If you are using the standard Copenhagen theme, you can easily add and remove some common search functionality and visibility elements in your theme. These options are advanced settings in the Settings panel of your theme.
You will not see the advanced settings described in this article in your Settings panel if you're using a custom theme created before August 1, 2018.
The settings panel also contains options for setting branding and design elements for your theme, including colors, fonts, logos, and images. For information about those settings, see Branding your Help Center.
The settings panel sets the values of placeholders in the template code. For example, the
instant search option in the Settings panel sets the value of a placeholder named
settings.instant_search
in the code. If you replace the placeholder in the
code with a literal value such as true
or with another placeholder, you'll no
longer be able to use the Settings panel to set the value in the code.
Setting search options in your standard theme
In the Copenhagen standard theme, you can easily add and remove some common search functionality options for your theme in the settings panel.
To update search options for your theme
- In Guide, click the Customize design icon (
) in the sidebar.
- Click Customize on the theme you want to update.
- In the Settings panel, click Search settings.
- Select or deselect any of the following options:
- Instant search enables users to see links to suggested articles while entering their search terms, then select matched articles directly from the Search box without going to the search results page first. Instant search uses partial word search and returns results based on article titles only.
- Scoped search in Knowledge base enables users to search only the articles in the current category.
- Scoped search in Community enables users to search only the posts in the current topic.
The theme preview updates so that you can see changes as you add or remove elements.
- When you're finished, click Save at the top.
The changes are applied to the theme.
- Click Back to return to the Themes page.
Setting visibility for home page and knowledge base elements in your standard theme
In the Copenhagen standard theme, you can easily set visibility for some home page and knowledge base elements for your theme in the settings panel.
To set visibility for home page and knowledge base elements in your theme
- In Guide, click the Customize design icon (
) in the sidebar.
- Click Customize on the theme you want to update.
- In the Settings panel, click Home page elements, then select or deselect
Recent activity, if you want to add or remove the recent activity feed from
your home page.
- Recent activity shows a list of the five most recent new articles, article comments, new community posts, and community comments on your Help Center home page.
- Click Article page elements, then select or deselect any of the following options:
- Articles in section displays a list of all articles in the current section in a sidebar on the article.
- Author displays the avatar and name of the author on each article.
- Comments shows all comments at the bottom of the article in order of oldest to newest.
- Follow displays a button on the article so that users can subscribe to the article to receive notifications when new comments are added. Notifications are not sent when the article content is updated.
- Recently viewed displays a list of articles recently viewed by the user in a sidebar on the article.
- Related articles displays a list of related articles, on a relevancy score, in a sidebar on the article (see How is the relate articles list populated).
- Social sharing adds elements for sharing content on social media to the article.
The theme preview updates so that you can see changes as you add or remove elements.
- Click Section page elements, then select or deselect Follow, if you want
to enable users to follow sections.
- Follow displays a button on the section so that users can subscribe to the section to receive notifications when new articles are added to the section and when new comments are added to articles in the section.
- When you're finished, click Save at the top.
The changes are applied to the theme.
- Click Back to return to the Themes page.
Setting visibility for community elements in your standard theme (Gather Professional)
To set visibility for community elements in your theme
- In Guide, click the Customize design icon (
) in the sidebar.
- Click Customize on the theme you want to update.
- In the Settings panel, click Community post elements, then select or deselect
any of the following options:
- Follow displays a button on the community post so that users can subscribe to the post to receive notifications when new comments are added.
- Social sharing adds elements for sharing content on social media to the post.
- Click Community topic elements, then select or deselect Follow, if you
want to enable users to follow community topics.
- Follow displays a button on the community topic so that users can subscribe to the topic to receive notifications when new posts are added to the topic and when new comments are added to posts in the topic.
- When you're finished, click Save at the top.
The changes are applied to the theme.
- Click Back to return to the Themes page.
11 Comments
Jennifer Rowe
The steps under "Setting visibility for home page and knowledge base elements in your standard theme" don't appear to be totally accurate.
I can't locate a Settings panel once within the theme. Can you provide a screenshot of the location of the Settings panel?
Hey Matt,
You should see this option after selecting the theme you're using in Guide. Screenshot below:
This can be found in Guide Admin > Customize Design > View Theme. I'll be sure to flag this article for update.
Thanks for taking the time to share this with us!
Well, apologies, Matt. We should have a screen shot there. We'll add it. Thanks!
Matt Taylor I've added a screen capture at the start of the article, to help provide some context,
Thanks!
Ah, I believe it might be that our theme has been brought over from the preCopenhagen days and therefore doesn't provide those options.
You will not see the advanced settings described in this article in your Settings
panel if you're using a custom theme created before August 1, 2018.
Here's what I'm seeing.
Thanks for helping isolate what I was missing
I'd really like to use the Scoped Search feature but I'm on a custom theme from before 2018. Is there any way to force the theme to update so this newer feature can be used?
Hey Kirsten,
We have been overwhelmed with requests during this time. Appreciate your patience in this!
I consulted the Guide experts about this. Only the newest Settings panel has these options and it’s not possible to force add them to the old versions. You would need to upgrade to v2: Announcing Guide Templating API v2
Hope this answers your question. Let us know if you need anything else. :)
For the Support Articles on Guide - although the author has been hidden they are still visible in the Search Results. Is there anything that can be done about it?
Hi,
If you edit the code for the search_results.hbs page, you can comment out the author name code:
<!-- <li class="meta-data">{{author.name}}</li>-->
Thanks,
Maggie
Hi Maggie,
Thank you for your reply. I did what you suggested but somehow that didn't work. Any ideas what might have gone wrong here?
Hi Iwona,
I just tested this on my end and Maggies solution did work. Can you make sure you hit the publish button after editing your code and then try refreshing your browser?
Let me know!
Please sign in to leave a comment.