Importing and downloading your theme and manifest file

Fastpath: Guide Admin > Customize design icon > Add theme > Import theme

You can import or download a zip archive of a help center theme, containing templates, JavaScript, CSS, and assets.

You must be a Guide admin to import and download help center themes.

This article contains the following sections:

• Importing a help center theme
• Downloading a help center theme
• Help center theme files

Importing a help center theme

You can import a zip archive of a help center theme, containing templates, JavaScript, CSS, and assets. You can have a maximum of 10 themes in total in Guide.

If you want to import a theme from GitHub, see Setting up the GitHub integration with your Guide theme.

To import a theme into your help center

1. In Guide, click the Customize design icon () in the sidebar.

   The Themes page opens.

2. Click Add theme in the upper-right corner.
3. Click Import theme.

   

4. Select your theme.

   The theme should be in a compressed file with a file name of 30 characters or fewer.

   The theme is imported and appears on your Themes page.

Downloading a help center theme

You can download help center themes that you have code access to as a zip archive of templates, JavaScript, CSS, and assets. This enables you to work on it locally, with your own development tools, and check it into version control. To make iterative changes to your theme, see Previewing theme changes locally.

Downloading your theme is the only way to access the manifest.json file for the theme. The manifest file enables you to customize the theme's branding settings, including colors, fonts, and images, see the Customizing the Settings panel.

To download an existing help center theme

1. In Guide, click the Customize design icon () in the sidebar.

   The Themes page opens.

2. On the theme you want to download, click the options menu (), then select Download.

   

   The theme is downloaded to your system in a zipped file.

Help center theme files

You can use the Themes page in Guide admin to download the latest version of the Copenhagen theme. When you download the Copenhagen theme, a zip file containing the Copenhagen theme package is copied to your download folder. This package includes all mandatory files and folders and all optional files contained in the supported folders.

Optional files are files developed to support a custom theme (available with Guide Professional and Enterprise). Custom themes are created when you modify the theme by editing the page templates, CSS, or Javascript, or when you add optional files to a theme. Optional files developed to support a custom theme must be in the related supported folder (templates/article_pages, templates/category_pages, templates/custom_pages, or templates/section_pages) in order to be functional and downloaded with the rest of the theme.

If the theme that you are downloading contains files that are not recognized as one of these files or does not fit into the supported folder structure, they will be stripped from the theme before download. As a result, you will not see them in your zipped theme file.

The following image shows the download folder when the Copenhagen theme package is unzipped. In this example, the article_pages folder is expanded to show an example of the custom article page template file (article_page_template.hbs). The translations folder is expanded to show a partial selection of contents.