PBS FAQ

PBS FAQ - A Lean PHP and MySQL FAQ System

PBS FAQ is a small FAQ and knowledge base written in plain PHP and MySQL. There is no framework, no Composer and no build step: copy the files to a folder on your site, open setup.php once, and start writing answers. It was written as a lighter replacement for phpMyFAQ, faster to use and easier to look after, and it can import an existing phpMyFAQ database.

Key Features

• Live search suggestions as you type, then full results with the matched words highlighted. Search uses MySQL FULLTEXT plus a keyword table, so short words and keyword matches are found too
• Articles are written in Markdown with a toolbar, and a Preview tab that uses the same renderer as the saved page
• Categories with one level of sub-categories, and an article can also appear in other categories
• "Read this" links that show another article's answer, and "Also refer to" links between related articles
• Public articles for everyone and Admin articles only for people who are signed in
• Editors write, Admins approve - or switch approval off and new articles go live at once
• Help keys, so an application can link straight to its help: index.php?help=invoice.print
• Password sign-in with lockout, and optional single sign-on from your own site
• One attachment per article, always served through PHP so private files stay private
• Colour schemes, time zone and attachment limits in Settings
• Nothing is ever deleted - removing an article only marks it Removed

Search

Suggestions drop down from the search box after a couple of letters. Press Enter for the full list, where articles that match a keyword are ranked first.

Articles

Each article shows when it was last updated, how often it has been read, its related articles and its keywords. Keywords come from the title automatically, and editors can add their own.

Editing

Signed-in editors get the admin pages: every article with its status, who can see it, its category and its help key, filtered by status, visibility, category or text. Articles waiting for approval are counted in the menu.

The editor has a Markdown toolbar for bold, italic, headings, lists, links, code, quotes and tables, and a Preview tab. Main and related articles are picked from a searchable list, and the help key shows the finished link ready to copy into your application.

Admins also manage categories, keywords and stopwords, people and their roles, and the site settings.

Single Sign-On

If your people already sign in to another site, that site can sign them in to the FAQ too. It posts who they are, with the time and an HMAC-SHA256 signature made with a shared secret, and the FAQ starts its own session. It works across domains, shares no cookies and needs no third party. The download includes an example to copy into the calling site. Password sign-in keeps working alongside it.

Importing from phpMyFAQ

Manage > Import from phpMyFAQ reads a phpMyFAQ 3.x or 4.x database, on the same server or another. Check shows the counts first; Import brings across categories, articles, links, tags and users in one transaction. Article numbers are kept where possible so old links still work, and it can be run again without doubling anything. Attachments are not imported.

Requirements

• PHP 7.4 or later with pdo_mysql, mbstring and fileinfo
• MySQL 8.0 or later, or MariaDB 10.4 or later
• Apache or IIS - every protected folder has both an .htaccess and a web.config

Installing

1. Create an empty database and a user with SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, CREATE, ALTER and INDEX on it. The FAQ never deletes rows, so it does not need DELETE or DROP.
2. Copy the contents of the app folder to a folder on your site, for example faq.
3. Let the web server write to the src and data folders.
4. Open setup.php in a browser, enter the database details and the first admin's login. Setup checks the server, creates the tables and then locks itself.
5. Sign in at admin.php and choose your settings.

The readme in the download covers each step in detail, including IIS permissions, upgrading and translating the captions.

Download Source Code