Help Center
By Pranav, Shivam Mishra, and Sivin Varghese
By Pranav, Shivam Mishra, and Sivin Varghese
Create, organize, and publish help center articles so customers can find answers on their own.
How to set up a Help Center?
You can easily create a self-service portal for your customers to access articles and information. In this guide, we take you through the steps to set up a Help Center, including creating a portal and adding articles. You can set up your Help Center in three parts, as explained below. I. Creating a portal Step 1. Click the Help Center icon from your sidebar, and click the "New Portal" button. Step 2. You will see a basic settings page. Start filling in the fields. These fields are explained below: 1. Logo Upload your organization's logo. 2. Name Name your portal to refer to it internally. 3. Slug This will be auto-generated. 4. Custom Domain (optional) You can add the domain you want to serve your portal on a custom domain. For example, if your website is yourdomain.com and you want your portal accessible at docs.yourdomain.com, type that in this field. Click "Create portal basic settings". Your portal is ready. You can start adding categories and articles within these categories. II. Creating categories Categories exist to structure your portal and organize your articles. Follow these steps: Step 1. Click the + sign alongside the Category section on the secondary sidebar to create a new category. Step 2. A modal will open up. Fill up the fields. These fields are described below. 1. Name Name your category. This name will be used on the public portal. 2. Slug This will be auto-generated. 3. Description (optional) Describe your category. Click the "Create category" button. III. Creating articles Finally, start writing your articles. Follow the steps below. Step 1. You can find the "New Article" button on almost every page. Click it. Step 2. Use the text editor to write your article. Use the sidebar to select your article's category and author and update the meta content. Here is an example: You can use the "Preview" button to see how your article turns out. Once ready, click "Publish". Your live article will look like this:
How to setup an SSL certificate for your Help Center's custom domain?
Using your own domain, like docs.your-company.com, makes your help center feel more trustworthy and on-brand. Chatwoot allows you to use your own custom domain and would help you to secure your site with SSL certificates so that it's safe for your visitors. This guide walks you through setting up a custom domain for your Help Center portal in Chatwoot. Note: This guide is for Chatwoot Cloud users. If you're using the self-hosted version, you'll need to set up and manage the SSL certificate on your own. TLDR: Add your custom domain in Chatwoot portal settings, update your DNS with the CNAME Chatwoot provides, and we will issue the SSL certificate. Once it's ready, your Help Center will be live and accessible to your customers. Step 1: Set up your custom domain in portal settings Log in to your Chatwoot dashboard and go to the Help Center you want to connect with your custom domain. Click on Settings, then scroll to the Custom Domain section. Click the Add custom domain button to begin the setup. You'll now see a prompt asking for your custom domain. Enter the domain where you want your Help Center to be available (e.g., docs.yourdomain.com). This is the website address your customers will visit to access your documentation. Next, you'll be shown the DNS settings you need to add so we can confirm that the domain is yours and connect it to your Help Center. You’ll need to copy this information and update your DNS provider accordingly. If you’re not sure how to do it, you can use the option on the screen to email these details to your developer. Step 2: Update your DNS with the CNAME record You must point your custom domain to Chatwoot by creating a CNAME record. Host: docs Type: CNAME Value: chatwoot.help Instructions vary by DNS provider: Using Cloudflare: You can find the setting under the "DNS" tab. Note: Make sure that the SSL encryption mode is set to Full in Cloudflare (You can view this under SSL/TLS -> Overview). Using AWS Route 53: You can find the setting under the "Route53" service. If you're using a different DNS provider, the steps are generally the same. Look for the DNS settings section and add a CNAME record as described. If you’re unsure how to do this, just search for instructions specific to your provider using a phrase like How to add a CNAME record on [Your DNS Provider]. This step links your domain to Chatwoot’s servers. Once it’s done, we’ll have everything we need, your portal details and the domain configuration to issue the SSL certificate and make your Help Center live. Step 3: Getting an SSL certificate Chatwoot provides SSL certificates for all cloud customers on paid plans who set up a custom domain for their Help Center portal. This step happens automatically. Once you add the CNAME record to your DNS, our server will verify the domain and begin issuing the SSL certificate. This usually takes just a few minutes, but in some cases, depending on your DNS provider and how long they take to update records, it may take up to 24–48 hours. You can track the status of your SSL certificate right from the Chatwoot dashboard. Initially, you’ll see the status as Awaiting Verification. This means we’re still confirming your domain setup before the certificate is issued. If there are any issues during the SSL verification process like an incorrect CNAME record or DNS propagation delays, you’ll see an error message next to the status on your dashboard. Hover over the status indicator to view more details about what went wrong and what you need to fix. This helps you quickly identify and resolve any problems in the setup process. Once the verification is successful and the SSL certificate is issued, the status will change to 'Live' on your dashboard. This means your Help Center is now securely available at your custom domain. Your customers can visit the URL and browse the content.
