An alternative to webtrees’ FAQ module – part 2
As discussed in part 1, I am looking at a series of different options for implementing phpMyFAQ (“pMF”).
This first approach is the easiest to implement, as it requires no adjustment to pMF beyond its standard configuration options. All that is required are the following steps:
- Install pMF following its supplied installation instructions into a sub-folder (not sub-domain) of your webtrees folder. For convenience I suggest you name that folder “faq”, and all my following steps assume you have done that. If you choose a different name just change the instructions accordingly. The URL for your installation of pMF will therefore be “http://yourwebtreesdomain/faq/”.
- Create a simple php file to contain the code webtrees needs to display pMF in an iframe or wrapper as explained in this article here under the heading “Managing the height of iframes”. I called my file “phpmyfaq.php”
- Install and enable the add-on “simpl_menu2” from our collection here, and configure it to link directly to the file “phpmyfaq.php” created in step 2 above, and set it’s access levels to whatever you feel right for your site.
- Optionally – change line 38 of the file module.php in simpl_menu2 from “Menu” to “FAQ”, so that your FAQ menu icon has a more appropriate name. You might also want to consider replacing the default menu icon with an FAQ related image. As you may see below, I chose to use an adaptation of the phpMyFAQ logo.
- In webtrees’ administration pages disable the standard FAQ page. You can do this by disabling the module, or by changing the access level of the menu item, or both.
- In pMF you can now create your categories, sub-categories, FAQs, news items etc.. If you want to transfer existing webtrees FAQ items to pMF it might be possible to do it in the database tables, but is probably best done by a simple copy & paste between the two pages displayed in your browser window(s).
Once these steps are complete you will have pMF available in your webtrees pages much like my trial shown below.
This is certainly a workable solution, and may suit some people. But for me it remains incomplete. It has an invitation for users to “sign up” which could confuse; it has it’s own header and footer elements that add to the page complexity; it allows non-registered visitors to submit FAQs, and it’s overall look or style is totally different to webtrees.
My next update will look at correcting some of these these issues.
