I am in the early stages of a project but want to make sure I'm going in the right direction with which technologies we use.
The goal of this project is to have a help system which will be viewed by users in several cities. I want to have a hierarchical table of contents, much like you find in Microsoft Word's Online Layout with the collapsing and expanding + and - signs, as well as a keyword search. In addition I want to have an easy to use interface which will allow non-technical users to add/edit/remove content through use of a user name and password system.
My initial thought was to use a web-based system using PHP with a database back-end. I know the database will be able to store the manuals, and each entry could have fields such as "Title", "Parent Title", and "Text" where "Parent Title" would help determine placement in the table of contents, but I was not sure if PHP had the ability to create expandable menus on the fly like that.
I am starting from a blank sheet here, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Is PHP the best way to go, or is there something far simpler that I am overlooking (a coworker suggested Word with autoindexing subdocuments or possibly Acrobat, but I don't think either of those provides the type of interface I am wanting)? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
The goal of this project is to have a help system which will be viewed by users in several cities. I want to have a hierarchical table of contents, much like you find in Microsoft Word's Online Layout with the collapsing and expanding + and - signs, as well as a keyword search. In addition I want to have an easy to use interface which will allow non-technical users to add/edit/remove content through use of a user name and password system.
My initial thought was to use a web-based system using PHP with a database back-end. I know the database will be able to store the manuals, and each entry could have fields such as "Title", "Parent Title", and "Text" where "Parent Title" would help determine placement in the table of contents, but I was not sure if PHP had the ability to create expandable menus on the fly like that.
I am starting from a blank sheet here, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Is PHP the best way to go, or is there something far simpler that I am overlooking (a coworker suggested Word with autoindexing subdocuments or possibly Acrobat, but I don't think either of those provides the type of interface I am wanting)? Any help would be greatly appreciated.