Helpdox, start to finish

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01Getting started

Helpdox is a help center, knowledge base and customer support theme. The theme handles the design. The bundled Helpdox Core plugin adds the docs, search, tickets, changelog, roadmap, status page and 33 elements, and each element works in both Elementor and the block editor.

01.1Requirements

01.2What is in the download

01.3Install the theme

1. Go to Appearance›Themes›Add New Theme›Upload Theme.
2. Choose helpdox.zip (not the whole download) and click Install Now.
3. Click Activate. A notice asks you to install the required plugins. The next topic covers it.

Setup

02Required plugins

Helpdox asks for two plugins and installs them for you through TGM Plugin Activation.

1. After you activate Helpdox, click Begin installing plugins in the notice, or go to Appearance›Install Plugins.
2. Tick both plugins, choose Install from the bulk actions and click Apply.
3. Go back to the same screen, tick both again and choose Activate.

One click

03Import a demo

Go to Helpdox›Demo import. Import the whole demo website, pick one homepage, borrow a single page, or remove it all again.

03.1The six homepages

03.2Full website

Imports 111 help articles in 12 products, 16 pages, 23 changelog entries, 15 roadmap ideas, status incidents, menus, Theme Options and Helpdox settings. Steps: checking requirements, creating products, versions and categories, importing pages, articles, changelog, roadmap and incidents, linking everything together, building menus, applying theme options and helpdox settings, setting the front page, rebuilding the search index.

1. Choose the Front page after import.
2. Click Import the full website and confirm.
3. Keep the tab open until it says All done! It takes under a minute on most hosts.

03.3Choose your front page

Click Import & set under any homepage. The page arrives with the docs of its own products (for example the three vendor products for the Theme & Plugin Vendor homepage), so no section is empty.

03.4Import a single page

Pick a page (pricing, features, about, contact, sign in, a homepage…) and click Import this page. A homepage brings its products’ docs along.

03.5Remove demo content

Remove demo content deletes only what the importer created and restores your earlier Theme Options, Helpdox settings, menus and front page. Pages and articles you wrote yourself are never touched, and demo items you edited after the import are left as they are on a second import.

Content

04Docs: products, versions & articles

Articles live in Docs. Group them by product, version and category, and Helpdox builds the docs home, product pages, category pages, navigation and URLs for you.

04.1Addresses

The same article slug can exist in several versions. Change the base (“docs”) in Helpdox›Settings›Docs.

04.2Article settings

Find answers

05Instant search & ⌘K

Press ⌘ K (or Ctrl K) anywhere, or type in a search box. Results appear as you type, grouped by product, with deep links to the right heading.

• Typo tolerant: “pasword” still finds “password”.
• Inside a product, search covers that product and version only.
• Members-only articles never appear for visitors who may not read them.
• The search index rebuilds itself when you save an article. Developers can rebuild it with wp helpdox index.

Elementor + blocks

06The 33 elements

Search heroes, product cards, popular topics, steps, code tabs, API endpoints, ticket forms, pricing tables and more. The settings tables below come straight from the plugin.

Every element is built once and shows up in both builders. The settings and the output are the same in each, so a page made in Elementor and one made with blocks look identical.

06.1Account Form

Sign-in, sign-up or password reset card beside an illustration, using WordPress accounts.

06.2Annotated Screenshot

A screenshot with numbered hotspots that explain each part of the screen.

06.3API Endpoint

Reference for one API endpoint: parameters, request examples and the response.

06.4Was This Helpful?

Yes / No feedback for an article, with reasons and helpful-rate stats.

06.5Callout

Highlight a note, tip, warning or important detail inside an article.

06.6Category Grid

Docs topics as cards with icons and article counts — optionally with their first articles.

06.7Code Tabs

Code samples in several languages with tabs and a copy button.

06.8Contact Form

A spam-protected contact form beside your contact details. Messages arrive by email.

06.9Call to Action Band

A bold closing panel with heading, text, two buttons and an illustration.

06.10Downloads

A tidy list of manuals, firmware, drivers or brand assets with file type, size and version.

06.11FAQ Accordion

Questions and answers in an accessible accordion, with optional Google FAQ markup.

