Hiding and showing elements in your Copenhagen standard theme

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.

Note: You can update any theme settings and maintain a standard theme, which is supported by Zendesk and automatically updated with new theme features. If you edit any theme code, your theme will become a custom theme and will not receive updates.

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.

This article contains the following sections:

• Setting search options in your standard theme
• Setting visibility for home page and knowledge base elements in your standard theme
• Setting visibility for community elements in your standard theme (Gather Professional)

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

1. In Guide, click the Customize design icon () in the sidebar.
2. Click Customize on the theme you want to update.
3. In the Settings panel, click Search settings.
4. 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.

5. When you're finished, click Save at the top.

   The changes are applied to the theme.

6. 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

1. In Guide, click the Customize design icon () in the sidebar.
2. Click Customize on the theme you want to update.
3. 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.
4. 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.

5. 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.
6. When you're finished, click Save at the top.

   The changes are applied to the theme.

7. Click Back to return to the Themes page.

Setting visibility for community elements in your standard theme (Gather Professional)

In the Copenhagen standard theme, you can set visibility for some community elements for your theme in the settings panel.

Note: You will see the community post and community topic elements even if you do not have Zendesk Gather. If you do not have a community, setting options in this section will have no effect.

To set visibility for community elements in your theme

1. In Guide, click the Customize design icon () in the sidebar.
2. Click Customize on the theme you want to update.
3. 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.
   The theme preview updates so that you can see changes as you add or remove elements.
4. 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.
5. When you're finished, click Save at the top.

   The changes are applied to the theme.

6. Click Back to return to the Themes page.