Categories, and the order things appear in

A category is a heading articles are filed under. Select Knowledge Base in the left-hand menu, then Categories, to see the ones you have and to add more.

An article can sit in more than one category, which is occasionally useful but works against you if you rely on it. Somebody who finds the same article under three headings assumes there are three articles.

Nesting a category under another

Categories can have Parent Categories, which is how a library with more than about a dozen headings stays readable. A parent gathers several related categories under one name, so a reader sees a short list of subjects and opens the one they want rather than scanning everything you have.

It is worth doing this early. Two dozen top-level categories is the point at which a knowledge base stops being browsed and starts being searched, and search only finds what somebody already knows to look for.

Putting things in order

By default everything is listed alphabetically, which almost never matches the order a reader needs. The article explaining what something is should come before the article explaining how to change it, whatever their names happen to begin with.

• Reorder Categories, on the Categories list, sets the order the headings appear in.
• Article Order, on a category, sets the order of the articles inside that category. Drag them into place and save.

Deleting a category

Deleting a category does not delete the articles in it. They remain, now filed nowhere, which means nobody browsing will find them — and an article in no category does not appear on your public knowledge page at all. Before deleting a category, open its Article Order dialog to see what is in it, and move those articles somewhere else first. The Categories list itself does not show a count, so an empty-looking category is not necessarily empty.