Hi There,
Thank you for your post. Your right. We've had lots of news on InstantForum recently but we've not yet published any significant updates for InstantKB since 2011. We have been making progress with InstantKB (it's absolutely not dead). In fact our next update due 2014 will be the biggest update since our 2.0 release.
We've not posted any updates as we really don't have anything to exciting to show currently. Most fo the work completed so far includes the migration of the entire code base to C#. Similar to the InstantForum 2013 release we've also been redesigning and modernizing many areas of our source code to make InstantKB more extensible and reliable in anticipation of the planned marketplace.
With InstantKB 2014 we are moving everythig to a single code base. This means both our products will work together right away out the box and will allow you to use fetures such as the theme roller introduced in InstantForum 2013 to carry your theme across to InstantKB 2014. This will also make authentication and single sign on much easier. There is a real pain point currently for customers who own both our forum and knowledgebase in the fact we require a seperate database - this makes SSO and creating a consistant theme more difficult than it should be. Moving to a single code base will allow us to resolve this problem. This will also make it much easier for us to introduce additional functionality. We will containue to offer InstantForum and InstantKB as seperate products and you will simply activate these through our web site.
In terms of the features you will see an immediate benefit from for InstantKB 2014 we are focusing on the following areas...
- Mobile - Dedicated jQuery Mobile Skin (similar to InstantForum 2013)
- Responsive Desktop Skin (Media Queries etc)
- Localization support for each article (ability to create a single article in multiple languages. This will be a single URL for the article and users can easily select the preferred language when viewing the article from a drop down menu)
- Customiable translation management / workflows (to notify translators when master articles are updated and translations are needed)
- Revision History / Side By Side Comparison for articles
- Search reporting - See what your customers are searching for and if you have content to help
- Improved user feedback - Moving away from 5 start rating to ask more detailed questions on how articles can be improved
- Improved integration with InstantForum - use InstantForum topics for comments if InstantForum is installed - shared search
Other improvements will include...
- Line by line versioning for interface localizaton files
- Views to identify new language pack strings added between releases
- JSON Web Services Layer (similar to InstantForum - for widget support on planned marketplace)
- Improved security for user passwords (stronger encryption options - reset password)
- Social Logins (similar to InstantForum)
- Theme Roller (similar to InstantForum)
More long term we want to imrpove the reporting and analytics offered by InstantKB to help you get a better understanding into how your customers are using your knowledgebase. I mention above we are also working on a marketplace for both products and we hope to introduce additional functionality and 3rd party widgets, plug-ins, providers, themes & language packs through the marketplace.
Please be assured we are by no means finished with InstantKB. There are so many improvements we still want to add. Things have taken longer than usual recently due to the migration to C# and all the underlaying code changes to better support the planned marketplace. These are not very exciting but nesscarry to build a reliable, extensible modern code base.
I hope this helps elivaitae any concerrns. If I can assist further or provide any additional information please don't hesitate to respond.
Out of interest. What new features would you like to see in InstantKB 2014 or future versions?
Kindest Regards,
Ryan Healey
ryan@instantasp.co.ukwww.instantasp.co.ukBlog | Community |
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