How to create articles manually

This guide walks you through creating help center articles manually using the article editor. You'll learn how to create, edit, and publish articles without using AI-powered tasks.

Prerequisites

Before creating articles manually, ensure you have:

• Admin or editor role permissions

• At least one collection created in your help center

Create a new article

Your new article will open in the editor, ready for you to add content.

Edit article content

The article editor provides a rich text editing experience with auto-save and content blocks:

• Auto-save: Your changes are automatically saved as drafts in the background while you work

• Rich text formatting: Use the editor toolbar to format text, add links, insert images, and more

• Markdown paste: Paste markdown-formatted text into a paragraph and it converts to formatted content. This works for headings, lists, blockquotes, code blocks, links, and tables. Markdown conversion does not run inside list items, task items, or code blocks - paste plain text there instead

• Content blocks: Press / in the editor to insert cards, steps, task lists, details sections, and grouped code examples - see Content blocks

• Title and subtitle: Edit these fields directly at the top of the editor

• Collection placement: Change which collection contains your article using the breadcrumb navigation

When you select a block in the editor, a visible highlight appears around it to show which block is active. This helps when editing or moving content blocks.

Preview draft changes

When you edit a published article, the editor shows a View Changes button. Click it to see exactly what's different between your draft and the live version before you publish.

A comparison view opens with your changes highlighted. At the top, a banner appears:

Previewing your changes. Click here to keep editing.

Click the banner or Hide changes to go back to editing.

When View Changes appears

The button shows up when:

• The article is already published

• You have unpublished edits

• The article isn't in a translation workflow that blocks comparison

This feature is part of the editor. It doesn't change what readers see in your help center.

Publish your article

Publishing waits for any active draft save to complete, then makes your article visible to users in your help center. You'll see a success confirmation once the article is live.

Other actions

For published articles, the publish area offers additional options:

• View published version: Opens the live article in a new tab

• Discard changes: Removes all unpublished edits and reverts to the live version

Common issues