A theme restyles your whole help center in one step: colors, fonts, spacing and the layout of every page. You choose which parts to take from it, and nothing changes for visitors until you publish.
Who can do this: Owners and Admins (Editors through Customize on your help center) · Plans: All plans, with every theme included
Apply a theme
In the template editor, open the Theme gallery tab (⌘3). The theme you use now is marked Active.
Click Compare & apply… on the theme you want.
In the dialog, untick every part you want to keep as it is now. The dialog lists only the parts that differ from your current design.
Click Apply theme. The preview switches to the new theme and shows your Home page.
Look through your pages. When you're happy, click Publish.
Not sure which theme to pick? See Which theme is right for you? or see screenshots of every theme at helpcenter.io/knowledge-base-templates.
Choose what to keep
Every part in the dialog starts ticked except Brand and SEO title & description. A ticked part is replaced by the theme's version. Anything you untick stays exactly as you have it.
Part | What applying it replaces |
|---|---|
Brand | Your site name, tagline, logo, dark-mode logo and favicon. Themes come with a sample name and no logo, so leave this unticked unless you're starting from scratch. |
Colors (light), Colors (dark) | Your light and dark color palettes. |
Fonts, Corner radius, Density | Your fonts, the roundness of corners and the spacing. |
Home page layout, Category page layout, Article page layout, Search page layout, Contact page layout, 404 page layout | That page's layout and every component on it, including its header, hero, footer and their texts. Your contact form keeps its recipient email and confirmation email. |
Navigation | Your header and footer links. Some themes bring sample links, others none. |
Script injections | Only the scripts that came with a theme. Scripts you added or edited, such as analytics, chat and site verification tags, stay. |
SEO title & description | Your default page title and meta description, replaced by the theme's sample text. Your other SEO settings stay, including Hide from search engines (no-index), Nofollow external links, keywords and the Open Graph fields. |
Custom CSS | Your custom CSS snippets, replaced by the theme's own CSS (or by none). |
Keep what already works. Untick Navigation to keep your links and Custom CSS to keep your styling. Leave SEO title & description unticked unless you want the theme's sample text in search results.
Switching to Compass? Its light and dark switch and its search shortcut run as two scripts that come with the theme. They're added only if you leave Script injections ticked. Your own scripts stay either way.
Changed your mind?
Press ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows) right after you apply a theme. One undo puts your draft back exactly as it was before, and redo applies the theme again. To return to your published design instead, click Reset draft (the clock icon in the top bar) and confirm. That also discards every other unpublished change.
If you already published the new theme, open Version history and restore an earlier version. See Restore an earlier design.
Good to know
Themes never touch your articles, categories or languages.
Everything a theme sets stays editable afterwards: colors, fonts, pages and components.
On a help center with one language, themes leave out their language switcher. Add it to your header once you add a second language.
When your draft already has everything a theme would change, the dialog says "Your draft already matches this theme." and there's nothing to apply.
Troubleshooting
"Your latest edits could not be saved" when you click Apply theme. The editor saves your draft before it applies a theme. Fix the save problem first (click Retry save in the banner at the top), then apply the theme again.
My page title in search results changed. You applied SEO title & description. Set your title and description again under Brand. See SEO settings for your help center.
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