Knowledge Center
Community Edition Documentation

Any short length content which may be used to display term definitions, frequently asked questions etc.

To create panel records in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Panels' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the panel list page.
4. Start filling in your panel fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set panel taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. When you are ready, click Publish. If you do not have publish privileges, the "Submit for Review" button is displayed.
7. After the submission is completed, the panel status changes to "Published" or "Pending Review". Users must have "publish" right to publish panels. Users who do not have "publish" right can still create panels; however, these panels must be reviewed and approved by a user with panel "publish" right. Check Roles and Responsibilities section of this document to see which access groups have panel "publish" right.

Panels can be modified by clicking on the "Edit" link under the panel title in the panel list page in the admin area. Make any necessary changes and then click Publish.

In Knowledge Center, users are only allowed to search panels they have access to. Users who have access to panels can search using the filter system in the panel admin area.

To schedule Panels for publication on a future time or date in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Panels' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the panel list page.
4. Start filling in your panel fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set panel taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. When you are ready, click "Edit" in the Publish area next to the words "Publish immediately". You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date Panels. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the "Publish" button when you have completed the panel to publish at the desired time and date.
7. After the submission is completed, the panel status changes to "Published".

To create a password protected panel in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Panels' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the panel list page.
4. Start filling in your panel fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set panel taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. Click the "Edit" link next to Visibility in the publish box and select "Password protected".
7. Enter a password that will be required to view that panel in the text field. The password is limited to 20 characters.
8. When you are ready, click the "Publish" button (or "Update" if the panel is already published.)
9. After the submission is completed, the panel status changes to "Published".

Only an Administrator and users with "publish" right can change the password set for your panel or modify visibility setting by clicking the "Visibility: Edit" link again.

When panel content is password protected, panel title displays the text "Protected: " before the panel Title and the content prints a password form with this text: "This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:".

If multiple panels have the same password, one will only have to enter the required password once. Only one password is tracked at a time so if you visit two different panels with two different password, you must re-enter the panel password to access content. WordPress saves passwords for maximum 10 days. After this period expires, one must reenter the password again to view the protected content.

Panels can be privately published to remove them from panel lists and feeds.

To create a private panel in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Panels' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the panel list page.
4. Start filling in your panel fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set panel taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. Click the "Edit" link next to Visibility in the publish box and select "Private".
7. Once you change the visibility to private, the panel status changes to "Privately Published".
8. When you are ready, click the "UPDATE" button.

Only an Administrator and users with "publish" right for the panel can change visibility setting by clicking the "Visibility: Edit" link again.

To preview panel content press the "Preview" button - a button directly above the “publish” button - in the publish box before officially publishing or sending for review.

To create a draft panel in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Panels' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the panel list page.
4. Start filling in your panel fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set panel taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. When you are ready, click "Save Draft" button in the publish box.
7. After the submission is completed, the panel status stays at "Draft".

Once the panel is published the user who created the panel is assigned as the panel author. Panel authors can view and edit the panel. One can change the panel author from the author box. The author box drop down is limited to the users who have panel "publish" right.

KC Group can be set by clicking on the desired option in "KC Groups" box and updating/saving the panel. Setting a value for KC Group is optional. KC Group is also not organized hierarchically meaning there's no relationship from one KC Group value to another.

KC Groups do not have preset values.

KC Tag can be set by typing the desired option in the empty text field and clicking "Add" button in "KC Tags" box and updating/saving the panel. Setting a value for KC Tag is optional. KC Tag is also not organized hierarchically meaning there's no relationship from one KC Tag value to another.

KC Tags do not have preset values.

Displaying Panel archives can be done by creating a link in the Appearance Menus Screen in the admin area.

Alternatively, if you'd like to display a specific Panel, you can select the link from Panel metabox and add it to your menu. If you don't see Panel metabox, check the Screen Options to ensure it is set to display.

To create a custom link for Panel archives:

1. Goto Appearance in the admin menu and click on Menus link
2. On the right hand side, pick the menu you’d like to include from Select a menu to edit dropdown
3. Under Links menu navigation item, type in /panels to the URL field
4. Type in Panels or another label describing the custom link URL in the Link Text field
5. Click “Add to menu” button to add the item to the menu
6. Pick “primary location” under “Menu Settings” below the menu
7. Save your menu
8. Go to the frontend and click on the link you created to access Panels. Panel archive page content is only displayed to the authorized users who have access permissions.

In Knowledge Center, Panels are locked during editing, preventing other users from accessing and modifying the Panel.

If a user clicks to edit one of the Panel records that's currently locked they are presented with three options in a pop-up dialog:

1. Go Back - Return to the Panels listing.
2. Preview - Preview the current state of the Panel that's being edited.
3. Take Over - Lock out the current editor of the Panels and begin editing. (The other user will receive a notification)

The user that has been locked out receives the following dialog, and is no longer able to edit the Panel. It can take up to 15 seconds for the current Panel editor to be notified that another user has taken over.

You can use Panel Rating to create interactions from users.

Panel Rating module :

• Supports accepting ratings from logged-in users, visitors or both
• Allows users to rate Panels
• Stores user logs. The logs can be accessed by administrators.
• Allows "star", "like" or "thumbs" rating modes
• Supports custom font, custom image, font awesome and dashicons icon types
• Supports Google Rich Snippets
• Allows customization of rating stats area using rating tags
• Allows customization of rating area using rating tags
• Allows to filter and search user ratings using multiple criteria and more
• Allows to hide or disable rating
• Features user rating integrity protection through IP, cookie or both

Click on ratings menu link under KC Settings menu to access configuration options.

