Hey we’re transitioning our website into hubspot. Using hubspots elevate theme. I’m working on setting up the navigation menu and the site header and the navigation looks so bad. how do my navigation menu is only 4 parents wide with max of 5 child items below each. the header stacks these two by two with this weird back option. help how do i make it look good. I don’t have code option.
Hey @KGolke,
Welcome back to the Community!
Great question! I think think this may be best answered by folks from the community with hands-on experience. However, I did find few resources that you might find helpful while we wait for some peer support! (especially the first thread)
- HubSpot Community: Fixed Navigation Menu in Elevate Theme
- Set up site navigation menus (how parent/child menus are structured and managed in HubSpot.)
- Edit theme settings (where to control website header and navigation styling in the theme)
- Use global content across multiple templates
Tagging in some of our community experts to see if they have any tips and tricks on this!
Hey @Lucila-Andimol, @GRajput, @UlianaV – do you have any additional suggestions for @KGolke on this?
Thank you!!
Sam, Community Manager
Hey @KGolke,
I’m sorry to say this, but the Elevate theme is the worst default theme HubSpot has ever produced.
Starting from the individual theme settings till the fact it’s written in React. Therefore you cannot access the code via Design-Manager and modify it.
If you don’t have a (React) Developer on your side who’s familiar with local development, especially Project development, the only way to apply visual changes (except Theme functionality) is to put your CSS into the Head HTML area of a page or - preferably - on a global/domain level.
To make the logo smaller, try adding following code on a global/domain level
<style>
img.hs-elevate-site-header__logo{
max-height:50px;
max-width:auto;
}
</style>
if this shouldn’t work, try the sledgehammer method:
<style>
img.hs-elevate-site-header__logo{
max-height:50px !important;
max-width:auto !important;
}
</style>
(you can change the max-height value to your requirements)
Nonetheless, my personal recommendation is always:
Get yourself a good theme (free or paid is up to you) from the marketplace and use this rather than Elevate.
Since no Marketplace theme will ever meet 100% of your requirements, look for one which meet around 80% function wise.
Once installed, create a child-theme to enable code-level customization. Even if you don’t need it now, you never know what the future holds. Starting with a child-theme rather than the actual theme should be mandatory 
If you got a (few) developer(s), time and budget, you can also look into creating a custom theme tailored completely to your corporate design, requirements and many other aspects. Custom themes are amazing and can give you much more than any Marketplace theme, but they’re pricy.
Hope this helps
Best,
Anton
Anton thank you! gah i figured Hubspot’s Elevate theme would be the best since it’s you know… created by hubspot 
but yes quickly running into limitations. I’m 90% of the way through our website transition into hubspot. curious what effect switching themes now would have on the work I’ve put in so far.
Hi TeeTech, I can’t seem to edit the header layout… it seems it only gives me this version of the header layout and i can only upload a logo, and select a menu, and display one button…
Hey @KGolke,
thanks for clearification.
Your idea was right. If HubSpot offers something, it should be good.
I really don’t want to bash Elevate anymore - I’ve done this long enough
It’s an ok theme to get started, but if you don’t know React, don’t have React developers nearby or are looking for easy modifications → don’t start with it.
Switching themes when you’re almost done will result in basically rebuild every page from scratch.
If you got Content Hub Professional or Enterprise, you got access to Content Staging, which makes such process a bit easier, but the most important note for switching themes is:
Theme modules are most likely not compatible → if the new theme doesn’t have a module which the old one has, you’ll end up in a quite messy code as the old module might load some old theme files which are not compatible and you’ll end in a bunch of messed up code.
For such cases it’s better to create a custom module for your new theme or use something similar from the new theme.
Furthermore:
If you switch the module, you’ll need to re-enter the content of it. There are some exceptions like HubDB & JSON content, but since Marketplace themes don’t support them, I won’t go into detail here
What I recommend in a case like yours:
- Go-Live with the current theme
- Get used to HubSpot
- After some time, collect some feedback, wishes and such from your team. What they’d like to have during page creation/editing, what the like, what not …
- Start by creating a design for your company and implement the wishes&feedback
- Do some feedback rounds
- Start creating your own custom theme in a free dev test account
- Run some feedback rounds on “every” module/function
- Once everybody happy, copy the theme to the live account
- Add the existing pages to the Staging Environment
- Migrate them to the new theme
- Once happy → push everything from Staging to live. The old pages will be replaced by the new ones. No need for redirects, no redirect loops. Everything is transitioning smoothly
But - since such a migration can take a few months (depending on your URL size, page complexity and a few other things), don’t rush. And - in best case - look for design/dev support if required.
Got a similar case right now. Client got a theme by the HubSpot Migration service. Without diving to deep into it - I’ll create a custom theme for this company and migrate the page to it.
Hope this helps
Best,
Anton