Joomla Documenter Manual

Delivering Help Pages¶

In the Joomla configuration.php file is an entry that tells the installation where to find the Help pages. It looks like this:

public $helpurl = 'https://help.joomla.org/proxy?keyref=Help{major}{minor}:{keyref}&lang={langcode}';

To fetch an individual Help page the items in curly braces are replaced with the parameters for a specific Help page. This is an example for the the Articles list:

https://help.joomla.org/proxy?keyref=Help43:Articles&lang=en

The proxy server does some extra processing of a Help page to remove information not relevant in that context. For example, if the lang parameter is not en it checks to see if the page is available in that language. If not, it delivers the en version (English). Also, it removes the links used to edit sections of the source or the images.

The Jdocmanual Proxy Server¶

There is a similar proxy server available with Jdocmanual set up during installation of the Help manual.

The proxy server is a simple php script (index.php) in a proxy subfolder of the installed site. Subfolders are created for each available language. The Help pages are stored as individual HTML files. The proxy script looks for the desired language and either sends the Help page in that language or English if the original has not been translated.

To use your own proxy all you need to do is change the configuration.php file helpurl to remove the domain part of the url. If Joomla is installed in a sub-folder make sure the subfolder name precedes /proxy. Example:

public $helpurl = '/jdm3/proxy?keyref=Help{major}{minor}:{keyref}&lang={langcode}';

At the moment the proxy delivers the same Help pages for Joomla 4 and Joomla 5. That may change in the future.