Embedding videos in Help Center
Chatwoot's Help Center supports automatic embedding of videos from multiple platforms. When you paste supported video URLs on their own lines (surrounded by empty lines), they will be automatically converted to embedded video players. Supported Video Platforms Platform URL Format How to Get the URL YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID or https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID Copy URL from browser address bar or use "Share" button Vimeo https://vimeo.com/VIDEO_ID Copy URL from browser address bar or use "Share" button Loom https://loom.com/share/VIDEO_ID Use "Share" button after recording or from video library Wistia https://SUBDOMAIN.wistia.com/medias/VIDEO_ID Copy URL from browser or use "Share & Embed" option Arcade https://app.arcade.software/share/VIDEO_ID Use "Share" button from your demo library Bunny CDN https://iframe.mediadelivery.net/play/LIBRARY_ID/VIDEO_ID Get iframe URL from Bunny CDN dashboard Direct MP4 Any URL ending in .mp4 Use direct link to MP4 file from any hosting service Important Requirements 1. Empty Lines: Video URLs must be surrounded by empty lines (blank lines above and below) 2. Standalone Links: The URL must be on its own line, not embedded in other text 3. Must be a Link: The URL must be formatted as a clickable link in markdown (not plain text) 4. Exact Format: URLs must match the exact patterns shown above The video embedding system automatically detects these patterns and replaces the URLs with responsive video players that work across all devices.
Connect analytics to your help center
You can track how visitors use your help center by connecting your preferred analytics tools. Chatwoot supports popular providers like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Hotjar, Plausible, Microsoft Clarity, Meta Pixel, and Amplitude, so you can start collecting insights without adding any custom code. Before you begin A few things to keep in mind before setting up analytics: - Only administrators can manage analytics integrations. - You only need to configure the providers you use. The rest can be left empty. - Tracking scripts are added only to your public help center pages. They aren't loaded inside the Chatwoot dashboard. Open the Integrations tab 1. Go to Help Center and open the portal you want to configure. 2. Select Settings. 3. Open the Integrations tab. Add an analytics provider Each analytics provider has its own configuration card. Enter the required ID or key, then save your changes. 1. Find the provider you want to configure. 2. Paste the required ID or key into the input field. 3. If the value isn't in the expected format, Chatwoot shows an inline validation message explaining what needs to be corrected. 4. Select Save changes. If you no longer want to use a provider, simply clear the field and save again. Supported analytics providers Provider Required value Example Google Tag Manager Container ID GTM-XXXXXXX Google Analytics 4 Measurement ID G-XXXXXXXXXX Hotjar Site ID 1234567 Plausible Domain example.com Amplitude API Key Your project API key Microsoft Clarity Project ID Your Clarity project ID Meta Pixel Pixel ID 123456789012345 Verify your setup After saving your configuration, open your public help center in a new browser tab and visit a few pages. Then check your analytics provider's real-time or debug view to confirm events are being received. For example: - Google Analytics 4: Realtime report - Meta Pixel: Test Events - Microsoft Clarity: Live recordings or dashboard - Hotjar: Incoming recordings or heatmaps Notes - Amplitude currently sends data to the default (US) region. EU data residency isn't supported yet.
Recommend categories and articles
By default, your help center home page shows the first few categories and your most-viewed articles. If you want to highlight specific content instead, you can choose exactly what appears. For each locale, you can recommend up to 3 categories and 6 articles, and arrange them in any order. Set recommended content 1. Go to Help Center → Locales. 2. Click the ⋯ menu for the locale and select Select recommended content. 3. Under Recommended categories, click Add another... and choose a category. Use the search box if needed. 4. Under Recommended articles, add the articles you want to feature. 5. Drag and drop categories or articles to change their order. 6. Click Save recommendations. Recommendations are saved per locale, so each locale can feature different content. What visitors see Your recommended categories appear on the help center home page instead of the default category list. Recommended articles replace the Popular articles section with Recommended articles. Good to know - If you don't add any recommendations, the help center uses the default content. - Categories and articles work independently. You can recommend either one or both. - Only published articles are shown. Draft or deleted articles are skipped automatically. - Recommended categories are shown even if they don't contain any published articles. - Recommendations are available for every locale, including drafts.
Hide your help center or articles from search engines
By default, Google and other search engines can list your help center pages in their results. You can now keep a single article, or your whole help center, out of search results. Visitors can still open and use it as before. This is useful for pages that people should reach from your product or support conversations rather than from Google, such as internal guides, beta features or duplicate content. Hide a single article 1. Go to Help Center → Articles and open the article. 2. Click More properties. 3. Turn off Show in search results. The change saves automatically. The article stays published and visible in your help center. Only search engines skip it. Each translation of an article has its own setting, so turn it off for every language you want to hide. Hide your whole help center 1. Go to Help Center → Settings. 2. Open the SEO tab. 3. Turn off Show in search results. While your help center is hidden, every article's switch is turned off and can't be changed, with a note pointing back to Settings → SEO. Turn the help center setting back on to manage articles one by one again. What happens when a page is hidden - It's removed from your help center's sitemap, the list of pages that search engines read. - Search engines are told not to list the page. - Visitors see no change. Links, categories and help center search all work as before. Good to know - It isn't instant. Pages already in search results disappear the next time search engines check your help center, which can take a few days or weeks. If you need a page gone urgently, request removal in the search engine's own tools, such as Google Search Console. - It doesn't make pages private. Anyone with the link can still open a hidden page. To take an article down completely, move it back to draft or archive it. - You can turn it back on at any time. Pages become eligible for search results again the next time search engines check your help center.