How themes work

Plan requirement

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A theme decides how your help centre looks. Most of what people want is settings rather than code.

The three levels

  • Settings. Colours, fonts, logo, what appears on the home page. No code, and enough for most help centres.
  • Editing the code. Templates and stylesheets, for changes the settings do not reach.
  • A custom theme. Built from scratch or bought, for a help centre that must match a designed site exactly.

Start with settings

Your logo, your colours and a sensible home page get you a help centre that looks like your company. That covers what most organisations actually need, and it survives Zendesk's own updates without maintenance.

What editing code costs

A customised theme is yours to maintain. Zendesk improves the standard themes; a copy you have edited does not receive those improvements, and reapplying them is manual.

Worth it when the design genuinely matters. Not worth it to move a heading.

The version that is live

You can have several themes and one is published. That makes it safe to work on a new one, because nothing changes for readers until you publish it.

Check it on a phone

A meaningful share of help centre traffic is mobile, often somebody standing in front of the problem. A theme that looks right on a wide screen and cramped on a phone is the wrong way round.

See also

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