Creating a category or section

Both are made from Add in the top menu bar, and one category behaves differently: with only one, readers never see it.

Categories and sections are the containers your articles live in, and both are made from Add in the top menu bar. One behaviour shapes how you plan the structure: if you have only one category, that category is hidden from readers and they see only the sections.

Create a category

1. In your help centre or Knowledge admin, click Add in the top menu bar and select Category.
2. Enter a Name and, optionally, a Description.
3. Select the Source language.
4. On Enterprise, optionally pick a Template.
5. Click Add.

Create a section

1. Click Add and select Section.
2. Enter a Name and, optionally, a Description.
3. Select the Source language.
4. Under Order articles by, choose how articles are listed.
5. Under Hierarchy, choose the parent category or section.
6. On Enterprise, optionally pick a Template.
7. Click Add.

You need to be a Knowledge admin to add or edit either.

One category is a special case

With a single category, end users do not see the category at all: they see its sections. That is the reason a small help centre can be built as one category with several well-named sections and still read cleanly, and it is also why adding a second category changes what everybody sees.

Hierarchy is a field, not a drag

A section's parent is chosen in the Hierarchy field when you create it, which is also how you make a subsection: pick a section as the parent rather than a category.

Write the description

It is optional on both, and worth filling in. One sentence saying what belongs here helps whoever files an article later, and whether it appears on the page depends on your theme, so check your own help centre rather than assuming either way.

It is read by somebody regardless. Zendesk builds the meta description of a category or section page from the description you wrote, so it is what a search engine shows underneath the title. An empty one means that space is filled with whatever the page happens to contain.

Order is a decision

Order articles by governs the articles inside a section. The order of the sections and categories themselves is what a reader scans, so put the most common first, not the most important to you. Getting started first, and whatever generates the most tickets second, is a reliable default.

Do not create empty ones

An empty section on a live help centre is a dead end, and readers who hit one stop trusting the navigation. Create the section when you have articles for it.

Sections are per help centre

With several brands, each has its own structure. There is no shared set of sections, which is one of the costs of a second help centre.

See also

• Setting the order within a section
• Adding subsections for more levels
• Categories, sections and articles: how to organise them