On a knowledgebase homepage, how much information is too much?
I am involved with putting together a knowledge base website where users of a suite of software products can go to learn how to use certain features and to help troubleshoot problems that may arise.
Ultimately the main goal of the site is to allow the user to get to relevant information for their needs, as fast as possible.
With this in mind we have added a really prominent search box at the top of the page, where a user can simply type in their question and get a list of page links that can potentially help them.
As a secondary option, we also have listed right below the search box, links to 5 of the most popular/frequent articles as well as some additional "getting started" type of links.
We also have many additional pages (eventually it will be a few hundred pages) that we group into categories (roughly 10 for now, but likely will grow) that we will allow the user to browse as a third option.
My question: Should all these less popular articles (grouped by category) be put on the home page underneath the search option and the "popular" links, adding at least an additional 5 links per category, or should they all be put on a separate "browse all topics" page?