Yes, we are using the Knowledgebase to help with our SEO efforts and would really like a way to have either A. same menu as blog template or B. at least a way to insert CTAs.
Yes, we should have the option to adjust the header. The header is occupying most of the screen and the categories are not visible!
We need to customize the navigation and the footer. It’s ok to have some restrictions, but it’s not ok to take this small set of default templates and not make them adjustable. Without the customization, it really looks outdated.
Also, it does not fit to our webpage, as it looks like a completely different page due to unmatching styling.
The current knowledge base templates are very restrictive. It would be best if we could make the knowledgable fit into our current website style. We run a Shopify site so maybe a direct integration?
At the very least we would want our header nav and footer to match. It’s too simplistic as is and makes for a bad user experience when they go to this “microsite”.
+1
+1
We also want the custom styles from our HubSpot default form to show up on the contact us page in our knowledge base. HubSpot support has confirmed this is not possible today.
Our team would appreciate some functionality, at the very least, to allow our help center logo link to open in a new tab.
Thanks for your attention to this issue, @Snaedis. You mentioned we should add our voice to this thread if KB customization is important to us, so I’m doing just that. We’re hoping to customize fonts (with the ability to use a Google Font being the main request) and adjust the layout on the KB index page. It would be really excellent if we could edit the KB index page to add our own modules to the page alongside the existing grid layout currently used for KB article categories.
I’d be happy to show examples or use cases when the product team is ready to move this into planning and production.
Thanks for bringing all these suggestions together in one place Snaedis. It’s good to see a summary of some issues currently under discussion.
I’m currently trying to work out how to set up a knowledgebase in Hubspot that is currently set up in Madcap Flare. There appear to be several key limitations in Hubspot that makes this tricky, but I would be interested to hear from others how they would deal with these challenges, as I’m new to Hubspot.
We are keen to move our knowledgebase into Hubspot because of the integration features it provides, but working around these issues is making it a bigger job than we had hoped.
1. Drop-down accordions not available. This is a key feature of Flare and allows embedded paragraphs, tables and images to be hidden under a heading, but displayed by clicking on that heading. It’s a great way of layering information in one article so that the user can see what’s there and read selected information without having to jump to new articles. The nearest I can get to reproducing this behavior is to set up a mini-TOC at the start of a long article and link each heading in the TOC to an anchor further down the article. But more on anchors later…
2. Single categorization of articles. As far as I can see, any article can appear once only in the overall architecture of the knowledgebase. This is a problem for me as the current Flare knowledgebase has two or more entry points in the TOC for many articles. For example, Jobs>Job settings>Job templates, Templates>Job templates, Settings>Job settings>Job templates. So it looks like I have to decide which is the most useful access path for the article on Job templates and categorize it accordingly.
3. Two levels: Category and sub-category. Flare allows as many levels as required to be defined in the overall table of contents for the knowledgebase. This is a powerful feature as it allows individual articles to be located in the most suitable place in the overall information architecture, regardless of how many levels are required. Continuing with the previous example, there is currently an article called “Creating a job template”. This article appears at the end of the path: Jobs>Job settings>Job templates>Creating a job template, at level 4 in the hierarchy. Because I can only store articles down to three levels, this means that all the articles about working with Job templates (creating, editing, deleting, copying etc.) need to be stored in a single article in Hubspot. This is OK, but I need to make use of my mini-TOC to allow users to jump straight to the relevant section. In some ways it’s probably better to limit the number of levels in the hierarchy, but it’s going to require some rethinking about how the articles are organized and linked to get it to work in Hubspot.
4. Links to anchors only within the same article. I can’t find any way to set up a link from one article to another that goes to an anchor in the target article, rather than the article itself. This means that if I want to set up a link from one article to (say) the “Deleting a job template” section of the Job templates article, I can’t do that. The nearest I can get is to jump to the article itself and then rely on the user spotting the “deleting” option in the mini-TOC. This problem could be resolved if it was possible to edit the HTML directly (as mentioned in the main post) and add a suitable anchor reference manually to the link.
Perhaps you can give me some idea if any of these issues are likely to be addressed in the near future? All of them apart from the last one have some sort of workaround, but that could be addressed if HTML editing is provided.
I would like to be able to change the background color, style and images (not just the header). For example, we have a custom background that I would like to be able to upload, so it isn’t so white and bare.
Thanks for mentioning this! We’re just switching over from Zoho and doing an update for our whole KB to partially for internal reasons, partially to align the differences in formatting options between Zoho and Hubspot. I was happy to see you mention the ability to insert an image into a numbered list since we have many “how-to” articles which require images for multiple steps.
I am currently becoming quite frustrated with how the bullet point/ number point system works. Is there a tutorial or something I can use to figure out how to create a smaller set of bullet points? E.g. if I have steps 1,2,3 but step two has 3 parts to it.
I appreciate any advice! Thanks!
What is the last update on this? @Snaedis?
Our team would appreciate being able to display all of the articles in a subcategory instead of the just the first 4 and “see more” link.
This functionality would potentially be the difference for staying with Hubspot or not. The KB is a key component of our support model moving forward and being able to customise it is crucial.
I agree with @Andy_Mantle, and would even take this idea one step further to adding a cascading menu in left panel for the user to easily navigate between Categories, Sub-categories and Articles. This is basic KB functionality.
I agree with you both. I find it difficult to use anchors and link articles to each other (not really possible).
Hi Snaedis,
I just got a request from a client (full growth stack Sales, Service, Marketing, CMS) and they believe their knowledge base appearance reflects badly on their company and therefore their customers. I am not sure I agree with them but they have this opinion.
Here are some suggestions:
- At a minimum, enable the ability to set the website header and footer as the header and footer of the knowledge base. This should be straightforward.
- Secondly, provide more control formatting the header where the search box is.
Below these two things, then formatting of the body of the knoledge base is upside, but at least the KB looks like it fits into the rest of the website.
I have many other points of feedback abd would be happy to speak with you about the solution but wanted to remain focused with this reply. Feel free to reach out if you would like to speak about these suggestions and other related ideas.
- Dave Orecchio, Bristol Strategy, Inc. - Hubspot Partner.
Hi Snaedis
Ref. Custom layouts for index pages and articles, just the ability to choose home page (level 1) styling also on the sub category pages (level 2), would be very helpful. We have Tiles on the home page, and would like to have Content Rich
or Minimal on the sub category pages (level 2).
I can see https://help.hubspot.com/ have version of this idea, but a custom solution.
It would be very helpful and important to us if we can fully customize the KB in layout and styling.
Hey Snaedis!
I just wanted to chime in here regarding the Knowledge Base feature which I just signed up for (Service Hub Pro). While I love a majority of the experience and basic templates included in the KB feature, I’m SHOCKED there isn’t even a tad more developer control. If not only to be able to add in CSS or scripts to the <head>.
Frankly, I’m not trying to do anything super tricky. I simply want to be able to increase the font sizes in the sidebar, article, etc.
What was the UX rationale in not allowing that user input where the fonts in the KB are currently editable?
At the end of the day, all I really would need is the ability to add in my own CSS to the head for these minor cosmetic changes.