Getting Started with a Custom HTML Template

Partial Name

Purpose

default.hbs

This is the default template that includes the main layout of the HTML. It's maintained by us here at HelpDocs and isn't user editable. This is where we insert metadata for SEO, our required JavaScript libraries, add your integrations, etc.

header.hbs

You should add your header bar and navigation in here. This appears on every page of your knowledge base. Depending on how you wanna structure your template, this might also be the right place for your search bar and maybe some secondary navigation like a sidebar. If you need to register inline partials for use in all templates, here's a good place to do that too.

footer.hbs

This gets added after your main content (e.g. after the category or article that's being displayed). You can use this to mirror the footer on your main website, or add any scripts to your site that you want before the closing </body> tag.

home.hbs

The entry point of your knowledge base. This is where you display all your categories, so users can easily navigate to a category or article.

category.hbs

Display a single category and all its articles.

article.hbs

Display a single article.

search.hbs

Display search results. Custom templates ship with instant search as standard, but this page is shown when someone hits return in the search bar regardless.

Data

Example

Available in Partial(s)

categories

[Category]

home.hbs

category

{
  category_id: String,
  parent_category_id: String,
  slug: String,
  title: String,
  description: String,
  url: String,
  relative_url: String,
  icon: String,
  is_featured: Boolean,
  created_at: Date,
  updated_at: Date,
  articles: [Article],
  authors: [Author]
  meta: {
    num_authors: Number,
    num_articles: Number,
  }
}

category.hbs, article.hbs

article

{
  article_id: String,
  category_id: String,
  user_id: String,
  author: {
    profile_image: String,
    email: String,
    name: String,
  },
  slug: String,
  title: String,
  description: String,
  url: String,
  relative_url: String,
  short_version: String,
  icon: String,
  body: String,
  is_published: Boolean,
  is_private: Boolean,
  is_featured: Boolean,
  show_toc: Boolean,
  created_at: Date,
  updated_at: Date,
  tags: [String]
}

The full article object is available in article.hbs. In other partials, some fields (notably body) may be missing.

search_term

String

search.hbs

meta

{
  canonical: String,
  home_path: String,
  sidebar_categories: [Category],
  related_articles: [Article],
  top_articles: [Article],
  language_code: String,
  languages: [
    {
      code: String,
      name: String,
    },
    ...
  ],
  default_language_code: String,
  account_id: String,
  is_home_page: Boolean,
}

meta is available on all partials, but some of its attributes may not be available on some partials. Notably top_articles is only available in home.hbs and related_articles is only available in article.hbs.

user

{
  user_id: String,
  name: String,
  email: String,
  permission_groups: [String],
}

All partials. If there's no logged in user this will be empty.