If you're new to Help authoring, try creating a small Help system to get the feel for how everything works. eHelp authoring tools come equipped with tutorials to provide a quick and easy way to experience Help authoring while learning the features and power of your Help authoring tool.
Here are the basic steps to creating any Help system:
Select an authoring environment. Decide which Help format best meets your users' needs. Then select the Help authoring tool suited for that environment. You can create several Help systems in different formats from the same project files.
Create a Help project. Using your selected Help authoring tool, set up the Help project. The Help project allows you to manage and organize all the source files that go into creating the Help system. It also allows you to decide overall things - like the title of the Help system and the appearance of the Help windows.
Create topics. Next, create your topics using text, images, sound, video - anything that helps you to communicate the message of your Help system in ways that are meaningful and interesting to your audience. When creating your topics, you'll also use styles, which are named formats that affect the layout and appearance of your topics.
Link the topics. When your topics are created, you need to connect them. Your audience uses these links to access the topics. There are many different types of links that show relationships among topics, and your linking strategy can take advantage of the various types.
Create a table of contents. The table of contents is one of the first things your user sees. It's also an important way users access the topics in your Help system. With that in mind, create a table of contents that not only shows what information your Help system contains, but also clearly demonstrates how that information is organized. Topics need to be accessible, or your audience will never see them.
Create an index. You'll also want to give careful thought to the index. Some studies show that Help users use the index to find topics more than they use the table of contents. To create the index, you'll create the keywords and phrases that your users will most likely search for to find information. You associate keywords with your topics, so that when users search for a keyword, they instantly see the topic or topics associated with the selected keyword.
Generate the Help system. When you're ready to see the results of your efforts, you generate the source files into the Help system (for WinHelp and HTML Help).
Test the Help system. To make sure the Help system looks and acts the way you planned, you need to test it. Testing can be as simple as opening the Help system and looking at every topic or as complicated as using testing your topics by clicking Help buttons and pressing F1 in a software program. The important thing is that you can get to the topics inside your Help system and that those topics display without errors. If you find problems, resolve them in the source files and compile the Help system again.
Deliver the Help system. When you're satisfied with the way your Help system looks and acts, you make it available to your audience. That may mean creating a diskette or CD-ROM. If you plan to distribute the Help system over an intranet or the Intranet, you'll need to work with your system administrator.