Where is the "DemoWolf" of Knowledgebase articles?

[sitemaker]

Is there a source for jump-starting the knowledgebase by buying article DB that can be instantly imported?

 

Don't want to reinvent the wheel by writing common subjects from scratch, nor spend lots of time copy/pasting or emulating the articles of other sites.

 

Where can new resellers of hosting/domains/email/certs/etc. get a jump start on knowledgebase?

 

Thanks for your attention.

[MACscr]

Is there a source for jump-starting the knowledgebase by buying article DB that can be instantly imported?

 

Don't want to reinvent the wheel by writing common subjects from scratch, nor spend lots of time copy/pasting or emulating the articles of other sites.

 

Where can new resellers of hosting/domains/email/certs/etc. get a jump start on knowledgebase?

 

Thanks for your attention.

 

You better not be copy and pasting from other sites. Thats called stealing.

 

If your a reseller, i would highly recommend just asking your provider if you can use their kb.

[sitemaker]

Thank you for that helpful response. Actually it isn't called stealing; it's called plagiarism. Depending on the source of the material, it's probably copyright infringement too. However, emulation is fine as long as your expression of the same ideas is original. In other words, you can look at other people's knowledge-bases to find out what has to be covered, and what are good ways to organize, and even what the facts are that must be taught. But then you have to express yourself in your own words, without recourse to their original expression.

 

Since you found my first post so unclear, perhaps you don't know what DemoWolf is. They sell the video tutorials that most of us provide our customers. We pay them for this. They stick our logos on the demos for us, and we show them to our customers in that branded form. This saves us the trouble of having to write tutorials for common stuff that every host needs to teach customers. It's much more efficient than everybody reinventing similar stuff.

 

My post was titled "Where is the Demowolf of WHMCS knowledgebases?" In other words, where can I buy/license a good starter knowledgebase? Hard to believe there wouldn't be somebody selling this somewhere.

[jeramie78]

i think that would be a great idea. i wish that was around to purchase, s standard knowledge base for whmcs that you could buy and then make it fit to your business. It would save alot of time on our end.

[herdboy]

You better not be copy and pasting from other sites. Thats called stealing.

 

If your a reseller, i would highly recommend just asking your provider if you can use their kb.

 

Now where did you get that idea from? I re read that a few times and cannot see how you came to the conclusion that that was what sitemaker was referring to .

 

I think its a great idea to have something like this available for purchase. POerhaps is we can band together we can all contribute to a project where we can share KB articles.

[MACscr]

Don't want to reinvent the wheel by writing common subjects from scratch, nor spend lots of time copy/pasting or emulating the articles of other sites.

 

So thats where i got the idea he said he was going to do that. I dont feel anything i said was out of line.

 

LOL, i know of demowolf. I have bought a few hundred tutorials from him and have met the owner (Rob) in person on numerous occasions. No one is selling these KB articles as far as i know. You can though hire someone to write them, then start your own company reselling them.

 

I also gave a pretty decent tip about getting articles from whoever your reselling. Its quite common for them to allow you to use their TOS, privacy, etc, maybe kb articles as well.

Edited December 28, 2008 by MACscr

[sitemaker]

I also gave a pretty decent tip about getting articles from whoever your reselling. Its quite common for them to allow you to use their TOS, privacy, etc, maybe kb articles as well.

 

I do have permission from my host provider to copy their kb articles. But there's no database dump; just copy and paste articles one at a time.

 

As I indicated in my original post, the labor of copy & pasting (whether with or without permission) is exactly what I seek to avoid.

 

What I'd love is an SQL file that could be run in phpMyAdmin that would fill the kb in one fell swoop. It would be worth money to me, and I suspect many others. In my naivete, I presumed such a product must exist somewhere, just as DemoWolf exists for tutorials.

 

Anybody who has already developed a really great kb for themselves could easily enter this business. But perhaps they all regard their kbases as a proprietary advantage and so would not?

[Its Trish]

What I'd love is an SQL file that could be run in phpMyAdmin that would fill the kb in one fell swoop. It would be worth money to me, and I suspect many others.

 

hi Sitemaker,

 

You can post a $25 project at scriptlance for someone to write a program that will spider your ips's article kb (with permission of course) then save as a myqsl file.

 

trish : - )

[sitemaker]

Way cool! Thanks for the tip, Trish.

[ChrisGooding]

If I may add my twopenneth.....

 

Depending on why you are wanting the articles, it is always good to write your own, although a huge, mammoth task, it pays in the long run.

 

If its for customer service reasons alone, then using a pre-written article is ok.

 

HOWEVER, if using a knowledge base for customer service AND web site copy (i.e for SEO purposes) duplicating it will give you no bennefits. Search engines will see it as duplicate copy, and give you no credit for it. Or even worse, you could be marked down for using duplicate copy.

 

My advice, write them all, even if it is just re-writing them. The benefits it brings your sites searchability is well worth the effort.

 

[/seo advice]

[apollo1]

I dont feel anything i said was out of line.

 

The following sounds a little confrontational and condescending to me.

 

"You better not be copy and pasting from other sites. Thats called stealing."

[Zorro67]

I'm following this with interest, even thou I've already mostly done my own kb

 

@All, try to stay on topic, and this might turn into a useful thread. We are all adults here

[sitemaker]

Thanks, Chris. I'd been thinking only in terms of lowering customer support costs, not about maximizing search engine traffic. Thanks for the heads up.

[Its Trish]

if using a knowledge base for customer service AND web site copy (i.e for SEO purposes) duplicating it will give you no bennefits. Search engines will see it as duplicate copy, and give you no credit for it. Or even worse, you could be marked down for using duplicate copy.

