Build your own help center

A help center is the cheapest support you will ever run: an article answers the same question forever without anyone typing it again.

The mechanics are simple, but two of them surprise people — the status that gates the whole site, and the article counts that only count published articles.

Who this is for

Admins and whoever owns support content.

Before you start

• Permission to manage the help center and its articles.
• A short list of the questions you actually get asked most.
• A slug for the address — some words are reserved and cannot be used.

Two things that catch people out
First: the help center's status gates everything. Anything other than live means the whole public address returns nothing, no matter how many published articles are inside. Second: a section's article count only counts published articles — a section showing zero next to thirty drafts is correct, not a bug.

Build and publish it

1. Create the help center and pick a slug
   The slug is the address. A handful of words are reserved because they collide with real paths, so you may need a second choice.
2. Choose the visibility
   Public means anyone can read it and search engines can crawl it. Sign-in requires a customer session. Internal restricts it to your own team. Pick before you publish, not after.
3. Create sections
   Sections are the browse structure. One level of nesting is supported, so start flat and add sub-sections only when a section outgrows a screen.
4. Write articles as drafts
   Articles start as drafts and are not public until published. That gap is the review step — use it rather than routing round it.
5. Turn on the features you want
   Search, a contact form, CSAT feedback and the chat widget can each be enabled. AI answers are off by default and are an opt-in decision.
6. Publish the articles, then go live
   Publish the articles you are happy with, then set the help center to live. Doing it in that order means nobody sees a half-empty site.
7. Watch what people search for
   The searches that find nothing are the best article backlog you will ever get, because your customers wrote it for you.

What you get

• A public, searchable knowledge base at your own address.
• Typo-tolerant search, so a misspelling still finds the article.
• A contact form that files real tickets rather than sending mail into a void.
• Per-article feedback and view data, so you learn which articles actually work.

Frequently asked questions

My articles are published but the site shows nothing. Why?

Check the help center's own status. Anything other than live makes the entire public address return nothing regardless of what is inside it.

A section says zero articles but I filed thirty. Is that a bug?

No. The count is of published articles only. Thirty drafts correctly show as zero until they are published.

Can I keep the help center private to my team?

Yes. Internal visibility restricts it to your own workspace members, and sign-in visibility requires a customer session. Both are excluded from search engines.

What should the first articles be?

The questions your team answers most often. Look at your ticket history rather than guessing — the repeated ones are the articles that pay for themselves fastest.