In a Guide theme, there is one page template each for article, section, and category by default. You can create up to ten additional page templates each for articles, sections, and categories.
This means that you can create alternate versions of templates to use for your articles, sections, and categories. You can change the look and feel based on content. You can apply or change the page template when you create or edit an article, section, or category.
You cannot create additional templates for any other page type in your theme. You must be a Guide admin to create multiple templates.
Adding multiple templates using the theme editor
You can create additional page templates for articles, sections, and categories using the theme editor in Guide. If you prefer working on your themes locally, you can also add templates to your downloaded themes.
- In Guide, click the Customize design icon (
) in the sidebar.
Your themes appear on the Themes page.
- On the theme you want to edit, click Customize.
- Click Edit code.
- Scroll to the bottom of your templates list, then click Add new
template.
- Under Template for, select the type of template you'd like to create.
You can create article, section, and category templates only. You can create up ten additional templates for each type.
- Enter a Template name.
- Under Start from, select an existing template to copy and use as a starting
point.
You can select blank template if you don't want to start from another template.
- Click Create template.
The new template opens for you.
- Edit your template and click Save as you go.
- To preview your template, click Preview, then click Templates at the top
of the preview and select the template you want to preview.
For more information, see Previewing your theme while editing theme code.
When you are ready, you can apply your template to a new article or new category or section. You can also change the template on an existing article, section, or category.
Adding multiple templates in downloaded themes
If you download and work on themes locally, you can add multiple templates to the themes. The workflow consists of creating a predefined folder in a theme's templates folder, then adding .hbs template files to the folder.
To learn more about working on themes locally, see Working on a theme locally.
To add a template to an downloaded theme
- Depending on the type of template you want to add (article, section, or category),
create any of the following folders in the templates folder of the downloaded
theme:
- article_pages
- section_pages
- category_pages
As in the Guide theme editor, you can only create article, section, and category templates.
- Add an .hbs template file in the new folder.
You can name the file anything you want. The name must be 25 characters or less, and snake_case.
Tip: To save time, copy an existing .hbs file into the folder to use as a starting point for the new template. - Edit and save the template.
- If you need to add more templates of the same type, add them to the same folder.
- When you're done, zip the theme and import it into Guide.
Use Guide to preview the new template.
When you are ready, you can apply your template to a new article or new category or section. You can also change the template on an existing article, section, or category.
23 Comments
We'd like to have a default set of headings/sections populate when a new article is created. Is there a way to do this with templates? It doen't look like I can define a default "article body" to populate that would then be editable. Thanks in advance for any tips.
Hey Nick, It sounds like you are looking for some information on how to set up consistent Articles in the Article Editor itself, not the back end behavior of these articles.
Unfortunately we do not have built in functionality that accomplishes exactly what you're looking for, Article Body Templates. That is a great suggestion though! For now I would recommend drafting your articles bodies in a service like Microsoft Word or Google Docs and then copy past in as needed. It's not seamless, but it will cut down on your editing time.
Thanks!
Makes sense. Thanks for the info.
Just wanted to echo this request too - that would be of great use to us. I was just asking a member of your support team the very same thing.
Surely it wouldn't be that taxing to do in the backend and make the feature available to us no?
Thanks, Matt
Another one for this request. Seems like the most sensible use of a templates feature especially when Zendesk promote collaboration amongst agents when it comes to building a knowledge base - it would make for a far tidier kb if agents had templates to work from within the editor. i.e. a 'How to' or an 'FAQ' type of thing.
Does anyone else have a solution to adding placeholder text to the .hbs file?
Hey Alex,
Thanks for sharing your feedback!
I would encourage you to cross-post this in our Guide Product Feedback forum as well. This will help provide visibility to both our product managers since that's the primary channel they use to capture customer feedback.
Cheers!
When previewing multiple templates, is there a way to view anything other than the default page for an article or section?
Let's say I have a new template set up for a section. For now, all other sections use the original, default template.
While I'm in local preview mode, if I navigate to the section that has the new template, it shows up rendered through the original template.
If I use the dropdown to specifically select the new template, then it renders some randomly chosen "default" section through the new template.
I can't seem to preview the desired section with the desired template. Am I missing something?
Everything works fine when it's all published, but I felt a little like I was flying blind until then.
Hey Dru,
You should be able to preview your templates via the Templates menu in Preview Mode. Screenshot below:

Then, if you navigate to a particular article, you can select the template you'd like to preview it with.
Let me know if I'm misunderstanding your question!
You understood, and answered my question...thank you! It seems simple now that I know, but was rather unintuitive until now. So, is there a cookie set, declaring which template you've last selected, and then as you navigate to any article (or whatever), it uses that template, until you select another?
Hey Dru,
AFAIK that's how it works :) I actually reached out to one of our Guide PM's and those are the steps that were recommended to me.
Cheers!
Hey team, has any progress been made on "Article Body Templates" that was requested earlier in this article?
I couldn't find a feature request matching it.
Would be super awesome to be able to template the article body and then be able to edit the content.
Hey Grant -
The product team is working on the concept of reusable blocks of content, where you could post the same chunk of content in multiple places, but I haven't heard of anything around article body templates. I encourage you to post the idea to the Feedback on Guide topic in the community, so that others can up vote and add to the idea. Product managers are subscribed to the notifications on that topic, so they can see it and engage as well.
I don't have Add New Template in my templates list...how do I get that?
Hello Molina, Theresa,
Looking into your account, I believe this is because you are running on a trial account, which is limited in the scope of functionality you have access to. If you would like to upgrade your account and need more information, I've shared a link below that should help.
Guide Pricing
Best regards.
Is there a way to select one of the template themes via the API? I'm thinking through a use case where an internal facing article might be wrapped differently than a public facing article to help indicate that certain content shouldn't be shared based on its visibility. I could do this via the theme code to check if the article is internal but I'd like to extend this to other user segments as well.
Hey Dan, I don't believe it's documented yet, but it looks like there is a
attribute in the sections JSON objects now. I checked one of my articles that uses a separate template, but it doesn't look like it's there. Not sure if this is a work in progress, if I'm getting cached data, or what, exactly...
Might be worth POSTing or PUTting a `theme_template` attribute to an article to see what happens (I'd try it myself but time's a little tight right now...)
Also, seems like the default value for the "regular" template is simply "section_page".
Thanks Dru, this definitely gives me a lead in how I can look into this.
Grant Foster I would also like an update! :)
Grant Foster and Richard Younger -
The product team is working on some functionality that will allow for blocks of content to be reused in multiple places throughout a knowledge base. You should follow this feedback post to receive updates about that feature, which we do expect to go into an EAP in the near future:
Allow articles to be posted to multiple sections
As far as the specific request around article body templates, here is the feedback thread that Grant created so that users can up vote it and add their comments to it:
Article Body Templates
That thread is where product managers will ask questions and provide updates if and when it is something they pick up to work on.
Thank you very much Nicole S.
You're welcome, Richard!
Would be great to be able to add a Header template! I've coded an animated header on the homepage but I want a static, fixed header on all other pages. Trying various things but can't seem to find a decent workaround. Appreciate any suggestions!
Is there is there a way to modify the template so that agents can view the labels?
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