Plan requirement
| Subscription | Suite Growth or higher, Knowledge Professional or higher |
| Access | Admin |
The standard theme plus your settings gets most help centres where they need to be. What a custom theme adds, and costs.
Customise the standard theme
- In Knowledge, click Customize design in the sidebar.
- Click Customize on the theme you want to change. The settings panel opens beside a live preview.
- Click Colors, Fonts or Brand and set them. Under Brand, Replace swaps the logo; 200 by 50 pixels is the recommended size.
- Click Publish to apply the changes to the theme.
Start here and stop here if you can
The standard theme is Copenhagen. Zendesk supports it and updates it automatically as theme features are released, so a Copenhagen theme carrying your branding looks like your company and keeps improving without you doing anything.
A custom theme gives that up. Zendesk does not support custom themes and does not update them, because an update would overwrite what was customised. New features have to be added to your theme by hand.
What a custom theme buys
- A layout the settings do not offer.
- Exact alignment with a designed website.
- Elements that are not in the standard theme at all.
All real reasons, and all worth their cost only when somebody will maintain the result. Custom themes are not available on Suite Team.
What it costs
Ownership. Your theme no longer tracks Zendesk's, so improvements and fixes have to be applied by hand, and a theme built two years ago by somebody who has left is a liability rather than an asset.
Preview before publishing
The preview is not visible to readers, so you can look freely. The home page updates as you edit; use the Templates menu to see a category, a section and an article, and Preview role to see the help centre as an end user rather than as yourself.
It shows look and feel, not behaviour. Zendesk is explicit that the preview is not meant for end-to-end testing of how a theme works, which is what a sandbox is for.
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