Creating your first help topic

Capture. Edit. Share.

To create a new topic, click the New Topic button (below) in HelpBurner.

Capture

Firstly you need some images in your help to show users what to do. It's true what is said - pictures are worth a thousand words. If you use clear images to illustrate each step, your users will complete the task much easier.

Screen-captures - HelpBurner's screen-capture tool makes it easy to add screenshots to your help. Click the screen-capture button (1) on the elements toolbar to add a new screen-capture to your topic. Learn more about the screen-capture tool...

Import images - add existing images from your computer by clicking the import image button (2) on the elements toolbar. Learn more about importing images...

Edit

Building a help topic around your images is as easy as adding simple text and instructions - so the reader can complete the task as easily as possible.

• Sub-titles - break your help topics up into bite-sized steps that readers can complete without having to reference the topic more than once. Add sub-titles by clicking the sub-title button (1) on the elements toolbar.

• Rich-text boxes - adding instructions, details and other information using rich-text (colors, lists, paragraphs etc) is a good idea - just make sure you only add as much as is needed for the user to complete the step. Add rich-text boxes by clicking the rich-text button (2) on the elements toolbar.

Share

Sharing your help and tutorials is super simple using HelpBurner.

• Publishing to blogs - HelpBurner fully supports publishing to many blog platforms and we're adding more all the time. See how to publish to blogs now...

• Publishing to PDF - publishing to PDF is a de-facto standard and only takes a few clicks. PDF is great for sending your help to customers via e-mail or making it available on your website for download. See how to publish to PDF...

• Publishing to the Web - HelpBurner can publish help topics or entire help projects to HTML - making them available on the web to anyone with a web browser. See how to publish to the web...

• Send as e-mail - Sending a topic to a customer as a rich e-mail is a great way to solve customers problems and answer their questions by delivering step-by-step instructions right into their inbox. See how to send help topics as rich e-mail...

Tips

• Overwhelming users with too much information is a sure way to turn them off. Keep topics short, task orientated and broken up into small easy to complete steps.

• Re-order any element in your help topic by using the up/down arrows that appear in the top-right corner when you hover your mouse over the element.

• Delete elements using the red-cross button by the re-ordering buttons.