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31May2015

Forum help page for Kunena

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3687 hits Updated: 27 September 2021 Blog

Create the forum help page article

Create the Kunena menu item

One of the current problems with the Kunena website is that the documentation is out of date and no-one is maintaining it properly.  This article is part of an ongoing series to update the information so that it is more relevant to Kunena today.

K20 help defaultContentsWhen you first install Kunena on your Joomla site, a help menu item is created for you but its contents are not very useful (see the image on the right); many people choose to hide or remove this menu item completely.  The menu item is more of a “template” for a help page indicating that there are several ways to build your real page but it is up to you to write your own text if that will eventually appear on the Help tab.

The help page can be anything you want.  It can be used, for example, to show your community how to use the forum, what is allowed and what isn’t allowed and to educate your users about the features of Kunena and how use them.  I wrote a sample forum help page for Kunena several years ago but it contains errors and it is sorely in need of a major rewrite.

The help page is built using the Kunena custom content menu type.  Menu items using this menu type can be used for more than only providing a help guide for your users. They can be renamed or used for any purpose that helps your community and you can also build other pages using the techniques we will describe below.

Create the forum help page article

k30 forumHelp01The first thing you will need is an article—the text contents—containing your help guide.  I have created a sample help page for you to download Download

Create a new Joomla article, copy the HTML source code from the downloaded file, and paste it into the article as “raw” code (i.e. do not use the WYSIWYG interface), like you see in the image on the right of this page.

It does not matter what category you assign to the article.  In the example I have chosen put the article in the “uncategorised” category and allow public access; you can decide to do something else if you prefer.

k30 forumHelp02Save the article and make a note of the article ID that was created (see the image on the left of this page to find the location of the article ID).  In the example article you have created, let us assume that the article ID = 3.

Create the menu item

As we mentioned earlier, when you install Kunena a Help menu item is created for you. The next step in utilising the article that you have just created is to change the existing Kunena menu item.

k30 forumHelp03Go to Menu Manager » Kunena menu and locate the existing Help menu item (see the image on the right as a guide).

Open the menu item for editing.  Refer to the first two images below for further help.

k30 forumHelp04k30 forumHelp05Kunena forum help menu item

Using our example, the contents of the main settings are [article]3[/article]

Make the changes in the first two images above and save the menu item.  Return to the frontend of your site to see the updated menu item (shown in the third of the three images above).

By doing things in the way described in this article, to change the forum help page it is simply a matter of editing the Joomla article you created.

About the author:

has worked in the information technology industry since 1971 and, since retiring from the workforce in 2007, is a website hobbyist specialising in Joomla, a former member of the Kunena project for more than 8 years and contributor on The Joomla Forum™. The opinions expressed in this article are entirely those of the author. View his profile here.


One thought on “Forum help page for Kunena”

  1. Wednesday, 04 May 2016 03:47
    Excellent article thanks

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