Question

Adding a custom widget to Knowledge Base sidebar?

  • 24 February 2021
  • 7 replies
  • 77 views

Userlevel 2
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Hey there!

I’ve managed to figure out to display widgets on specific categories (and even topics), since we’re able to add things to sidebars here:

Is there a way to do this for Knowledge Base categories? That sidebar is pretty bland, but for something like educational content (where you want to set the exact order of topics) the Knowledge Base really is better.

Any way to add things to that sidebar, by any chance? 

Thanks!


7 replies

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Hiya @nicksimard ,

This looks like another forgotten question, but not anymore. 

It doesn't appear to be possible to do this unfortunately, as the knowledge base doesn't look as if it supports extra widgets. I've been looking around several other communities and none seem to have any. 

 

Feel free to suggest it though!

Userlevel 2
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Ok, thanks! I figured as much. I think forum categories might work better for our use case anyway :)

@nicksimard hey! I’m curious how you were able to achieve consistent custom widgets across pages. I’m running into an issue where the html/css code is rendering the same widgets in different places depending on if it’s a category page or a topic page. Did you also run into this? 

 

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks so much,

Michael

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Mornin​g @Michael !

I'm afraid that's actually not an option right now. You can set different widgets on the homepage than for everywhere else, but all other pages share one set.

@Blastoise186 

 

Thanks for the response! I actually just edited my question before I saw the response: 

 

I’m running into an issue where the html/css code is rendering the same widgets in different places depending on if it’s a category page or a topic page. Is this expected behavior? 

 

Thanks so much for chiming in!
Michael

Userlevel 2
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Yes, this is expected behaviour, the sidebar widgets have to be defined seperately for category- and topic pages.

 

So there are basically three different sidebars that you can customize:

  • homepage (via customization mode)
  • topic pages (articles, questions, conversations)
  • general pages (including category pages)

The last two can be defined via the Control Environment, under [Customization] - [Sidebar].

With “general pages” we specifically mean all pages that have a sidebar and are not the homepage or a topic page. Because there are several other pages next to (parent-)category pages which also have a sidebar, for example the profile page or the page where you see your subscribed topics. So this setting defines the sidebar for all of these pages, including category pages.

We have a vision that wants to make this process more straightforward. Moving the homepage customization to the frontend was a first step in this. We hope to be able to share some news around category customization and other improvements soon!

We have a vision that wants to make this process more straightforward. Moving the homepage customization to the frontend was a first step in this. We hope to be able to share some news around category customization and other improvements soon!

Hi @Julian - curious when we’ll hear more about customization options and feature enhancements here.  We have multiple product lines and need to be able to filter/target widget and sidebar content contextually within a Category structure.  It would help to clarify any options or workarounds currently available as well as what is coming in the roadmap.  

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