Organize categories and subcategories

Categories are how customers find their way around your help center. Get them right and the site feels obvious; get them wrong and customers bounce to chat.

When to use a subcategory

A subcategory is a second-level grouping inside a category. Add one when:

• A category has more than ~10 articles and they cluster naturally.
• The cluster has a name a customer would recognize (“Invoices”, “Payment methods”, “Refunds” inside Billing).
• Splitting it actually helps — if the subcategories would each have only one or two articles, leave the category flat.

If you’re unsure, leave it flat. It’s much easier to add subcategories later than to undo a structure customers have started bookmarking.

Create a category

1. Open Knowledge Base.
2. In the category tree on the left, click + New category at the top.
3. Fill in the form:
   Name — what customers see. “Billing”, “Returns”, “Getting started”.
   Slug — auto-generated from the name; edit only if the auto-slug is awkward.
   Description — optional, shown on the category page above the article list.
   Icon — optional, picked from the icon set. Categories with icons render more cleanly on the public site.
   Sort order — controls where the category appears relative to others.
4. Save. The category appears in the tree. It won’t show up on the public site until it has at least one published article.

Create a subcategory

1. In the category tree, hover over the parent category and click the + that appears next to it.
2. Fill in the same fields as above. Subcategories don’t have icons of their own — they inherit the parent’s.
3. Save. The subcategory appears nested under the parent.

Reorder categories

Drag categories in the left tree to reorder them. The sort order on the public site updates immediately.

If drag-and-drop feels imprecise (especially with deep trees), edit the sort order field on each category directly.

Move an article to a different category

1. Open the article.
2. In the metadata panel, change Category (and optionally Subcategory).
3. Save.

For bulk moves — moving 10+ articles from one category to another — use Bulk actions instead. See Bulk-edit articles.

Rename a category

1. Click the category in the tree.
2. Click Edit category above the article list (or the pencil icon next to the name).
3. Change the name. The slug does not auto-update — change it deliberately if you want the URL to reflect the rename.

Renaming preserves the slug by default to keep external links working. If you do change the slug, set up a redirect or accept that bookmarks will 404.

Delete a category

1. Move every article out of it first (categories with articles can’t be deleted).
2. Click the category in the tree.
3. Click Delete category.

Quick guidelines

• Customer-facing names beat internal names. “Returns and refunds” beats “Reverse logistics”. Use words your customers use.
• Five to nine top-level categories is a sweet spot. Fewer than five and the site feels thin; more than nine and customers can’t scan it.
• Don’t mirror your org chart. Customers don’t care which team owns what. They care about their problem.
• Reuse subcategory names across parents. “Setup”, “Troubleshooting”, “FAQs” can repeat under multiple parents — customers find that pattern intuitive.