Writing and managing your knowledge base

Tidemark Billing has a built-in help center for your own customers. You write articles in Markdown, organise them in nested categories and publish them at /kb on your site. This is separate from the Tidemark Billing help you are reading now. It holds your content.

Turn it on#

An administrator opens Settings → Knowledge base:

With it on, Knowledge base → Articles appears in the admin menu, and customers see Knowledge base under Support in the client portal. Drafts and hidden categories are never shown to customers, whatever the guest setting says. Staff see them on the public pages with a note.

Plan the structure#

Categories can nest as deep as you like, for example Getting started, then Domains, then Transfers. Every article sits in one category, or at the top level.

Web addresses follow the nesting: /kb/getting-started/domains/transfers/move-a-domain. A category and an article cannot share an address under the same parent. At the top level, the link names search, media and feedback are reserved.

Add a category#

1. Open Knowledge base and select Add category. From the tree you can also use Add next to a category to add a subcategory.
2. Enter a Name. Choose where it goes under Inside, or leave it at Top level.
3. Optionally add a Description, a Link name and an Icon. The icon is a Lucide icon name such as rocket.
4. Leave Visible to customers ticked. Untick it to keep the category, and everything inside it, for staff only.
5. Select Add category.

You can only delete a category when it is empty. Move or delete its articles and subcategories first. In the tree, the arrows move a category or article up or down among its siblings.

Write an article#

1. Select Add article, or Add → Article here on a category.
2. Enter a Title.
3. Write in the editor. It opens in a visual Write mode. Switch to the Markdown tab under the editor to work with the source. Either way, the article is stored as Markdown.
4. Under Publish, set Status to Draft (only staff can see it) or Published, and choose the Category.
5. Optionally add a Summary of up to 300 characters, shown in lists and search results. If you leave it blank, the start of the article is used. You can also set the Link name, which is made from the title if blank.
6. Select Create.

Use Preview draft to see a draft as it will look, and View for a published article. A published article gets its publish date the first time it is published.

What Markdown works#

The same features work in every article:

• Headings. Level 2 to 4 headings get anchors and fill the "On this page" list.
• Bold, italic, strikethrough, links, quotes, horizontal rules and tables.
• Bullet lists, numbered lists and task lists. Numbered lists are shown as numbered steps.
• Fenced code blocks with a language, such as php, bash, html or json. They get syntax colours and a copy button.
• Callouts: start a quote with [!NOTE], [!TIP], [!IMPORTANT], [!WARNING] or [!CAUTION].
• A few HTML tags where Markdown cannot say it, such as <kbd>, <details> and <summary>. Only a safe list of tags is kept. Scripts, frames, forms, event handlers and javascript: links are removed when the page is displayed.
• Images. Drop or paste one into the editor. PNG, JPG, GIF and WebP up to 5 MB are accepted, and SVG is refused. Images are stored privately and shown through the help center, so they follow the same guest setting as the articles.

A callout looks like this in Markdown:

> [!TIP]
> Customers can find this article by searching for "invoice".

The visual editor may write bullet lists with * and re-wrap some spacing. The result displays the same.

Publish and keep articles current#

Staff all manage content. Any staff member can create, edit and delete articles and categories.

The Knowledge base page lists everything as a tree, with tabs for All, Published and Drafts, a search box and a category filter. Each article shows its status, number of views and when it was last updated. Move articles with the arrows to set their order.

Deleting an article removes it for good, and links to it stop working. There is no revision history yet, so keep a copy of the text before a large rewrite.

What readers see#

The home page has category cards, Most read and Recently updated lists and a search box. Search looks in the title, summary and text of published, visible articles. Category pages list their subcategories and articles. Article pages have breadcrumbs, a side menu, On this page, previous and next links and the last updated date. At the foot, readers can answer Was this article helpful? once per visit.

Editing an article shows its Views and the percentage who found it helpful. Views count once per visitor session and are not counted for staff. Use low helpfulness figures to decide what to rewrite.

Related#

• Support tickets
• Using the client portal
• Settings reference