Guide templating renders the help center theme packages. This contains the Curlybars templating language that is used in the template files, CSS and JS files, and the manifest file.
Guide templating is also known as the Templating API.
To learn more about Guide themes, see Customizing your help center theme and the Help center Templates developer documentation.
About Guide templating versions
The following table lists the Guide templating versions, release dates, and links to the related developer documentation page where you can find specific information about what is available in each version.
To check which version you're using, see Checking your templating version.
| Version | Release date | Developer documentation page |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | November 20, 2014 | N/A |
| 2 | February 24, 2020 | Upgrading from templating API v1 |
| 3 | June 1, 2023 | Upgrading from templating API v2 |
| 4 | July 2, 2024 | Upgrading from templating API v3 |
Checking your templating version
You can see the templating version from the Edit code view in your theme or in the manifest file.
To check the templating version
- In Guide, click the Customize design icon (
) in the sidebar. - Click Customize on the theme you want to see.
- Click Edit code.
- Under the theme name, you'll see the templating version number, for example,
Templating API v2.
This version number corresponds to the
api_versionfield in the manifest file.
Upgrading your Guide templating version
If you have customized your Guide theme, you can upgrade to the latest templating version to take advantage of new features, improved performance, and accessibility improvements.
To upgrade the templating version
- Download your help center theme, see Downloading a help center theme.
- Open the theme package locally and edit the manifest.json file.
- In the manifest.json file, find the
api_versionfield and change the value to the version you want to upgrade to. - Preview your theme changes locally. When you preview the theme, you'll get warnings if you are using helpers that have been deprecated in the version you are upgrading to.
- If you are using a deprecated helper, refer to the related developer
documentation (see About Guide templating versions
) to replace the helper with a supported equivalent.
Preview your theme again to verify that there are no further warnings.
- Upload the updated theme to Guide (see Importing your help center
theme).
You can check that the new version has been applied by checking your templating version.