Customizing your help center theme

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Quick Look: Guide admin > Customize design > Customize > Edit code

Web-savvy Guide admins can work directly with the page code to build a customized theme for your help center. Customized themes can include:

• Editable templates that define the layout of each page (for example, article page, category page, or community topic page)
• Custom pages that you create from scratch and place anywhere in your help center
• Global header and footer for the help center

You can also use a full-featured templating language called Curlybars to access help center data and manipulate the content in page templates and custom pages. You can also use the JavaScript and CSS files included with your theme to make site-wide changes to the appearance and behavior of the theme. If you are thinking about using your own HTML code to edit your help center theme, read Editing the source code of help center articles.

When you modify a theme's code (for example, its templates, JavaScript, or CSS), the theme preview displays the </> icon, indicating that the theme's code has been modified and will no longer receive new features and updates.

Tip: If you need help with your help center branding and customization, you can visit the Zendesk Marketplace to purchase new themes created by Zendesk and third party developers.

Note: Trial users are given the Professional plan, which includes code editing options, but they will no longer be able to access that feature if they purchase Suite Team.

This article covers the following topics:

• Customizing the page templates with HTML and Curlybars
• Customizing the CSS or JavaScript
• Using variables in CSS and HTML

Related articles:

• Branding your help center
• Guide theming limits
• Help center templating cookbook
• Creating custom pages in your help center
• Adding multiple article, section, and category templates to your theme

Customizing page templates and custom pages with HTML and Curlybars

The HTML for the help center is contained in editable templates that define the layout of page types, custom pages, and a global header and footer. You can also use a full-featured templating language called Curlybars to create or manipulate content for these elements.

Note: On Enterprise plans, you can create custom pages, as well as additional page templates for articles, sections, and categories if you need multiple versions of those templates.

You can customize the template of any of the following page types or elements, or create your own custom pages.

• Custom pages (custom_page.hbs): custom pages that you create from scratch and link from anywhere in your help center
• Article page (article_page.hbs): the individual article pages in the knowledge base
• Category page (category_page.hbs): landing pages
• Community post list page (community_post_list_page.hbs)
• Community post page (community_post_page.hbs)
• Community topic list page (community_topic_list_page.hbs)
• Community topic page (community_topic_page.hbs)
• Contributions page (contributions_page.hbs): the lists of posts, community comments, and article comments by an end-user
• Document head (document_head.hbs): the document's head tag
• Error page (error_page.hbs): the message displayed when a user lands on a non-existent page
• Footer (footer.hbs): the bars appearing at the bottom of all help center pages
• Header (header.hbs): the bars appearing at the top of all help center pages
• Home page (home_page.hbs): the top-level landing page for your help center
• New community post page (new_community_post_page.hbs)
• New request page (new_request_page.hbs): the request or ticket submission form
• Request page (request_page.hbs): the individual request or ticket pages
• Requests page (requests_page.hbs): the lists of requests or tickets assigned to a user or that a user is CC'd on
• Search results (search_results.hbs): the search results display format
• Section page (section_page.hbs): landing pages
• Following page (subscriptions_page.hbs): the list of categories, sections, and articles a user is following
• User profile page (user_profile_page.hbs)

Note: When you use the Theme Editor to edit the page templates, CSS, or JavaScript for a standard theme, or when you develop your own theme, it is saved as a custom theme. Custom themes are not supported by Zendesk and are not automatically updated when new features are released (see About standard themes and custom themes in help center).

To edit the page templates

1. In Guide, on the sidebar, click the Customize design icon ().
2. Click Customize on the theme you want to edit.
3. Click Edit code.

   

4. In the Templates section, click the template or custom page you want to modify.

   The page opens in the code editor.

5. Use the code view to edit the template or page.

   You can add, remove, or reorder any the following:

   • Template expressions to display and manipulate content in your pages

     For example, the breadcrumbs template helper {{breadcrumbs}} displays a breadcrumb navigation element on a page. For a detailed guide on template expressions, see Help center templates.

