Serve the help center in a folder

Serve your help center from a path on a site you already run, like acme.com/help. There is no DNS change and no certificate to wait for. Your site forwards the requests to chat.sh.

Set it up

1. Open Help center, then Domain.
2. Under Inside a folder on your site, enter Your domain, like acme.com, and the Folder, like /help.
3. Select Save.
4. Choose what sits in front of your site: Cloudflare Worker, Vercel, Next.js, or nginx.
5. Copy the snippet into that setup and deploy it.

What gets forwarded

Your site forwards two paths to chat.sh, unchanged:

• The folder and everything under it, like /help and /help/....
• /chat-assets/..., which carries the help center's styles and scripts.

The snippet already does both.

The snippets

These are the snippets the Domain page gives you, for a help center at acme.chat.sh served from acme.com/help. The Domain page fills in your own address and folder, so copy from there when you set yours up.

Cloudflare Worker

Create a Worker with this script:

// Everything this Worker needs is in these three lines. If you change
// the folder in the dashboard, change PREFIX here too.
const ORIGIN = "acme.chat.sh";
const PREFIX = "/help";
const ASSETS = "/chat-assets";

export default {
  async fetch(request) {
    const url = new URL(request.url);

    const mine =
      url.pathname === PREFIX ||
      url.pathname.startsWith(PREFIX + "/") ||
      url.pathname.startsWith(ASSETS + "/");

    // Everything else is your site, untouched.
    if (!mine) return fetch(request);

    // One address per page: /x/ and /x are the same page.
    if (url.pathname.endsWith("/") && url.pathname !== "/") {
      url.pathname = url.pathname.slice(0, -1);
      return Response.redirect(url.toString(), 301);
    }

    const upstream = new URL(url);
    upstream.hostname = ORIGIN;

    const proxied = new Request(upstream, request);
    proxied.headers.set("Host", ORIGIN);
    proxied.headers.set("X-Forwarded-Host", url.host);

    // Redirects are handled here rather than followed. A renamed article
    // redirects to the help center's own host; visitors should stay on yours.
    const response = await fetch(proxied, { redirect: "manual" });
    if (response.status < 300 || response.status >= 400) return response;

    const location = response.headers.get("location");
    if (!location) return response;

    const target = new URL(location, "https://" + ORIGIN);
    if (target.hostname !== ORIGIN) return response;
    target.protocol = url.protocol;
    target.host = url.host;

    const rewritten = new Response(response.body, response);
    rewritten.headers.set("location", target.toString());
    return rewritten;
  },
};

Then add three routes to it: acme.com/help, acme.com/help/*, and acme.com/chat-assets/*. The /help/* route alone does not match /help itself, so without the first one every page works except the home page.

Requests outside those paths go straight to your site, untouched. If you change the folder later, change PREFIX in the script too.

Vercel

Add the rewrites to vercel.json at the root of your project:

{
  "rewrites": [
    { "source": "/help", "destination": "https://acme.chat.sh/help" },
    { "source": "/help/:path*", "destination": "https://acme.chat.sh/help/:path*" },
    { "source": "/chat-assets/:path*", "destination": "https://acme.chat.sh/chat-assets/:path*" }
  ]
}

These are rewrites, not redirects: the address in the browser stays yours.

Next.js

Add the rewrites to next.config.js:

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  async rewrites() {
    return [
      { source: "/help", destination: "https://acme.chat.sh/help" },
      { source: "/help/:path*", destination: "https://acme.chat.sh/help/:path*" },
      { source: "/chat-assets/:path*", destination: "https://acme.chat.sh/chat-assets/:path*" },
    ];
  },
};

Use this instead of vercel.json when your own Next.js app owns the routing.

nginx

Add both locations to the server block for your domain:

location /help {
  proxy_pass https://acme.chat.sh;
  proxy_set_header Host acme.chat.sh;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
  proxy_ssl_server_name on;
}

location /chat-assets/ {
  proxy_pass https://acme.chat.sh;
  proxy_set_header Host acme.chat.sh;
  proxy_ssl_server_name on;
}

• Keep proxy_ssl_server_name on. Without it, chat.sh cannot tell which help center to serve.
• Do not add a trailing slash to proxy_pass. That would rewrite the path.

Once it is live

Links, the sitemap, and search engines use the folder address. Your chat.sh address keeps working too.