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
Ashleymccu
Participant

I agree with you both. I find it difficult to use anchors and link articles to each other (not really possible). 

Ashleymccu
Participant

 I would like to see 'last updated on Month, Day, Year,' displayed on the articles themselves. This informaiton is only available on the articles dashboard and doesn't allow readers to know how up to date KB articles are on a given topic. 

AstridvanDam
Contributor

It would be of great value if we could add more styling to our KB articles. For example, add a cell colour in a table, adjust the table border to make them think, adjust text colour, etc.

FatiiUnrein
Member | Diamond Partner

This is important! 

karlyfield
Member

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.

swooddesign
Member

I just launched HubSpot Service and the Knowledge Base recently and I am so upset at the lack of customization. I can't even change the fonts or anything... looks completely different than the rest of my website 👎

andreorfgen
Member

I need: Website Header and Footer html

Bildschirmfoto 2021-04-07 um 19.48.55.png

duncanparsons
Participant

Thank you so much for this post!

 

Coming to HS from a WordPress site where we had all our support pages as part of our main sales site, those pages remained as part of the sales site in the transfer. Which has been fine for the last 18months, but we're now looking att he additional user self-service options available via widgets and the additional reporting available using the KnowledgeBase functionality.

 

It is going to require a major rework of many of our pages as we make extensive use of accordia [ 😉 ] and additional CSS for highlighting certain terms outside of just Bold/Italic/etc. From my history as a programmer, when updating pages I almost exclusively use the HTML editor to get the items rendering as wanted (table layouts, CSS classes for keyword/feature rendering and bullet points, etc). I'm also a little disappointed that the anchor insertion dialog doesn't allow for the rel="help" attribute to help crawlers understand the purpose of a link in a body of text - one would have thought that a KnowledgeBase would have this implemented! I use it frequently for links to glossaries, etc.

The following paragraph has been highlighted as a practical, simple outline of how a requested feature could be implemented (should a dev manager wish to give it the once over..!)

Being able to use local CSS classes would be fantastic. It could be implemented fairly simply (I'm not advocating "It's just a button, isn't it.." - I'm a dev, I understand the work involved..). A table where a company can specify as class name and the associated text can be implemtned in the KB settings, and parsed so that only correct CSS can be used. The locally defined classes can then be made available in a dropdown box similar to the Hx/Paragraph/Blockquote/etc one, and selected text would be enclosed with a <span class="xyz"></span> on render. Extending the RTF editor wouldn't be too much of an issue - it's already been solved in the main site editing facilities.

This thread is a very positive move - thank you for creating it, Snaedis! I hope it has already generated items on the devs schedule of works. I look forward to seeing this stuff implemented, especially the accordion functionality and better control over the rendering, whether by direct HTML editing or via a more flexible tagging dropdown.

kimbob
Member

I would like to see a place where we can put custom content and things like announcements on the landing page. For example, "Drop in to our Office Hours every Friday at noon" or "New features rolling out for xxxx on DATE."

Jarno
Member

Yes! I could really use this, in my current project this is almost the most important part of the whole site... Hope this feature gets added real soon!

adamlfoster
Member | Partner

Thanks Snaedis. I am about to migrate a client away from the helpdesk for the following reasons:

 

Font size can't be changed/incresaed from 14px.

Header bar can't be changed from white to match there branding. 

 

Both should be simple fixes that hopefully can be addressed

eyeson
Participant

100%! I was looking everywhere, cause I thought it must be changeable anywhere. If only it was light grey instead of light blue at least. 

CandiceCote
Member

While designing our knowledge base homepage, I have come up with a list of items that would help us to improve the appearance of the Homepage design.  

 

  • Company Logo (Header /Footer) –
    • ability to drag and resize the logo within the preview pane or allow to make logo larger than 65pxW by 50pxH
    • be able to choose placement of logo on page
  • Header / Footer Text
    • ability to move the text in the header section.  
      • Either make it available to select right / left / center aligned or
      • Allow users to drag and move text box. 
        • This option would work best since the alignment on the page seems to be off, some text box items are higher than others in the footer section

Footer.png

 

  • Have the ability to change the font size for items in the header.
  • Header Background
    • If an image is loaded for the header background allow users to be able to resize within preview pane to make fit.  Stretch and Tile options are not enough to make an image work correctly in this space. 
  • Header / Footer
    • Ability to resize the height of the header and footer sections that are displayed on the homepage.  There is alot of wasted space on the inital homepage screen in the header section. 
  • Categories
    • Ability to resize the category image loaded.
    • When using the Tiles template ability to move the tiles.
      • For example, if I only have two tiles I want them to be centered under the search bar, not both left aligned.
AstridvanDam
Contributor

This would be very necessary to get more styling possibilities within the knowledge base articles.

ArjunT
Member | Diamond Partner

Hi HubSpot,

We need the ability to fully customise the appearance of the Knowledge Base by editing the CSS and HTML.


YiRui_Chua
HubSpot Employee

Hi team,

 

commenting for a customer here.

Been bout a year, can we have an update? thanks!

TASuccess
Member

Good day Hubspot community,

 

As others have expressed, the ability to edit the KB templates is absolutely critical for a variety of reasons.

 

Please allow some basic editing options (e.g. CSS) so we can start to achieve what needs to be updated.

 

Thank you again!

rasivert
Member

Yes, this is would be an important upgrade - please consider it since so many customers want the functionality.

dorecchio
Contributor | Platinum Partner

Hi Snadeis,

 

Because Hubspot has not provided a timeline for this activity, we started the design process to move a client knowledge base from the service platform into a blog instance to do the same. The client believes that because the knowledge base does not have the look and feel of the main website (and other items in my previous reply) they must move their KB over. Thy are investing $ in design fees and then migration of 100 english and 100 spanish language articles. It is a shame that the lack of response by Hubspot causes this action by the client. 

 

- Dave Orecchio

TashaDalBianco
Contributor | Platinum Partner

100% this is needed 🙂