CampusLoop Help Center

WordPress Support Platform for the CampusLoop Marketplace

A custom WordPress plugin that provides a searchable public Help Center for the CampusLoop student marketplace. It is a support-content layer—not a replacement for the marketplace application—and implements custom content types, REST-powered search/filtering, templates, setup tooling, and accessibility-focused states.

PHP · WordPress · REST API · JavaScript · CSS

What I Built

• A support_article Custom Post Type for Help Center content.
• A hierarchical support_category taxonomy for topic-based organisation.
• A /support/ Help Center page powered by the [support_search] shortcode.
• Keyword search and topic filtering with the WordPress REST API.
• Custom templates for the Help Center and individual /help/<slug>/ articles.
• An administrator-only setup screen that creates or updates four topics, twelve articles, and the Help Center page.
• Loading, no-results, API-error, duplicate-submission, focus, and screen-reader status states.

How It Works

User
  ↓
/support/ Help Center
  ↓
JavaScript search and topic filter
  ↓
WordPress REST API: /wp/v2/support_article
  ↓
support_article + support_category
  ↓
Custom Help Center / article template

Technical Highlights

• Structured WordPress content: register_post_type() and register_taxonomy() expose support articles and categories to the REST API using show_in_rest.
• REST API search: the browser sends keyword searches through the search parameter and selected category Term IDs through support_category; requests limit fields and results for the Help Center UI.
• Safe asynchronous UI: JavaScript uses fetch, disables duplicate submissions while loading, and renders API-provided titles with textContent rather than HTML injection.
• Template control: a template_include filter routes the Help Center page and all support articles through the plugin template. A the_content filter adds topic metadata, a back link, and related articles.
• Protected setup tooling: the Tools → Help Center Setup action requires the manage_options capability and a WordPress nonce before seeding or updating content.
• Accessibility-focused interaction: visible labels, keyboard form submission, focus-visible styles, an aria-live results region, and aria-busy while a request is in progress.

Screenshots

The following are real screenshots from the local WordPress Help Center.

Help Center

Search & Topic Filtering

Help Article

Quality & Testing

Functional QA covered keyword search, topic filtering, and article navigation. The repository’s prior local test record reports Lighthouse 13.4.1 results in Chrome’s emulated Desktop mode for both /support/ and a representative article:

These were measured in the local LocalWP environment, not a production deployment. The Best Practices score was affected by local HTTP and deployment-level HTTPS/security-header checks.

Debugging / Engineering Lessons

• A /help/ routing issue was resolved by refreshing WordPress permalinks after registering the custom post type rewrite base.
• A duplicated JavaScript block and extra closing brace caused a category-filtering syntax error; the fix reinforced the value of testing each filter path after edits.
• The setup screen initially failed to appear because its registration was conditionally gated. Registering it through admin_menu with add_management_page() made the route reliable.

Running Locally

1. Copy the plugin into wp-content/plugins/ in a local WordPress installation.
2. Activate CampusLoop Help Center in WordPress Admin → Plugins.
3. Open Tools → Help Center Setup and select Set up CampusLoop Help Center.
4. Save Settings → Permalinks to refresh the /help/ rewrite rules.
5. Open /support/.

The setup action matches seed articles by title. Matching titles may be updated; renamed seed articles should be reviewed before setup is run again.

Limitations / Future Work

• Support content is currently English only.
• Multilingual, crawlable routes are not implemented.
• Production hosting and deployment configuration are outside this repository.

Repository Contents

• support-portal-tools.php — plugin registration, content setup, templates, asset loading, and metadata.
• support-search.js — REST search/filter interaction.
• support-search.css — Help Center and article presentation.
• templates/help-center.php — shared front-end template.
• docs/INTERVIEW_NOTES.md — implementation-based interview preparation notes.