Question Potts Help Centre for webtrees 2.2

Hello everyone,

I have developed a new module for webtrees called Potts Help Centre and I’m looking for a few testers before making the full public release.

It is designed to provide a built-in help centre for visitors, members and administrators, with features such as:

• audience-specific help articles
• Quick Help links
• topic browsing and search
• contextual help links
• illustrated articles with screenshots
• user feedback on articles
• administrator editing and review tools

The current version is 1.0.0-rc.1 and is intended for webtrees 2.2.x.

I would especially appreciate testing of:

• fresh install and upgrade
• signed-out and signed-in views
• Potts Modern and standard themes
• phone/tablet/desktop layout
• screenshots and article usability
• feedback and admin functions

Please treat this as a release candidate, and back up your site before testing.

GitHub repository:

If you test it, I would be very grateful for any feedback, bug reports or suggestions.

Thanks

Another great module!

I see a relation to the custom module linkenhancer ( github.com/bschwede/linkenhancer ). My first impression was that this is a modern version of the FAQ core module, but only for English. Supporting all the webtrees languages is a "must have" for me.

Some first impressions

• There are good topics, but some other topics are very generic and not helpful (like "Enter places consistently").
• There are no links in the help text. There are no screenshots. There is no references to the official webtrees documentation.
• The button line "Need help with ...?" is much too prominent and needs too much room. 
• "Was this helpful?" is a great idea!
• There are too many recommendations like "contact the administrator ". Together with no hint of how to do that.
• If you use the search in the "POTTS Member Help Centre", you are redirected to the home page of your tree. I expect that the help content would be searched instead.

best regards Hermann

Hello Hermann,

Thank you for taking the time to test the module and provide such detailed feedback. It is very helpful.

From the title you mentioned, “POTTS Member Help Centre”, and the absence of screenshots, it appears you may have tested an earlier 0.4 development version. The current release candidate has been renamed Potts Help Centre and includes 12 illustrated guides.

I will check the release and update process to make sure testers are consistently receiving the current package.Your other points are well made.

I agree that multilingual support is important. The current bundled guidance is English, so I intend to add support for language-specific article versions, English fallback and importable community language packs.

I will also:

• review and improve generic articles such as the places article
• add links to official webtrees documentation and related resources
• make the contextual “Need help?” control smaller
• reduce repeated “contact the administrator” wording and provide an actual contact option
• investigate the search redirect as a priority bug
• review how the module interacts with LinkEnhancer

Thank you again. This is exactly the type of release-candidate feedback I was hoping to receive.

Best regards
Jason

Yes, my test was based on the 0.4 version. Sorry.

I just added your module to the German webtrees manual  to enable your module for adding it to the CustomModuleManager. Then updating will be easier.

Now the test of potts_help_centre_v1.0.0-rc.2 shows great progress.