Creating online documentation, how to approach

Please share your thoughts ...

[getxb]

Very recently I was assigned the task of creating an online documentation on the whole process involved in creating a website (nop I am hiding the truth but the process is something as big as that). My Boss asked me to start from the 'thought process'.

Now I am bit confused here since I never handled an assignment like that before. How shall I proceed? How shall the interface look like? Better if I opt for Wiki and make the documentation a collaborative one?

Please share your thoughts and expertise ...

[Brett_Tabke]

KISS - keep the interface as simple as humanly possible. You are working with a topic that is going to be difficult for some people to underand at times. It is also going to be "by exmaple" - meaning, what you are talking about is right in front of them on the page.

[getxb]

Thanks Brett,

Your suggestions are really helpful. I thought someone will suggest the opposite. I too started working on a very simple interface, giving loads of screenshots n all so that anyone can understand. Breaking up complex sentences into simple ones ... Do you feel wiki has a very complex kind of interface?

One problem am facing right now is with planning the whole thing. I have completed ten percent of the project and I get a feeling that its gonna end at the end of this year! There are so many elements which I cant club together. What shall I do?

Please guide me ..

Thanks again,
getxb

[cmarshall]

I maintain a wiki at my company, and am pushing it very hard to a large, distributed team of engineers (New York, Tokyo, Hamburg, Bucharest, San Diego, San Francisco, Galway, etc. I mean REALLY distributed).

I went to a HUGE amount of work to make the wiki very simple and very intuitive (starting with throwing MediaWiki into the circular file). I employ a print media CSS file that strips out all the navigation fluff, and prints the content in a very simple fashion.

It is catching on, but slowly. There is a great deal of requirement for CM (Configuration Management), and the wiki is wonderful, as long as the content is all text. However, we are still working on the best way to share PDF/Image/Microsquash Turd documents. The Japanese insist on having reams of paper to which they can affix little red stamps.

I am also starting a blog-based system for a personal project that will endeavor to connect multiple Web designers and act as a "diary" for their processes. I'll SM you the URI for that. It is still a month or two from being "unwrapped," but you will get the picture.

I look to this community for guidance in decorum. I am absolutely stunned by how nice everyone is here. I have to keep my katana sheathed when playing in WebmasterWorld.