Panel Rating feature is provided by wpas rating extension which is sold separately and must be activated to be used.

Featured Panels is an entity sidebar widget. It shows latest 5 published panel records without any page navigation links.

Recent Panels is an entity sidebar widget. It shows latest 5 published panel records without any page navigation links.

"Frequently Asked Questions" is a standard view which displays -1 Panel records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is disabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Frequently Asked Questions". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [std_panel] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

To install your Knowledge Center Plugin using the built-in plugin installer:

1. Download Knowledge Center Plugin to your desktop.
2. Go to Plugins "Add New".
3. Under Upload, click "Browse".
4. Find the knowledge-center-community-VERSION.zip file.
5. Click Install Now to install the Knowledge Center Plugin.
6. A popup window will ask you to confirm your wish to install the Plugin.
7. Click Proceed to continue with the installation. The resulting installation screen will list the installation as successful or note any problems during the install.
8. If successful, click Activate Plugin to activate it, or Return to Plugin Installer for further actions.

Replace VERSION in instructions with the version number of Knowledge Center you want to install. After the activation, the Knowledge Center plugin setup may display notification asking if you if you'd like to install setup pages or skip setup page installation, click the appropriate button.

To uninstall your Knowledge Center Plugin using the built-in plugin installer:

1. Go to Plugins screen.
2. Find the Knowledge Center Plugin you wish to deactivate and uninstall.
3. Click Deactivate.

WordPress auto-update system displays notification in the Admin Bar and also on the plugins page when new version of the Knowledge Center is available.

To install the new version, simply hit the "Update automatically" button. WordPress will automatically download the new package, extract it and replace the old files. No FTP, removing old files, and uploading is required.

Upgrading your plugin

We offer different plugin editions to better match your needs. If you purchased a different edition of Knowledge Center, follow the steps below to upgrade your plugin:

1. Go WordPress plugins page and deactivate and optionally delete the current Knowledge Center Community edition.
2. Install the new edition based on the instructions in WordPress Codex
3. Activate the new edition
4. Go to Plugin Settings page and save settings

Upgrading Knowledge Center Community edition does not have any impact on your existing data but it is always a good idea to back up your WordPress database as a rule of thumb before any changes.

Using Plugin Extensions

Knowledge Center Community edition is configured to work with many plugin extensions. Most plugin extensions work regardless of the edition unless specified specifically in the plugin page.

if you purchased a plugin extension, follow the instructions in WordPress Codex to install and activate your plugin extension like any other WordPress plugin.

If your extension comes with a license key, you must save and activate your license key to get software updates and support.

The default entity base slug can be changed within entity tab of settings page in KC Settings menu. After you update, make sure to refresh your site's Permalinks under Settings. You can only change base slug if post name based permalink structure is selected.

For the most part, Knowledge Center templates will integrate nicely with most WordPress themes. However you may run into issues when the default Knowledge Center content wrappers do not match your chosen theme or your theme's CSS rules overwrite Knowledge Center CSS rules.

Theme related issues manifest themselves by;

• Breaking your layout on Knowledge Center pages and shifting your sidebars into incorrect positions
• Some random text getting displayed in header or footer of your site
• Some sections in plugin pages not getting displayed as in the plugin's demo site.

Theme related issues can potentially affect all single, taxonomy, archive and shortcode pages because Knowledge Center uses templates of its own to display these pages and it’s impossible for eMDPlugins to know exactly what markup or CSS rules your theme uses.

There are three methods to resolve theme related issues;

• Copying and modifying your theme's header.php and footer.php
• Copying and modifying your theme's page.php
• Adding custom CSS rules

Modifying header.php and footer.php

1. Go to your theme's folder -- wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/
2. Copy header.php of your theme as header-emdplugins.php
3. Copy footer.php of your theme as footer-emplugins.php
4. Remove the conflicting code from header-emdplugins.php and/or footer-emplugins.php.
5. This will make Knowledge Center use these newly created header and footer instead of your theme's default header and footer. Save the files. You’re done.

Copying and modifying your theme's page.php

If the issue can not be resolved through simply modifying the header and footer templates, you need to modify your theme's page.php.

To set up this template page:

1. Duplicate your theme’s page.php file, and name it kc-com.php. This file should be found like this: wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/kc-com.php.
2. Open up your newly created kc-com.php in a text editor, or the editor of your choice.

3. Next you need to find the loop (see The_Loop). The loop usually starts with a:

   <?php if ( have_posts() ) :

   and usually ends with:

   <?php endif; ?>

   This varies between themes. Once you have found it, delete it. In its place, put:

   <?php kc_com_content(); ?>

4. This will make your theme use Knowledge Center’s loop instead. Save the file. You’re done.

Adding CSS rules

You add custom CSS rules in the Custom CSS field of Tools tab under KC Settings menu, settings page to overwrite your theme's default CSS. The custom css rules added in the settings are not deleted when your plugin gets updated.

You can learn CSS language by completing the tutorials at w3schools.com

Any short length content which may be used to display term definitions, frequently asked questions etc.

ID

Unique identifier for a panel. It is incremented by 1. Being a unique identifier, it uniquely distinguishes each instance of Panel entity. ID is filterable in the admin area. ID does not have a default value.

Featured

Featured is filterable in the admin area. Featured does not have a default value.

Context color

Colors the panel header to highlight or group similar content. Context color has a default value of "'default'".Context color is displayed as a dropdown and has predefined values of: default, primary, success, info, danger, warning.

Initial State

Sets the initial state of a panel\'s content. Initial State does not have a default value.

Title

Title is a required field. Title is filterable in the admin area. Title does not have a default value.

Content

Content does not have a default value.