Chris,

 

Great comment. I'm pretty sure he could add NO FOLLOW meta tags to his article pages, then the search engine spiders will ignore his article pages, thus not penalizing him for duplicate content. What do you think?

 

trish : - )

[Pima]

All,

 

I have opend a thread here http://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?p=87612#post87612

 

And welcome any and all activity as I also see this as an aid to those getting started and may mature into a tips & tricks exchange for the rest of us

[keliix06]

Chris,

 

Great comment. I'm pretty sure he could add NO FOLLOW meta tags to his article pages, then the search engine spiders will ignore his article pages, thus not penalizing him for duplicate content. What do you think?

 

trish : - )

 

There is absolutely no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. It's about as real a unicorns.

 

http://searchengineland.com/the-duplicate-content-penalty-myth-10741

[Its Trish]

There is absolutely no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. It's about as real a unicorns.

http://searchengineland.com/the-duplicate-content-penalty-myth-10741

 

Hi keliix06,

 

That article you cited is almost 2 years old.

SEO has evolved many lifetimes during that period.

 

(2 calendar years = 6 SEO years, and that's pretty darn accurate according

to this guy who was sitting in the next booth at McDonalds. seriously.)

 

I'm not an SEO person so I don't know whether the article you cited

holds water, but I can tell you that in the past few years

Google changed it's focus from backlinks.... to importance (PR)...

to importance of who's linking to you... to fresh everchanging

content (hundreds of fresh articles on pages in your sitemap)...

to blogs... to social networking... to video... and most recently

to the combination of blogs/social-networking/video/socialbookmarking

all cross linked to one another.

 

And guess what?

 

Virtually all of the above happened after the time that article you cited

was written.

 

It's about as real a unicorns.

 

Brilliant remark, it's the cherry on top

of your awesome posting. Kudos!

 

trish : - )

Edited January 6, 2009 by Its Trish
typo

[VicToMeyeZR]

How about this one Directly on Google...

 

http://googlewebmastercentral.*************/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html

 

 

Is that new enough for ya

[Its Trish]

VicToMeyeZR,

 

Thanks for the link to that awesome article.

I read it and learned a lot.

 

That article explains, in a nutshell, that yes you can get penalized

for duplicate content but only in certain circumstances.

 

(one example would be duplicating an entire site, or a large set of

webpages, without making content changes.... so be careful

when using your ISP's kb articles!)

 

Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not an SEO person,

but this type of stuff is really important to know

so I'm going to bookmark and hardcopy that article

cited by VicToMeyeZR.

 

trish : - )

Edited January 6, 2009 by Its Trish
typo

[Its Trish]

okay, just got it...

VicToMeyeZR = victimizer

[VicToMeyeZR]

lol... right on. You are actually the only person to ever figure that out. I am impressed.

[keliix06]

So yes, like I said, there is no duplicate content penalty.

 

You may not get duplicated pages ranking well in the serps, although through my SEO testing we have a site that is 100% content taken from other sites (within the terms of said sites) and it ranks quite well. Article sites have the same articles submitted to them as hundreds of other article sites and they all rank when searching on that article.

 

But no search engine is going to say "This guy has the same KB as this other site, he no longer ranks". It just doesn't happen.

 

I actually do study SEO quite a bit. I know Matt Cutts wrote an article about a year ago stating there being no duplicate content penalty, I just couldn't find a link to it.

[Daniel]

This one? http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/duplicate-content-question/

[Its Trish]

So yes, like I said, there is no duplicate content penalty.

 

hi keliix06,

 

Apparently you're wrong.

 

1. My earlier post....

   
   That article explains, in a nutshell, that yes you can get penalized
   for duplicate content but only in certain circumstances.
    
   (one example would be duplicating an entire site, or a large set of
   webpages, without making content changes.... so be careful
   when using your ISP's kb articles!)

   ....that post was based on the this article (cited by VicToMeyeZR)
   which seems to be more thorough and authoritative information
   than Matt Cutts' blog entry (cited in the post immediately above)
   or the searchengineland article cited by keliix06.
    
    
   
2. In reading Google's own explanation on how they handle Duplicate Content,
   I found this blurb:

   In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

 

I'm not an SEO person and I have no idea what Google would do

with any particular circumstance. But what I am trying to get across

is that anyone who says that there's no such thing as "duplicate content penalty" is dead wrong

and, if they're blogging that mis-information then they're causing situations

where perhaps large groups of people are reading their mis-information

and probably believing it.

 

trish : - )

Edited January 6, 2009 by Its Trish
typo

[ChrisGooding]

Thanks for backup guys.

 

After having one of our sister comapnies brands lose pretty much all, yess all its pages rankings, and numerous screaming email conversations with google, I have felt first hand the wrath that can come with duplicate content 'penalties', essentially loss in page ranks/rank points.

 

The website that we had duped......... our other brand :twisted:One was for virtuals one was for dedis, those sick gits.

 

I then took over 'cleaning them up', and as such spent ages swotting up on SEO, and attended countless masterclasses on it. Although I am no master at it, I like to think I now know more than enough to ensure we do more than just ok where SEO is concerned.

 

There is so much that goes into algorithms that output a ranking, and it doesn't just happen overnight. When your rank changes, as it did over the last few weeks, what you did the week before will have probably had no relevance. A rank is a culmination of constant spidering and complex algorithm based calculations based upon many things, not just the text on the page of links, a process which can take 3 months!!

 

As said in my original post, its only my advice, that's it, take it or leave it. But I'm a firm believer in the old saying, better to be safe than sorry!!