06.12Feature Grid

Icon, title and text items — features, quick links or how it works — in 2 to 4 columns.

06.13Glossary

Terms and definitions, sorted A–Z, with a jump bar and a filter box.

06.14Help Cards

“Still need help?” — ways to reach your team, beside an illustration or as a row of cards.

06.15Illustration

An illustration from the Helpdox library that follows your colors and dark mode.

06.16Popular Articles

The guides customers open most (or the newest), as a bento grid, cards or a compact list.

06.17Pricing Table

Plans with a monthly/yearly switch, a highlighted plan and what each one includes.

06.18Product Cards

Your products’ docs spaces as big illustrated cards, compact tiles or a list.

06.19Related Articles

Links to related docs: hand-picked, same category or most popular.

06.20Roadmap

Public roadmap: ideas by stage, voting and feature suggestions.

06.21Search Hero

A large help-center search box with instant results, popular searches and an optional product scope.

06.22Section Heading

Small title, big heading, text and up to two buttons — on the same rhythm as every Helpdox section.

06.23Stats Strip

A row of big numbers with short labels, in a panel or on its own.

06.24Status Page

System status with 90-day uptime bars and incident history.

06.25Steps

Numbered how-to steps with text and optional code.

06.26Team Grid

Team members with role, location and an avatar (photo or colored initials).

06.27Testimonials

Customer quotes with name, role and an initials avatar — grid or one big quote.

06.28Ticket Form

Support request form that suggests articles while customers type and verifies purchases.

06.29Ticket Portal

Customers see their tickets, read replies, answer and attach files.

06.30Updates & Status

Latest changelog entries next to a live system status card with uptime bars.

06.31Video Tutorial

A fast click-to-play video (YouTube, Vimeo or a file) with title and length.

06.32Warranty Check

Purchase date in, coverage out: a friendly warranty lookup with a link to start a claim.

06.33What’s New

Latest changelog entries with tags and dates.

Support

07Tickets & the support portal

Customers open tickets from the Ticket Form element and follow them in the Ticket Portal element. Your team answers in Helpdox›Tickets.

07.1Set it up

1. Create two pages: one with the Ticket Portal element (for example /support/) and one with the Ticket Form element (/support/new/). The demo import creates both.
2. Choose them in Helpdox›Settings›Tickets, together with the email address for new-ticket alerts, topics, reply time and SLA targets per priority.
3. Give support staff the Support Agent role (or any role with the hdx_manage_tickets capability).

07.2Customer accounts

• Customers don’t need an account to open a ticket — guests get a private link by email.
• If you allow sign-ups (Settings›General›Anyone can register), people who register with the Account Form element get the Customer role. Signed-in customers see all their tickets in the portal.
• Customers never see the WordPress dashboard: no admin bar, and opening /wp-admin/ sends them to the support portal. After signing in they land on the portal too. Forgotten passwords use the normal reset link on the sign-in form.
• Anyone who can edit posts or manage tickets (administrators, editors, Support Agents) keeps full dashboard access. Developers can turn the rule off with the helpdox_customer_frontend_only filter.

07.3What customers get

• Suggested articles while they type the subject — and a “Yes, I don’t need a ticket” button that counts as an avoided ticket.
• A drag-and-drop attachment area with previews, type and size checks and an upload progress bar.
• A private link to the ticket by email, so guests never need an account. Signed-in customers see all their tickets.
• Replies by email, with the full thread on the ticket page.

07.4Purchase verification

1. Create a personal token at build.envato.com → Create a token with the permission “View your items’ sales history”.
2. Paste it in Helpdox›Settings›Purchases → Envato personal token and save. The field is encrypted and stays empty afterwards.
3. Check Envato connection under the token field: “✓ Connected” means Envato accepts your token and codes are checked live.
4. Optional: limit codes to some of your items with Envato item IDs (comma separated), turn on Only verified customers can open tickets, and Refuse tickets when support has expired (the customer is asked to renew support first).

07.5Answering tickets

Helpdox›Tickets opens the queue: counts for open, waiting, answered and avoided tickets, status tabs, Assigned to me and search. Each row shows the priority, the verification badge and an SLA badge (on time, due soon or overdue).

