There are many ways to create a home page for your knowledge base articles and other support sections. This guide will cover these approaches one by one.
To add a page you can go to the WordPress admin menu / Pages / Add New. You can use new or any of the existing pages, there are no specific requirements. Also, if you want to make this page your website home page, you can do so in WordPress menu / Settings / Reading.
Available home page blocks
Currently, MinervaKB provides the following home page elements.
- KB Live Search
- KB Topics (List or Box layout)
- KB Single Topic
- FAQ
To see how a page looks with Search, KB Topic, and FAQ sections you may visit one of our demo pages.
There are also content elements, like the Tip, Info, or Related articles, but they are rarely used on the home page. You can use any of the methods described below to add them to your page.
Gutenberg blocks
As you probably already know, Gutenberg is a new visual block editor for WordPress.
While some people still prefer to use the Classic editor (especially for sites that have been online for a while and have lots of content) according to WP.org stats page, around 45% of users have already upgraded to version 5.0 or above (as of June 15, 2020).
MinervaKB also supports the new editor and provides all the knowledge base sections as blocks. When you’re adding a new block to a page, you should be able to see the MinervaKB category.
When the block is added to a page, you should be able to see all the available options on the right side of the page. The preview will update immediately when you change any of the options.
Elementor blocks
Elementor is one of the most popular WordPress page builders available today and the base version is free.
MinervaKB provides all KB sections available as Elementor blocks starting from version 1.6.7. The editing is completely visual and is the same as editing any page with Elementor.
Please note, that the free Elementor version is more than enough to work with Minerva modules, the pro version is not required.
Shortcode Builder
A Shortcode Builder is a Classic editor extension that we’ve developed to allow easier editing of MinervaKB shortcodes.
If you use the Classic editor you should be able to see the blue Minerva icon in the toolbar. When you click it, the shortcodes list will appear and you will be able to edit all module options via the settings panel.
If you prefer this approach, we have a detailed guide on Shortcode Builder.
Shortcodes
If you prefer to use Classic editor it’s probably better to use the Shortcode Builder described above, as it’s hard to memorize all the available options and add them in text mode.
However, the shortcodes may still be useful in some specific cases (for example, if you want to render the KB section at someplace in the theme via PHP).
If you need to use shortcodes in text mode, please refer to the shortcodes topic for a list of available parameters.
Visual Composer elements
We also provide knowledge base blocks for the Visual Composer page builder. All knowledge base modules are available under MinervaKB category.
Legacy Methods
There are also two legacy methods to create a home page:
- via the plugin options (sections Home page: Layout / Topics / Search / FAQ in plugin settings)
- via the page options sections builder (MinervaKB Builder Page Settings at the bottom of the page edit screen)
Initially, these were the only ways to create a home page and because of this many people are still using them. That’s why they are still available.
However, these methods have the following important limitation: they only allow to add kb sections and a single content section.
So, for example, if you need to add some promotional or other text between Search and Topics – you cannot do this with these methods. That’s why we don’t recommend these options anymore, they are not flexible.
The KB page via plugin settings also has the following disadvantages:
- It allows only 1 KB section of each type to be added
- It’s not translated via WPML