@appfusions on twitter (or email @appfusions.com"\>info@appfusions.com) - since we have a great plugin for this coming VERY SOON - which will save Enterprise corps who have translations with docs many many $1000s..

*(will update with link when avail - ETA mid-May latest - accepting Beta customers now)*

Never look back.

Confluence for product documentation is the way of the future - but actually its here NOW! :)

Have fun!

Ellen  


author: Joerg Bencke
body: Hi Michel,

i would try for the answers regarding "technical documentation". Common basis is to provide a hierarchy of pages to allow treelike search inside the pages.

Check out the confluence [documentation](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Developing+Technical+Documentation+on+Confluence+Wiki)and the blog posts from Sarah Maddox ([https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/\~smaddox](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/~smaddox)) and others, linked from there.

Bottom line : I think it is a question of style : Do you provide a given structure via a tree-style navigation or do you link and tag your articles, but keep the hiearchy low. Since people are used to browsing books, I would suggest

* starting out with the hiearchy,
* tag the important "entry-pages" to topics and
* provide additional theme-related navigationmaps or overview-pages and round it of with
* a FAQ page, answering the "worst" questions and linking to topics for further reading.


Tags: online-help