HubSpot Ideas

Snaedis

More flexible knowledge base design and layout, including custom HTML/CSS

There have been a number of different posts in the Community which are about the same core need (customizing the styling of the knowledge base), but many have been marked as "solved" or "delivered" because of options that get you part-way there. I'm consolidating those into this post so we can more easily track this need. This post should not be marked as solved or delivered until a knowledge base can be fully customized in layout and styling.

 

I've spoken with many customers who still want more flexibility in knowledge base styling, including: 

  • Custom layouts for index pages and articles
  • More fonts and styling options to better align KB with the rest of a business's website

For those of us who are working to improve the HubSpot product, it's incredibly helpful to have example use cases from our customers, and the posts here on the Community play an important role in our prioritization process. 

 

Giving you more flexibility in KB styling is something we'd like to do, and when we have the bandwidth to dig into this project we'll look to you all for guidance on how to best support your needs. So if customization is important to you, please add your voice to this thread!

 

For reference, I'm listing here the other posts which are related to this topic: 

196 Replies
agershenson
Member

Yes please! Huge barrier to adoption...

PabloR
Participant

+1

nz
Member

Even something as simple as the ability to load an external style sheet would be a big improvement. That way we can override the existing styles as needed.

CEdmunds
Member

This is a must.  Would like to be able to add custom emojis also.

74SinD
Member

Very disappointed with Hubspot Knowledge Base so far

rrumpf19
Participant

Our team would appreciate some functionality, at the very least, to allow our help center logo link to open in a new tab.

audpxi
Member

There are better styling options in this community forum! Can't believe that. How we can't even align / change text color etc...

 

We need some basic styling and CSS capabilities!

Michelle44
Member

Hello, new customer to HubSpot and I'm involved in deciding whether to use your knowledge base or stick with Word press.

 

I've just started to take a look around to see what I could achieve using the templates that you provide, I already knew that they were very restrictive however what I didnt realise was that you can only really have 1 landing page (the home page).   

 

Our software is extensive, so if I choose a topic on the home page (created in HubSpot), I will be presented with a navigation bar on the left hand side of my page where I will see sub categories that I have created associated with the topic I chose on the Home Page.  But I won't see or have the option to build a similar layout to what I have on the home page.   Instead whilst it can look organised, its ultimately a list of articles and I dont think thats the best user experience.

 

If I choose - https://help.hubspot.com/ Im taken to a home page, where I can choose a topic from a typical layout that I would expect.    If I select 'knowledge base' from options available - Im taken to a new page, which is presented in a very similar style to the home page.

 

This is a great example of what we need as a business for our own knowledge base, but doesnt yet seem possible within HubSpot.

 

Based on that, I am leaning towards word press which is a little bit frustrating as we will be using HubSpot extensively for services, all our customer tickets etc, so it would make so much more sense to have a knowledge base in HubSpot.

 

 

Zhariff
Member

I agree with @Michelle44 - need this functionality. You released in your latest developments this was coming, whats the ETA??

edstennett
Member

Much needed functionality - please could we have an update on where/if this falls on the roadmap?

Jaqueline
Contributor | Platinum Partner

Absolutely necessary. We can't match our customers corporate designs and they are paying hundrets of euros for the service hub. Sorry, but this is not acceptable...and it should be no big deal for you to make the CSS accessible.

JoeMayall
HubSpot Alumni

Hi folks!

 

If you're looking for more information about knowledge base design and layout, including custom HTML/CSS, I encourage you to check out this post from our knowledge base Product manager.

 

Best!

Joe

Ideas Forum Manager

brianserocke
Contributor | Platinum Partner

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.

stevemoss
Member

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.

 

 

Lass
Participant

We would like to use the Knowledge Base as our FAQ and would therefore like to have the same navigation bar available in the KB as on the rest of our site. Having the same footer as the rest of the site would also be nice, but not as important

nutrachamps
Member

Ditto to all of the above. Asking for this for 2 years and not having anything change is unacceptable. We don't want to make our Knowledge base public until it's customizable. Until then, we may have to host somewhere else. 😞 

Michelle44
Member

Hi

How do we find out if an idea is progressing - the idea of this community is great but I havent seen any responses to my post and it seems like a critical idea right now looking at all these other posts.

 

It would be great to hear back about progress.

 

Thanks

Ewa
Member

Agree, we also have some issues with current templates and would like to develop much more than it's currently possible! 

 

ephelps
Member

This would be really great. We have no data on our current FAQS and we aren't able to use the knowledgebase because it looks vastly different than our interface. I'm loosing so much data!

GBrown4
Member

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.