Local Zendesk Help Center

Back your Zendesk Help Center in git. Modify articles locally, and deploy directly to Zendesk.

Goals of this project:

• Back Help Center locally (via git), not Zendesk
• Give revision control of articles
• Reviewing article edits/changes made simpler
• Platform flexibility to be able to switch away from Zendesk

Note: Images will be backed by Amazon S3 so you will need an AWS account for the images to no longer be owned by Zendesk. Otherwise, you can leave images backed on Zendesk and comment out all scripts that involve S3.

Prerequisites

• Python 2.7

• Add environment variables:

  • Cloudfront URL: ZENDESK_CLOUDFRONT_URL
  • Zendesk subdomain: ZENDESK_SUBDOMAIN
  • Zendesk agent username: ZENDESK_USR
  • Zendesk agent password: ZENDESK_PWD
  • Zendesk AWS bucket name: ZENDESK_BUCKET_NAME
  • AWS Access Key: AWS_ACCESS_KEY
  • AWS Secret Key: AWS_SECRET_KEY

Installation

Run pip install zendesk-help-center-backer

Usage

###Tracking Changes

Before locally editing articles and images, always run zendesk-track. This allows for local viewing of content. All local content is available in the "out" folder. To quit zendesk-track, type CTRL+C.

Creating New Articles

• Run zendesk-new with a Zendesk Section ID as the parameter.
• Add the title to the file title.html.
• Open the file index.html and write the article.
  • For images, enter: img src="<image_name>" with the appropriate file type at the end (png, jpg, jpeg, gif).
  • For links to other articles, enter: a href="<article_id>" with the ID of the article you want to link to inserted.

Local Viewing

• Ensure zendesk-track is running. If it wasn't, run it now.
• Once the article is complete, open the version of the article in the "out" folder for local viewing. This will provide a basic HTML view in your preferred browser.

Deployment

• When you are ready to publish your changes, you have two options:
  • To deploy a single article, run zendesk-deploy <article_id>.
  • To deploy all the articles, run zendesk-deploy with no parameters.
• Commit all changes that you make in the "posts" folder to GitHub to ensure revision control and allow others to review your changes.

To edit past articles, simply edit the HTML files with zendesk-track running. Local edits can be viewed in the "out" folder and use zendesk-deploy as outlined above to publish the edits. You must have Zendesk editing capabilities for the article. The final version should also be commited to GitHub.

License

BSD 3-Clause, see accompanying LICENSE file.