Knowledge Base Overview

We've utilized our own Product Fruits Knowledge Base for documentation purposes. In fact, we're using it to compose this article ๐Ÿ˜Ž

The Knowledge base is a repository of articles organized into Categories. The Help Center is the frontend of your Knowledge base.

Example of Help Center

Our Product Fruits Help Center is displayed below; it's the frontend of our Knowledge base.

The Product Fruits Help Center

Knowledge base

The Knowledge base is a repository of Articles divided into Categories. Each category can have its own Subcategories. Categories and subcategories can have multiple articles. 

The Articles section of the Product Fruits administration highlighting a category a subcategory and an article

Featured Categories and Articles

Featured categories and featured articles will be displayed on the main landing page of the Knowledge Base:

The Product Fruits Help Center highlighting featured categories and featured articles

  • If no featured articles are selected, some will be randomly selected to display in the featured articles section. 
  • Featured categories must have an article or they will not display on the landing page. Articles in subcategories will not work for this. 

 

You can fully customize your Help Center by adjusting your Customer Portal settings:

The Customer portal settings screen in the Product Fruits administration

Customer Portal Settings

Languages

Choose the default language under the language tab. You must set up supported languages to be able to change this from English. 

The supported languages screen showing English as the default language

Images

Add Logos, Favicons, Hero images, and configure the hero image sizing and position under the images tab:

The images screen of the Customer portal

Colors

Add a main color scheme and Hero text color under the colors tab:

The Colors menu of the Customer portal


 Features and Menu Items

Completely customize the menu and add a new menu item that links to any URL, as well as add your newsfeed to the Knowledge base:

The features and menu items of the Customer portal
The Help Center logo items

Featured Categories and Articles Setup

Select which articles and categories to display on the customer portal homepage. You can upload an image or select from our default icons to bring attention to the most important information in your Knowledge base:

The featured categories section of the customer portal showing how to choose or upload an image to featured categories

Domains

In the domains tab you can view the URL that can be used to access your knowledge base, as well as set up a custom domain.

The domain screen in the Customer portal showing where you can set up a custom domain

Custom HTML and Scripts

In the Custom HTML and Scripts tab you can apply styling and scripts, such as installing google analytics or other external snippets

The custom HTML and Scripts section of the Customer portal menu

Localization

Customize all of the default texts in the localization tab. 

The localization menu of the Customer portal

Security

 On the security tab, you can secure your knowledge base, add authentication methods, and even add allowed IP addresses. 

Access Management

Configure how you'd like to secure your knowledge base here. You can choose to secure all or some of your articles, and then choose how users will be authenticated to view these articles. 

The Access Management screen of the Customer portal

Advanced Settings

Advanced settings is where you can add the allowed IP addresses, as well as add robots.txt content. 

The Advanced settings screen of the Customer portal showing where allowed IP addresses and Robots txt file content can be added

 

Article Editor

An example of an article in the Article Editor

In the article editor, you can not only write the article contents, but add images, tables, videos, and even HTML sections to the article. Ask AI or fully customize the text with different headings and colors. 

Using Headings

Headings organize the article automatically on the right side of the page, while categories are organized on the left.

An example of an article showing a title headings categories and subcategories

Headings can also be used to link directly to a specific section of the article. Mouse over the heading and click the # symbol to change the URL, which can be copied and directly sent or linked in your application:

An example of how to append links in the Customer portal with headings of articles to jump to that section of the article

 

Article Settings

Additional article settings can be found in the top-right of the editor. 

The article settings menu

Permalink

You can change the settings for the way the article's permalink behaves here. It is set to auto by default, but can be changed to manual. When it is set to auto, the permalink will change to match the article's title. When changing this setting to manual, you can choose the permalink you'd like. This is useful when you have a static button or link in your application that would break when the auto permalink changes with the title. 

The Permalink section of the article settings menu

Versions

In this section, it is possible to duplicate article versions to be edited and drafted before being published. 

An example of an article with two versions

Keywords

Add search keywords to the articles for easier searching in your customer portal. When adding keywords, think of what your users might search for which may not necessarily be words included in the article text. This is when keywords become useful!

An example of adding keywords to an article

Protection

Hide the article fully or configure it here to require authentication. Remember to enable this in the customer portal settings and set up access management or this article will be hidden completely. 

The Protection screen of an individual article

Alternative URLs

Set up additional slugs for this article. This is similar to setting the permalink to manual, but you can have multiple slugs that will redirect visitors to the primary content slug.

The Alternative URLs screen of an article

Knowledge base tips

Knowledge base Articles & Hints

It's easy to offer more information to the user through the KB articles linked from hints. Simply highlight the text you want to act as a link, and select the 'link' icon from the pop up menu to attach it to the URL of your choice. 

Knowledge base Articles & Life Ring

You can link a KB article directly from the Life Ring Button. Simply click the "Content" tab while inside the Life Ring Button settings and you'll be able to add adjust the title, URL path, and other specifications for the articles embedded inside. 

Knowledge base Articles & Life Ring Search

Articles can also be made searchable inside the Life Ring Button. This will help save time for your users by not having to manually parse through content you've created. 

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