Themes, versions, and Copenhagen

Ref: C17 · Track: Knowledge Base Admin · Time to complete: ~7 min

Why this matters

Your help center's look-and-feel is controlled by a theme — HTML/CSS/JS that Zendesk calls "Guide theme". Zendesk ships one out-of-the-box (Copenhagen), and you can customise it, fork it, or replace it. Done well, the theme is the invisible glue between content and brand.

What a theme is

A theme is a set of: - Templates (.hbs files) — Handlebars templates that render articles, sections, search, home page, etc. - CSS — styles. - JavaScript — interactivity. - Assets — logo, icons, fonts. - Manifest — theme metadata and settings.

Zendesk compiles them into the live help center.

Copenhagen — the default

Copenhagen is Zendesk's default theme. It's open-source, mobile-responsive, well-maintained, and a sensible starting point for most help centers.

Use Copenhagen as-is if: - You're launching quickly. - You don't have design/dev resources. - Your brand is flexible enough for Copenhagen's clean defaults.

Copenhagen updates with Zendesk releases. You can choose to pull updates in or stay on an older version.

Customising Copenhagen — three paths

1. Settings-only (no code)

Guide admin → Customize design → Settings: - Change primary colour, brand colour, fonts, header image, home page content. - Toggle features (search bar, categories display, etc.).

This covers most brand-alignment needs and requires no code knowledge.

2. Copy + edit

Clone Copenhagen into a new theme: 1. Guide admin → Themes → Copenhagen → Copy. 2. Rename the copy ("Acme Theme v1"). 3. Edit the copy — settings and/or code. 4. Leave the original Copenhagen alone.

Always edit a copy. That way you can always revert to pristine Copenhagen or re-fork against its latest version.

3. Full custom

Build a theme from scratch or heavily modify a copy. Needs web development skill. You can upload a ZIP of the theme files.

Theme versions

Zendesk keeps version history for each theme: - Every publish creates a version. - You can see previous versions and revert. - Useful when a deploy breaks something — roll back immediately.

In the Themes admin, each theme shows its version history with publish timestamps.

The preview-and-publish flow

Themes have their own staging: 1. Edit the theme. 2. Preview — see changes on the help center as you'd see them live, without end users seeing anything. 3. When happy, Publish the theme. 4. End users now see the new theme. Old version is retained and revertible.

You can also set a theme to live on a specific brand (see C03 multi-brand).

Brand variations

If you have multi-brand Guide (see C03), each brand can have its own active theme. Theme-per-brand is common when different product lines have different visual identities.

What customisation is worth doing

In order of leverage (biggest impact first):

1. Header + logo + colours — instant brand alignment.
2. Home page structure — category tiles, search positioning, featured articles. Customers land here — make it work.
3. Article page layout — table of contents, related articles block, feedback widget.
4. Search results page — a good search page reduces tickets massively.
5. Typography + spacing polish — matters but least urgent.

Gotchas

• Theme updates from Zendesk don't auto-apply. If you're on a copy of Copenhagen, you have to manually re-apply updates. Zendesk posts a release note each time.
• Broken JS/CSS breaks the entire help center. Preview thoroughly before publishing.
• Cache. Theme changes may take minutes to propagate to all users.
• Custom themes vs agent workspace. Themes only affect the customer-facing help center, not the agent interface.
• Accessibility. Copenhagen ships accessible by default. Custom themes often regress — audit for contrast, ARIA, keyboard nav.

A common mistake

Teams spend weeks polishing a theme and only weeks later realise content structure is the real bottleneck. Content first, theme second. A great theme over 12 badly organised articles still serves badly.

Quick check — have you got this?

• Should you edit Copenhagen directly?
• How do you revert a theme change?
• Your multi-brand setup has two brands — can they use different themes?

Related articles

• C03 — Brand switching in Guide
• C04 — Preview modes before publishing
• C20 — Global KB settings: require sign-in, unsafe content, GA