GD Knowledge Base

GD Knowledge Base Pro plugin includes a theme compatibility system that allows it to work with any theme without the need for creating special templates for displaying knowledge base articles, guides, and more. This system will be updated over time to fix issues that might be found with some themes.

But, for some themes, the plugin might require some additional code to better control integration. Because of that, the plugin can load special classes for some themes. First theme (framework and themes in this case) supported this way is Genesis Framework and themes built on it. This way, you can use GD Knowledge Base Pro with any Genesis based theme, and it will work without any extra coding.

GD Knowledge Base Pro includes default styling for all knowledge base pages and content. This styling is made to look approximately the same as most themes. But, some themes might introduce specific layouts and styling, and GD Knowledge Base Pro default styling might not look as intended. For such themes, you would need to adjust the styling for the knowledge base to match the theme. Default styling works best with themes designed for blogs, general-purpose, magazine/news, or other content-oriented themes.

Basic Genesis support

If the activated theme is Genesis or child theme of the Genesis, the plugin will load the special Genesis theme object that will hook into the Genesis layout engine to make some modifications to ensure that the GD Knowledge Base Pro theme compatibility system works properly.

If you want to add styling related to GD Knowledge Base Pro, you can add it to theme style.css file, or create new CSS file called style-gdkob.css in the theme folder, and the plugin will automatically load this file. This way, you can separate plugin related styling, and reuse it when switching theme.

Building the knowledge base

Considering the full support for Genesis themes, with no coding required, you need to only install and activate GD Knowledge Base Pro plugin. The plugin contains a large number of features, and before you start working with the plugin, make sure you explore the plugin features first. Here are few pointers:

• Go through all Settings panel and configure the plugin. There are many settings for control over the feedback and rating, live search, content queries, SEO, bbPress integration and more.
• The plugin supports products. If you are building a knowledge base for more than one product, make sure to create products in Knowledge Base -> Products. Products can be classified into Product Groups, and it is recommended to upload an image for each product. You can set product home page and select support forum from bbPress (if you use bbPress for support).
• All content types: articles, references, user guides and FAQ can be assigned to one or more products.
• For quick and short answers, it is recommended to use FAQ content entries. They should be created in form of question for a title, with the response added as the content.
• If you need to interlink articles or other content, use shortcodes. It is recommended to use Shortcake UI plugin for visual editing of the shortcodes. If you prefer to add shortcodes manually, all shortcodes are described in the plugin documentation.
• Make sure to explore Analytics, Feedback and Search Log panels to monitor how your users are using the knowledge base.

You can check out the Support Forum and Knowledge Base to learn more about the GD Knowledge Base Pro plugin.

Genesis themes examples

We have tested the plugin with many Genesis-based themes (themes available on the StudioPress website). Here you can see some screenshots made with various themes. And, all screenshots are made without any customizations added, only GD Knowledge Base Pro latest version and latest default styling.

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Supported Genesis versions

All tests were done using Genesis 2.4 and 2.5, but from plugin users’ experience, all Genesis since 2.0 should work OK. As for the themes, we tested various Genesis themes released in the past 3 years, all was OK. So, you should be safe using any Genesis since 2.0 or 3.0 and themes for it.