Domain settings

KB settings > Domain contains settings to configure your KnowledgeOwl subdomain and/or private domain, root path, and some high-level SEO settings. If you make any changes to these settings, be sure you Save them.

Sub-domain

This is the KnowledgeOwl subdomain used for your knowledge base. For example, the subdomain for this Support knowledge base is support.knowledgeowl.com.

You set up your subdomain when you first created your knowledge base, but you can change it any time.

Private domain

If you'd like to use your own domain for your knowledge base instead of something.knowledgeowl.com, set up that private domain here. Refer to How to use your own domain for full instructions. This feature is available on select plans.

If you set up a private domain, be sure to also review the Private domain settings.

Private domain settings

These settings let you control how fully you want to use the private domain. This section contains two settings:

• Use the private domain for application links or actions that open your knowledge base, e.g. View KB. By default, the View knowledge base, View Article, and View Category links in app.knowledgeowl.com open to your knowledge base's KnowledgeOwl subdomain. You can force these links to open to your private domain by checking this box. We recommend only using this setting once you've confirmed your private domain and SSL certificate are working properly.
• 301 redirect all KnowledgeOwl sub-domain traffic to your private domain: By default, you can use both the KnowledgeOwl subdomain and your private domain. If you'd like to redirect all use of your KnowledgeOwl subdomain to your private domain, check this box. We recommend only using this setting once you've confirmed your private domain and SSL certificate are working properly.

Root path

The root path is automatically added to the end of your subdomain or private domain URL. For example, in this knowledge base we use the /help root path.

Choose from /help, /home, and /docs root paths.

SEO settings

The three options in SEO settings govern some general Search Engine Optimization (SEO) behavior for your knowledge base. These are most relevant if all or part of your knowledge base is available publicly/without logging in:

• Generate a publicly available sitemap: If any part of your knowledge base is publicly available, you'll want to have a sitemap of your knowledge base to streamline search engines crawling your website. Check this box to enable that sitemap. Refer to Generate your sitemap for more information.
• Ensure that page titles do not exceed 55 characters: By default, KnowledgeOwl allows fairly long page title tags. It's an SEO best practice to keep your title tags to a maximum of 55 characters. Check this box to have KnowledgeOwl enforce a 55-character limit for article and category title tags to help boost your SEO. Refer to Title tags for more information on working with these tags.
• 301 redirect URLs ending with a trailing slash to non trailing slash: In the land of search engine indexing, a trailing slash (such as https://support.knowledgeowl.com/help/seo-guide#best-practices/) is treated as a directory. The same URL without a trailing slash is treated as a file or page. Those two URLs are indexed and tracked separately by search engines. So if you have readers who have somehow bookmarked or typed in an article URL with a "/" at the end, their visits won't factor into SEO reports and algorithms in the same way. Forcing these trailing slash URLs to redirect to the normal article permalink can improve SEO ranking. Check this box to enforce this behavior. Refer to SEO best practices for more details.

Custom robots.txt

In this section, you can override the default KnowledgeOwl robots.txt file with a custom robots.txt file. This is particularly useful for knowledge bases that are fully are partially public, so you can control which crawlers or indexing services are allowed to crawl your knowledge base. If you want to prevent ChatGPT from crawling your knowledge base to train its models, this setting is for you!

Enter the customizations you'd like in the Custom robots.txt box.

Refer to Customize your robots.txt for more detailed instructions on using this setting.