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phpMyFAQ is an open source, database-driven FAQ software solution. It is a complete solution for managing FAQs on your website. It is written in PHP and uses a database to store all relevant information. It is a good idea to try phpMyFAQ before trying to build a similar FAQ solution from scratch.

phpMyFAQ is designed to connect to MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL or SQLite 3 databases. Accessing other data sources is not supported, as phpMyFAQ unfortunately lacks the support for the ADOdb PHP database abstraction library.

Since it is PHP based, you should have no trouble running phpMyFAQ on just about any server. However, there are some things to keep in mind. You will need PHP 5.4.4 or higher (with the following extensions: GD, JSON, Session, MBString, Filter, XMLWriter, SPL), a database server (MySQL version 5.1.x or higher with ext/mysqli extension, PostgreSQL 8.x or 9.x, Microsoft SQL 2008 or higher, SQLite3). phpMyFAQ will run successfully only if the PHP directive_safe_mode is set to off.

You can install phpMyFAQ on Linux, Windows, OS X, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX or Netware operating systems. Detailed installation guides are available online from the community. Any Linux distribution should work fine as long as it has all the necessary components installed.

The current version of phpMyFAQ is 2.8.22 and updating from the previous version (2.8.x) is simply done by clicking a button and running the update script, the rest is handled automatically. If you are updating from older versions like 2.7.x, 2.6.x or 2.5.x, you must create a full backup before the update. Also, in that case, you have to manually delete parts of your existing installation before updating. Detailed instructions are available online, in official phpMyFAQ documentation. If you are running older versions of phpMyFAQ like 1.x or 2.0.x, a new and fresh install is recommended.

Running phpMyFAQ on Windows IIS servers should not cause any problems, as IIS 7.0 or higher is recommended. If you are using Apache for Windows, you may have to increase the Apache stack size.

phpMyFAQ uses a HTML5/CSS3 powered markup. Mozilla Firefox 3.6 or higher, Safari 5.x or higher, Chrome 5 or higher, Opera 11.0 or higher and Internet Explorer 9 or higher are all supported. JavaScript for the Ajax based functions also has to be enabled. Using the latest version of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer is highly recommended.

There is nothing to worry about – phpMyFAQ is free. The software is published under the MPL Mozilla Public License Version 2.0 which grants you the free usage of phpMyFAQ, access to the source code and the right to modify and distribute phpMyFAQ. The only restrictions apply to the copyright, which remains the property of Thorsten Rinne and the phpMyFAQ Team. Any modified versions of phpMyFAQ will also fall under the terms of MPL.

The phpMyFAQ interface is translated into 40+ languages including RTL languages such as Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew, so you should have no problems as far as localization goes. Also, PDF export functionality embedded in phpMYFAQ works with all supported languages. New releases of phpMyFAQ bring new translations regularly, and they are contributed by the community.

phpMyFAQ also features an integrated CMS for administrating users and content, active directory support, social network integration, revision system, exporting your FAQs to PDF, XHTML or XML, smart automatic answering, statistics, database backup and restore, advanced spam protection, and more.

phpMyFAQ supports rewrite rules for Apache, Nginx, IIS, lightppd and Zeus webservers. Automatically generated sitemaps for Google, Bing and Yahoo search robots are also supported. Detailed information on how to improve SEO on you server running phpMyFAQ is available in the official documentation.

Yes, the boolean full-text search only works with MySQL, under the condition that there are 5 or more entries in the database. The term you are searching for should not show up in more than 50% of all database entries, or it will be automatically omitted from the search. The search function in all other supported databases uses the LIKE operator.

No problems there, as phpMyFAQ is very well documented online and there is a free official support forum. The phpMyFAQ team also offers the possibility of paid commercial support and customizations available upon your request.

Pretty good. Since phpMyFAQ is free, well documented and very popular, a lot of hosting companies will provide you with access to phpMyFAQ “out of the box”. If phpMyFAQ is not already installed, you or your host should have no problems installing it. SimpleScripts also provides one-click installation of phpMyFAQ to your server via FTP.