Knowledge Center
Professional 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.

Panel revisions are stored when you save Panels as a draft or publish an update. The panel revisions allow you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision - what was added, what remained unchanged, and what was removed. Lines added or removed are highlighted, and individual character changes get additional highlighting. Click the 'Restore This Revision' button to restore a revision.

The revisions page also includes a 'compare any two revisions' mode that allows you to compare any two individual revisions. In this mode, the slider has two handles, one representing the revision you are comparing from and one representing the revision you are comparing to. Drag the handles to see what has changed between any two specific revisions. Note: the 'Restore This Revision' button always restores the revision you are comparing to.

To return top the panel edit screen without restoring a revision, click on the panel title at the top of the page.

Revision history box can be enabled/disabled using the screen option tab at the top of the edit screen. Revision history box details who made the change and when the revision was made.

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. You can use drag-and-drop admin interface for sorting, creating/saving complex filters, and ordering columns in the entity list pages.

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. Panel Rating records can imported, exported or reset by following the instructions in operations screen. Operations screen can be accessed by administrators by clicking on operation button in Panel list.
• Allows "star", "like" or "thumbs" rating modes
• 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.

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 11 published panel records without any page navigation links.

"Collapsible Panel List" is a standard view which displays 16 Panel records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is enabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Collapsible Panel List". 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.

"Open Panel List" is a standard view which displays 16 Panel records per page with a post status of publish in descending order by menu_order. Page navigation is enabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Open Panel List". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [std_open_panel] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

"Panel AutoSearch" is a combo report. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Panel AutoSearch". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [int_autocomplete] 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-professional-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 Professional 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 Professional 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 Professional 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.

Maintaining your plugin

Keeping your plugin up-to-date is very important. At emdplugins.com, we regularly update our products to offer plugin or WordPress related bug fixes, product enhancements, patches for security vulnerabilities and more. Ability to receive these updates is critical to maintaining your software and site in working condition.

To be able to see the update notifications and receive updates, you must have a valid, activated license at all times. If your existing license is expired, you must renew it manually if you opted out of automatic renewals.

Please also note that you must have a valid license to get support for your plugin.

To activate your license:

1. Go to KC Settings > Licenses page
2. Enter the license key you receive in your purchase receipt
3. Click "Save Changes" button
4. Now, you will see, "Activate License" button and "INACTIVE" right next to your license key
5. Click "Activate License" button to activate your license
6. If you see "VALID" message in place of "INACTIVE", you should be able to get your plugin updates.

If you followed the steps above and still are not able to get the plugin updates, there could be additional configuration needed for your site.

Administrators can import/export from/to CSV files or reset Knowledge Center entities, taxonomies and relationships by clicking on Operations button in entity list pages. You must be able to get a backup of your content and files before starting importing/exporting or resetting. Operations page is divided into Import, Export, and Reset tabs.

Importing

Import tab is used to visually import existing records into an entity, its taxonomies and relationships. Each fields to be imported must be mapped to the app design.If you have custom fields in your CSV files, these fields can be imported as well. By default, custom fields are not mapped and they do not have a mapped label. You need to specify custom field's label in the corresponding textbox to import it correctly. The imported custom fields are created for every record with the corresponding value specified in the CSV file.

In you import large files with a lot of images or files attached, your server may be temporarily unavailable and return a white screen. This is due to the extended time needed by WordPress to process and create image thumbnails. If you get a white screen, open up a browser screen and monitor the activity in Media library. If you see images getting created, wait until all activity stops. After image or file addition stops, check if all your records are imported correctly. As a sanity check, you can do the import again but this time checking the Update existing data based on unique field(s) option.

Updating and syncing with external systems

Update option checks the existing records against the CSV file and see if there is a change. If there is a change, it finds the difference and updates the record. For example, if an image is added, the new image is added. If the incoming record does not include an existing image, the existing image which is not included in the incoming record gets deleted. All deletions are permanent. If the incoming record is not there, new record is created. You can use the update option to sync your existing records with external systems.

Exporting

Export tab is used to export the content of an entity as a CSV file. If an entity has relationships, they must be exported separately from the main entity. You will see additional export buttons if this is the case. When you export records, all custom fields are exported as well.

Resetting

Reset tab is used to permanently delete the content of an entity including all the attached images and files. You can also choose to delete all entity content, relationships, or taxonomies. Make sure you have a backup of your content, attached images and/or files before any reset action.

You can take a backup of your content to CSV using export tab. However, you need to take a backup of your attached files manually. In addition, if you need to re-import after the reset using the exported CSV, you must modify the URLs of your attached images to the new or backup location to import them back correctly.

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-pro.php. This file should be found like this: wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/kc-pro.php.
2. Open up your newly created kc-pro.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_pro_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

Knowledge Center Professional comes with Visual Shortcode Builder(VSB) module which allows creating advanced custom shortcodes without manually writing code. To use Visual Shortcode Builder:

1. Create a new page
2. Click on WPAS button right next to Add Media button
3. Find and select the view or form you'd like to use a base from the drowdown list
4. Modify the shortcode by adding filters from taxonomy, attribute, relationship or misc categories
   • Don't forget to click + icon every time you add a filter
   • You can create as many filters as you need in the same shortcode
5. When you finished, click Insert Shortcode button. The shortcode will be inserted to the page
6. Update or publish the page to see the shortcode result
7. Repeat the same process for all your shortcodes

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.