Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : What type of tutorials?

[okihost]

I have found over the years I have moved around from different helpdesk and billing scripts and each and everytime I am stuck redoing all of my knowledgebase entries (I have about 100).

I will probably always use vbulletin as my forum for server announcements so I was thinking why not add them there. The problem is I do not know of any good hack for this type of thing in vB and if the developer of the hack goes missing I could be in the same situation.

So I may add them as threads and just create a new subforum for each type of KB entry (cPanel, email, billing etc.)

Do you think that I would be better off doing these in flash or with screenshots? I can do either using SnagIt and both are pretty easy to integrate.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[MACscr]

screenshots/text are so much better than flash tutorials IMHO. Just make sure you keep them updated.

[okihost]

Originally Posted by MACscr

screenshots/text are so much better than flash tutorials IMHO. Just make sure you keep them updated.

That was another part of it, with the cPanel 11 upgrade all of my old demos are out of date with the x2 theme.

[zildjian2000]

Originally Posted by MACscr

screenshots/text are so much better than flash tutorials IMHO. Just make sure you keep them updated.

Any reason you think they're better? I only see one benifit to screenshots and that it promotes more of "at your own pace" (though of course you can pause a flash tutorial), but besides that, I see flash tutorials as much much better, and if you have well made tutorials they will go at a slow pace.

The reason being is flash tutorials 1. seem more professional 2. allow for easier viewing, just click on a page and it runs you through the whole process instead of clicking a bunch of different pages and reading the text next to them, it puts the text on the screenshot. 3. A flash tutorial is just a group of screenshots, however, they include the text on the screenshot, they include mouse movement, and they include typing.

And about your comment okihost, while flash tutorials may go out of date, so do text/screenshot. Remember, a flash tutorial is just a bunch of text and screenshots, so any downside to a flash tutorial usually caries over to text/screenshots.

[MACscr]

flash for the most part cant be crawled by search engines. When you just want to glimpse over a step, flash tutorials are a pain. A lot of the time they go way to slow as well. Im not saying flash tutorials are evil or anything, im just saying that i prefer text/screenshots more. I would prefer to have all three to be honest.

[zildjian2000]

There's really no reason that you need them to be crawled by search engines, it's actually a plus sometimes because you have the tutorials for your clients, not others. Finding a step would be just as hard, and probably a lot harder with text. With a flash tutorial you can just drag the bar until you see the correct page, so it's easier than text and the same as a screenshot. The reason they go slow is because the people using them usually need it to go slow, the fact that you think it's slow doesn't really matter seeing as the tutorials are usually for the clients, so unless you use them, it doesn't matter how fast or slow you think they are (I also think they're slow, however, I make them slow because clients need it to be slow)

While I can kinda see your points about using screenshots and text over flash, I think that a lot of it doesn't really work because a flash tutorial is just text/screenshots.

[MACscr]

Originally Posted by zildjian2000

There's really no reason that you need them to be crawled by search engines, it's actually a plus sometimes because you have the tutorials for your clients, not others. Finding a step would be just as hard, and probably a lot harder with text. With a flash tutorial you can just drag the bar until you see the correct page, so it's easier than text and the same as a screenshot. The reason they go slow is because the people using them usually need it to go slow, the fact that you think it's slow doesn't really matter seeing as the tutorials are usually for the clients, so unless you use them, it doesn't matter how fast or slow you think they are (I also think they're slow, however, I make them slow because clients need it to be slow)

While I can kinda see your points about using screenshots and text over flash, I think that a lot of it doesn't really work because a flash tutorial is just text/screenshots.

I disagree and think your bias because you sell flash tutorials. I have to respectfully disagree. I always try to look at things like this from a clients point of view. There are services/scripts i get from providers that i need documentation for, so i am speaking as a client as well.

[zildjian2000]

Before I sold tutorials, I ran (and still do) a hosting company for 2 years. I bought flash tutorials from demodemo and it reduced my support requests (I used screenshots and text before). One issue in particular got a lot of messups/support requests, since I created a tutorial for it I haven't got a single request.

I SELL them because I made them for my clients and decided I could sell them too, which also allowed me to justify making a lot of them.

You have it backwards, I don't like flash tutorials because I sell them, I like them so I decided to sell them.