# Create a portal

> Publish a Help Center, changelog, community or ideas board on its own address.

A portal is a public website on its own address that shows your content collections: a Help Center, a changelog, a community or an ideas board. This Help Center is one.

## Choose a type

| Type | What it's for | Collection presets offered |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Articles | A Help Center, docs, news or a changelog: your team writes, customers read | Articles, News |
| Community | Discussions and questions between your customers | Discussions, Questions |
| Ideas | Feature requests with votes and a public roadmap | Ideas |

The type can't be changed after the portal is created. Everything else can.

## Create it

1. Open **Portals** and select **Create portal**.
2. Under **Portal type**, choose a type.
3. Under **Starting collections**, tick the presets you want. The type's first preset starts ticked, titled **Help Center**, **Discussions** or **Ideas**. Change any **Collection title** you like.
4. To show collections you already have in **Content**, pick them under **Existing collections**. Each collection becomes a section of the portal, and you need at least one.
5. Under **Name and address**, enter a **Name** of up to 120 characters. The **Address** follows the name until you edit it.
6. Add a **Description** of up to 500 characters and select **Create Portal**.

The portal is live straight away at your-address.help.chat.

## Address rules

- Use 3 to 63 characters: lowercase letters, numbers and single dashes, such as `acme-help`.
- `www` is reserved.
- Portals and hosted chat pages share one set of addresses, so each address can be used only once.
- You can change the address later in **Settings** → **General**, but links people already shared stop working.

## Find your way around

The portal opens on four tabs:

| Tab | What you do there |
| --- | --- |
| **Collections** | Drag sections into order, start a new collection from a preset, add one you already have, or remove one. A removed collection stays in **Content**. A portal shows up to 50 collections. |
| **Members** | Manage people who signed in to the portal or were invited. |
| **Settings** | Name, address, access, chat, branding, search appearance and analytics. |
| **Domain** | The portal's address and your own custom domain. |

Select **Open site** to see the portal as visitors do. Once a custom domain is **Active**, **Open site** opens that domain.

## Fill it with content

In **Content** → **Items**, select **New content** and pick one of the portal's collections. Set **Status** to **Published** and **Visibility** to **Public**, then select **Create content**. Only published, public items show on the portal. See [Publish articles and news with Content](https://support.help.ai/library-and-content/publish-articles-with-content).

## Add chat, branding and analytics

All of these are on the **Settings** tab. Select **Save changes** at the bottom when you're done.

- **Chat** → **Chat widget** puts one of your widget deployments on every portal page. Pick **No chat** to leave it off.
- **Branding** sets the **Logo**, **Browser tab icon**, **Accent color**, **Color scheme**, **Cover image**, **Corner radius**, **Text font**, **Heading font** and **Custom CSS**, plus up to 8 **Header links** and 8 **Footer links**. See [Brand your portal](https://support.help.ai/portals/brand-your-portal).
- **Analytics** takes your **Google Analytics measurement ID** (a GA4 ID like `G-ABC123XYZ`). Every portal page then reports its page views to your property.
- Keep the **Name** short, such as Help Center, when your logo already shows your brand, and put the full title, such as Acme Help Center, in **Search appearance** → **Title**. See [Search appearance and analytics for a portal](https://support.help.ai/portals/portal-search-appearance-and-analytics).

## Let your AI agents search it

Your AI agents can search the published content of your portals when they answer. To limit an agent to some portals, open the agent and pick them under **Knowledge** → **Portals**. With none picked, the agent searches all of them.

## Turn off or delete a portal

- Turn off **Enabled** in **Settings** → **General**, or select **Disable** in the portal's menu in the **Portals** list. A disabled portal answers "not found" to every visitor. Its collections and members stay.
- **Delete** in the same menu removes the portal and its members, and the site stops working at once. Its collections and their items stay in **Content**.

## Next steps

- [Connect a custom domain to a portal](https://support.help.ai/portals/connect-a-custom-domain)
- [Set up a community or ideas board](https://support.help.ai/portals/set-up-a-community-or-ideas-board)
- [Manage portal members, access and moderation](https://support.help.ai/portals/manage-portal-members-and-access)

<Tip>
One collection can appear in the widget's Help tab and on a portal at the same time. Write once, publish in both places.
</Tip>