   • Dynamic content placeholders (see Localizing help center content)
   • Embeddable widgets created by third parties
   • HTML markup
6. Click Save in the top right corner to save your changes.

   If you edited a template, the changes are applied to every page in your theme that is based on the template you modified.

7. To preview your changes, click Preview. See Previewing your theme in the help center.
   Note: When previewing a theme, all features may not work. The preview functionality is intended to show look-and-feel changes, but it is not intended for end-to-end testing of interactive theme functionality. We recommend you use a Sandbox for end-to-end testing.

   

8. Make other code changes as needed, then click Save.

   When you're finished editing the page template or custom page, you can close it.

Tip: Read this Zendesk blog post for more knowledge base article template ideas.

Customizing the CSS or JavaScript

You can add JavaScript code or customize the site's CSS. For a taste of the things you can do in the help center with a little bit of coding, check out the following resources:

• Help center community tips
• Help center CSS cookbook
• Help center JavaScript cookbook

Note: When you use the Theme Editor to edit the page templates, CSS, or JavaScript for a standard theme, or when you develop your own theme, it is saved as a custom theme. Custom themes are not supported by Zendesk and are not automatically updated when new features are released. See About standard themes and custom themes in the help center.

To customize the CSS or JavaScript

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

   

4. Click script.js to modify the JavaScript or style.css to modify the CSS.

   The file opens in the code editor.

5. Add or modify the JavaScript or CSS in the code view.
6. Click Save in the top right to save your changes.

   The changes are applied to your theme.

7. To preview your changes, click Preview, see Previewing your theme in the help center.

   

8. Make other code changes as needed, then click Save.

   When you're finished, you can close the file.

Using variables in CSS and HTML

The properties you choose in the Settings panel or set in your manifest file for colors, fonts, and theme images are stored in variables. You can use these variables in the theme's style.css file. You can also reference the variables using Curlybars expressions in HTML page templates.

The variables are useful if you want to specify the same value in several places and update it quickly. Updating the property updates it everywhere the variable is used. The default Copenhagen theme includes some variables for colors and fonts. You can change the names and labels, delete variables, or add your own (see the Settings manifest reference).

In the standard Copenhagen theme, you have the following variables by default:

• brand_color is the brand color for major navigational elements
• brand_text_color is the brand color for hover and active states
• text_color is the text color for body and heading elements
• link_color is the text color for link elements
• background_color is the background color of your help center
• heading_font is the font for headings
• text_font is the font for body text
• logo is the company logo
• favicon is the icon displayed in the address bar of your browser
• homepage_background_image is the hero image on the home page
• community_background_image is the hero image on the community topics page
• community_image is the image for the community section on the home page

To use variables in CSS and HTML, see:

• Examples using variables in CSS
• Examples using variables in Curlybars in HTML

Examples using variables in CSS

The properties you set for colors, fonts, and theme images are stored in variables that you can use in your theme's style.css file.

For example, you can use some of the default variables in CSS with the following syntax:

• $brand_color
• $brand_tex_color
• $heading_font
• $text_font

In the CSS file, you assign a variable to a CSS property the same way you would assign a normal value. For example:

.button {
  label-color: $text_font;
}

You can also use single curly brackets to embed the helper in a CSS expression, as follows::

max-width: #{$search_width}px

Examples using variables in Curlybars in HTML

The properties you set for colors, fonts, and theme images are stored in variables that you can reference with Curlybars expressions in HTML page templates.

The variables become properties of the settings object in Curlybars. As with any Curlybars object, you can use double curly brackets and dot notation to insert a property in a page template.

For example:

• {{settings.color_1}} is the HEX value of a color. For example: #FF00FF
• {{{settings.font_1}} is the font stack. For example, system is defined as: '-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"
• {{settings.homepage_background_image}} is the path to the file stored in this field. For example: p8.zdassets.com/theme_assets/...
• {{settings.range_input}} is the value of the range input.

The settings object can be used as input to any helper. For example:

{{is settings.enabled}} ... {{/is}}