• Reply — the customer gets an email with a link back to the ticket. Pick a saved reply to fill the box, then edit it.
• Internal note — tick “Internal note” to leave a message only your team sees.
• Status, priority and assignee — change them in the side panel; the assignee is the agent responsible for the next answer.
• Customer card — purchase status (re-check with one click) and the customer’s other tickets.
• Attachments — open files from the thread; they are never public URLs.

07.6Statuses

Statuses change by themselves: a staff reply sets Answered, a customer reply sets Waiting on us. Answered tickets without a customer reply are closed after the number of days in Close answered tickets after (7 by default, 0 turns it off), and the customer gets an email saying so.

07.7Settings reference

07.8Emails

Emails are sent from your site with the sender name above. If they do not arrive, see the FAQ about SMTP below.

07.9Privacy

Tickets, replies and attachments are included in WordPress’s Tools → Export Personal Data and Erase Personal Data, so you can answer GDPR requests from the usual screens.

07.10For developers

Keep customers informed

08Changelog, roadmap & status

Three places your customers check before they write to you.

08.1Changelog

Add entries in Helpdox›Changelog with tags (New, Improved, Fixed, Security) and a product. They appear at /changelog/, in RSS and a JSON feed (/changelog/feed.json), in the What’s New element, and readers can subscribe by email (double opt-in). The menu item gets a “New” badge for a few days after each entry.

08.2Roadmap

Ideas in Helpdox›Roadmap move through Under review → Planned → In progress → Shipped. Visitors vote once per idea and can suggest new ones (held for review). Show the board with the Roadmap element.

08.3Status page

List your components in Helpdox›Settings›Status (one per line: Name | Group | Description). Report incidents in Helpdox›Status incidents with impact and a timeline of updates. The Status Page element shows live status and 90-day uptime bars computed from your incidents; the footer shows a status dot.

Measure

09Insights & AI-ready docs

Helpdox›Insights shows searches, failed searches, low-rated articles, tickets avoided and top topics — with an optional weekly email.

09.1AI-ready

• /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt list your public docs for AI assistants (members-only articles are never included).
• Every article has Copy as Markdown, and ?format=md returns its Markdown.
• Ask AI (off by default): with your own Anthropic API key in Helpdox›Settings›AI, the search palette can answer questions using only your public articles, with links to the sources. The key is saved encrypted and never shown again.

Switching

10Import docs from another plugin

Coming from another knowledge base? Helpdox›Import moves your docs in a few clicks. Your original content stays untouched.

1. Leave Dry run ticked and click Run import to see what would be imported.
2. Untick it and run it again. Running it a third time only adds what is new.
3. Old article addresses redirect (301) to the new docs addresses.

Settings

11Theme Options

One screen with 6 tabs: colors and skins, layout, header, docs, footer, and dark mode with motion. You don’t need the Customizer.

Go to Appearance›Theme Options. Changes apply to the whole site after Save changes; Reset to defaults restores the original values.

11.1Colors

11.2Layout

11.3Header

11.4Docs

11.5Footer

11.6Dark mode & motion

Look & feel

12Skins, headers, footers & dark mode

Pick a color skin, a header style and a footer style for the whole site — then let single pages and products choose their own.

12.1Color skins

Each skin has matching values for light mode and Midnight (dark) mode. Your own colors in Theme Options›Colors always win.

12.2Header and footer styles

The header is 74 px tall and glides to 60 px once you scroll; on phones it stays 60 px. Dropdowns open on hover with a mouse, on tap with touch, and with Enter, Space or ↓ from the keyboard.

12.3Per page and per product

12.4Midnight dark mode

Visitors switch with the moon button; their choice is remembered and there is no flash on page load. Set the default (light, dark or follow the device) in Theme Options›Dark mode & motion.

Navigation

13Menus & the demo switcher

Create menus in Appearance›Menus and assign them to these locations.

• Second-level items open in a dropdown panel; add a Description to an item to show a small line under it.
• Give a menu item the CSS class hdx-new for a “New” badge. The Changelog link gets one automatically after new entries.
• The Home demo switcher with thumbnails (Theme Options›Header›Demo switcher) is meant for live previews; leave it off on a real site.

