Fastpath: Guide Admin > Customize design icon > Theme options menu > Update
from GitHub
If you've set up the GitHub integration for your Guide theme, you manage your theme in GitHub and update the theme in Guide as needed.
You must be a Guide admin to update a GitHub-managed theme in Guide.
To update your Guide theme from GitHub
- In GitHub, make any changes to your theme, then increment the theme version number in the manifest.json file when you are ready to update the theme in Guide.
- In Guide, click the Customize design icon (
) in the sidebar.The Themes page opens.
- Choose the GitHub-managed theme you want to update.
Any GitHub-managed theme has the GitHub logo beside the name of the theme.
- Click the options menu (
), then select Update from GitHub. 
- In Update from GitHub, click Update.
If you want to overwrite your theme settings in the Settings panel, deselect Keep theme settings. Otherwise the import will keep the theme settings as they are set in Guide and not overwrite them from GitHub.
Your theme updates in the Themes page.
30 Comments
The options menu icon image on step #4 is not visible.
Thanks for letting us know, James! It's fixed now.
Hi Jennifer!
I was curious if the Zendesk/Github integration can work in reverse.
Meaning instead of "...you manage your theme in Github and update the theme in Guide as needed", I have been trying to determine how to "manage our theme in Guide, and update GitHub with the changes" – as a way to keep a versioned backup of our theme code in Github.
Thanks!
Hi Rachel,
No, the integration doesn't work in reverse.
If you want to manage your theme in Guide and store a backup in GitHub, you can manually export the theme from Guide, unzip the files, and add them to a new branch in your GitHub repo.
Hope that helps!
It feels like I'm missing something here....
I've been looking at version control as a better way of managing our theme and GitHub was the obvious choice but the whole process seems particularly unwieldy to me. Unless I'm missing something, for every change I make, even if it's the most minor thing I have to:
My other option if I sacrifice versioning is to:
Or am I missing something?
Hey Phil Williams,
The Github integration works best when you are using our local tools to preview.
This way you will only pull the update when you are ready to set the theme live.
Have a look at this article
Hope this helps :)
And that's what I'm missing! :D
Thanks Augusto, that looks perfect!
OK made some progress. I've installed the ZAT server successfully, created an API token as we use Google to sign in and opened chrome with:
https://<<oursupportdomain>>.zendesk.com/hc/admin/local_preview/start
Now if I open this in Chrome I get bounced straight to the help centre preview. Thinking this was because I was logged in (which I was) I switched to Firefox instead and just got directed towards our Zendesk login page.
Going to http://localhost:4567/hc/admin/local_preview/start I just got "Sinatra doesn't know this ditty" so somethings not working here?
Now if I open this in Chrome I get bounced straight to the help centre preview.
The preview you are seeing now should be with templates coming from your local machine. Try to change a template and see if the page changes. :)
OK I figured out that I needed to hit the URL again after logging in however the content is still mixed due to the http/https mix. I've tried allowing our boundary domain in Chrome to allow insecure content but no change.
In firefox I've also allowed it but it just hangs for an age and simply never loads the local preview.
If it makes a difference I don't see the shield icon in chrome which warns about mixed content. I've added our support domain to the whitelist and still no joy. Very strange...
Yep it's definitely still being blocked:
Why is it trying to fetch content from localhost:4567/guide/? I navigated directly to the folder containing the theme export and the style.css and jscript.css files are in the root. There is no folder named guide...
Sorted. After allowing the insecure content through Chrome I had to stop and then restart sinatra.
There's an hour I'll never see again but hopefully will help someone!
Thanks for taking the time to share this with everyone Phil!
It would be nice if version number in the manifest.js file appeared somewhere on the theme card on the Themes page. The only way to see if your version matches the version in Github is to attempt to update it.
Agree with that...
Hello Phil Williams & David Bjorgen,
Understandable why you would want that. I'd recommend posting this feedback on our Community Feedback Forums so our devs can consider that update for our future roadmaps.
Best regards.
Hi,
i have this problem when i am trying to update the theme from git
You need to update the version number in the file manifest.json. It's right at the top:
"name": "Boundary-Github",
"author": "Boundary",
"version": "5.2.3",
"api_version": 1,
"settings": [
Do that and then try the import again.
What I tend to do is make that change as soon as I create a new branch as it's caught me out plenty of times!
Is there any integration service like Github available for Bitbucket too?
Hey AJ,
It looks like there's a 3rd party integration owned by Zapier here: https://zapier.com/apps/bitbucket/integrations/zendesk
You may want to contact their team to get more information.
I hope this helps!
Is there a way to deploy theme changes from GitHub to Zendesk without having to visit Zendesk's UI to click the "Update from GitHub" link? I'd like to automate the process so any time a change is checked into our GitHub repository, it automatically gets updated in Zendesk as well.
Hi Matthew Bass,
No, currently the Github integration only supports manual updates.
For continuous integration use cases, we would suggest using Github Actions with our public API instead. You can find the api docs in https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/help_center/theming
You can find an example of using github actions with the themes api in the Copenhagen theme repo: https://github.com/zendesk/copenhagen_theme/blob/master/.github/workflows/lighthouse.yml#L17-L22
Hope this helps
hi, we have a critical problem that
how to connect theme with private git project?
Hey Lev,
Can you provide us with additional information on what sort of problems you're running into with updating/connecting your Github theme?
Hi Brett Bowser
thanks for the super speedy reply,
so we have be using git to control out theme version, but i am not able to connect with private git repo, because, in general, access private git repo must have git account login info, but there is seems no way to add git account info on theme. Am i explaining it clear for you? :)
Hey Lev,
Thanks for the additional information!
Our integration is only for Github, not other Git services or private Git servers unfortunately.
In this case the you would need to set up a custom integration using our API.
Let us know if you have any other questions!
Hi Brett Bowser
we indeed use GitHub for themes, could you tell me which API are you referring here? For the connection to private git repo
thanks
Hi Lev,
If you are using github please follow this guide to import your private repo. You will be asked to authorize Zendesk to access your github repo.
Once that's done you can start using the steps detailed in this article to update your theme (pull the changes from github to zendesk) every time you have a new version of the theme.
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