Mental block with knowledge base website structure.

[subsystems]

Sorry about the length of the post but I have spent countless hours scratching my head on this and wanted to share the sensation.

I have an e-commerce website that started in 1996. Since I took over the design in 1998 the catalog went from hundreds of static html pages to a database driven catalog system. I added an FAQ area to help with the volume of emails & phone calls. The FAQs have been rewritten several times over the years and have moved more towards a knowledge base type of resource.

More recently I have been reading about proper use of HTML tags. That is to say use the tag for what it was designed for. (UL for lists & menus, h1, h2 etc for heading info, div for sectional info and CSS for layout etc.)

A while back I started to convert the knowledge base type info into a forum structure but it really didn't feel right.

This got me to thinking more about what types of information should to go into what types of formats. Example: Products should go into a shopping cart/catalog type structure, interactive FAQs in a forum structure etc. It then occurred to me that some of the info we put on sites like What's New might be best in a Blog type structure.

Thinking back to "use the right tool for the right job" has me wondering if there is a standard structure for knowledge base information.

I've looked around the web hunting for a nice layout/structure for things like Product How To's, Choosing the right product features, Care and Cleaning and on and on.

Currently there are 150 or so pages of info on our site, although the catalog has about 1000 pages. I know the knowledge base information needs to be easily scanable to go with the way people read on the net.

I suppose I could convert/rewrite the information and post it as articles. Not a bad idea but not ideal either because the info would tend to have a great deal of bulleted lists along with paragraphs of comments, information and images. I tried to force it into a forum structure, I like the folder like organization but the info tended to be all sticky posts. FAQ structure made the info hard to scan through the topics. Blog format doesn't make sense except the What's New and announcements sections. I even thought of a Wiki format but it kind of implies community developed information. Editing would have to be disabled so when we tell a customer the detailed instructions for doing such and such are at url ... they are as we intended. Even looking at help systems aren't much.

I have done "programming" for 25years (not by profession) but I think I have a mental block on seeing what a modern knowledge base looks like. Unfortunately I have looked at the BIG sites like Amazon, EBay, etc. and it doesn't seem like much attention has been given to web based knowledge base structure. I'm not very inspired by most of what I've found.

Maybe I am missing some important sites out there. If I need to see how Blogs work I can find countless free Blog sites to experiment with. If I need to find out how forums work & Wikis etc there are lots of sites to experiment with. But General Web based knowledge base stuff seems to be seriously lacking.

Anybody got any inspiring/helpful suggestions? Maybe I'll be able to get passed having to do an OS reload on my brain every time I start looking for knowledge base ideas.

Thanks everyone.