Products, sections and articles

KnowX organises documentation with the categories and posts WordPress already has. There is no custom post type and no plugin.

Docs concept	WordPress object
Product	Top-level category
Section	Child category of a product (they can nest)
Article	Post
Featured article	Sticky post

Setting up a site? Follow Set up docs for one product or Set up docs for several products.

Add a product

1. Go to Posts > Categories and add a category with no parent. Write a short description; it is shown on the product card.
2. Choose an icon from the list and, if you want one, tick Use an accent colour and pick a colour. Buttons and links on that product’s pages use it. If you choose nothing, a site with two or more products gives each product its own icon and colour from the theme’s palette automatically, so the cards look different out of the box. With one product the theme colour is used.
3. Add child categories for the sections and publish articles in them. An article can also be filed on the product itself, for an introduction, pricing or an FAQ; it then appears in the product’s Overview card.

The default category (“Uncategorized” on a new site) is not shown as a product until you give it a description, an icon or a section. The product appears on the docs home page and in the Products menu in the header. The menu is hidden when the site has a single product.

Order of articles

Use the Order field in the editor sidebar. Articles with the same order are sorted by title. On a section page, Customize > Knowledge Base > Order posts decides what happens after the Order field: by date or by name.

What readers see

• Docs home: product cards with an icon, the description and the article count, then featured (sticky) and recent articles.
• Product page: an Overview card with the articles filed on the product itself (only when there are some), then every section with its first five articles and a link to see all of them. The Overview card comes first, in the same order as the sidebar and the Start here button. On the docs home, with the Sections layout, it shows the first five and links to the product page. A product with no sections lists its articles like a section page, with page numbers.
• Section page: the articles of the section with a short excerpt and a page number list.
• Article page: the section tree on the left, the article in the middle and “On this page” on the right. On tablets and phones the tree and the contents are collapsible panels above the article.

Version badge

In the editor sidebar, the Docs box has an Applies to version field. Whatever you type is shown as a badge under the title, for example “Version 3.2”.

Large sites

The lists are cached and refresh when you publish, edit or delete a post or change a category. A product tree lists up to 500 articles; the section links always reach the full list. You can change the limits with the knowx_kb_max_categories and knowx_tree_max_posts filters.

Search results, tags, dates and authors

Search results and the tag, date and author archives use the same article list as a section page. Search results and these archives print the product and section above each title, so a reader can tell two articles with the same name apart. These pages have no sidebar; the Sidebar setting applies to the posts page and ordinary pages.

Order, start link and search filter

On Posts > Categories, a top-level category has two more fields next to its icon and colour:

Field	What it does
Product order	Lowest number first, then by name. Applies to the docs home, the product switcher and the search filter.
Start here link	Where the Start here button on the product page goes. Empty opens the first article.

When there are two or more products, search results show All products and one button per product. Choosing a product limits the results to that product and its sections.

Customize > Docs > Docs Home > Products on the docs home switches between product cards and each product listed with its sections.