Quality

14Speed, accessibility, RTL & translation

Helpdox is built to score high on PageSpeed: every demo homepage scores 95+ on mobile in our tests.

• Fonts are bundled and self-hosted (no Google requests); the two first-screen fonts are preloaded.
• Small stylesheets and scripts are printed inline, and elements load their code only where they are used.
• No jQuery on Helpdox pages; Elementor’s front-end scripts are skipped on pages made only of Helpdox elements.
• Every illustration is an inline SVG — no image requests for the art.

14.1Accessibility

• Skip link, visible focus rings, landmarks and labelled controls.
• Search palette, dropdowns, drawers and accordions work with the keyboard and screen readers.
• All motion is soft and stops for visitors who prefer reduced motion.

14.2Right-to-left

Every stylesheet has a mirrored -rtl.css copy that loads automatically for Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and other RTL site languages.

14.3Translate

1. Install the free Loco Translate plugin (or use Poedit).
2. Create a translation from helpdox/languages/helpdox.pot and from helpdox-core/languages/helpdox-core.pot.
3. Set your site language in Settings›General›Site Language.

14.4Caching

Use a page cache (your host’s, WP Super Cache, LiteSpeed Cache or WP Rocket). Search and ticket pages are cache-friendly: search runs through the REST API and ticket pages send no-cache headers themselves.

Developers

15Child theme, hooks & WP-CLI

Put custom code in Helpdox Child so updates never erase it. Every action and filter below is read from the code.

1. Install helpdox-child.zip from Appearance›Themes›Add New Theme›Upload Theme. Keep Helpdox installed.
2. Activate Helpdox Child. Menus and Theme Options are stored per theme, so set them again (or re-run the demo import).
3. Add CSS to the child style.css and PHP to its functions.php. To change a template, copy it from helpdox/ into the same place in helpdox-child/ (for example docs/article.php).

/* helpdox-child/functions.php: add a violet product skin and a section to the help-center home */
add_filter( 'helpdox_home_sections', function ( $sections ) {
	$sections[] = [ 'cta-band', [ 'title' => 'Still deciding?', 'btn1' => 'See pricing', 'btn1_url' => '/pricing/' ] ];
	return $sections;
} );

15.1Hooks

15.2WP-CLI

Answers

16FAQ & troubleshooting

Quick answers to common questions.

16.1Do I need Elementor Pro?

No. Everything in Helpdox works with free Elementor. Pro adds its own extras, such as Theme Builder headers, which Helpdox supports.

16.2Can I build pages without Elementor?

Yes. All 33 elements are also blocks with the same settings. Articles are written in the block editor.

16.3My docs pages show “Page not found”.

Go to Settings›Permalinks and click Save Changes once. This refreshes the address rules.

16.4Search doesn’t find a new article.

The index updates when you save. If you imported articles another way, run Rebuild index in Helpdox›Settings or wp helpdox index.

16.5Customers don’t receive ticket emails.

WordPress sends email through your host, which often lands in spam. Install an SMTP plugin and set a From address on your own domain in Helpdox›Settings›Tickets.

16.6I imported the demo twice. Do I have duplicates?

No. The importer recognizes items it created and updates them. Items you edited are skipped.

16.7Does Helpdox contact outside services?

Only if you turn them on: Envato purchase verification (api.envato.com) and Ask AI (api.anthropic.com). Fonts and everything else are served from your own site.

Help

17Support

Your purchase includes 6 months of support from the author. You can extend it on ThemeForest.

Open a ticket at https://fekbd.com/support/. Include your purchase code, your site address and what you see (a screenshot helps).

History

18Changelog & credits

What changed in each version, and the open-source work Helpdox uses.

18.1Version 1.0.0 (October 13, 2026)

• Initial release: 6 demo homepages, 33 elements for Elementor and blocks, versioned multi-product docs, instant ⌘K search, tickets with purchase verification, changelog, roadmap, status page, insights, AI-ready docs, a docs importer for five plugins and CSV, 6 color skins, 4 header and 3 footer styles, Midnight dark mode, RTL and a one-click demo importer.

18.2Credits