Admin · Allow about 14 minutes
Before you begin
Owner or Admin. Prepare representative published content and confirm who should approve the visual design. Brand Kit publication applies to every knowledgebase in this workspace. Some appearance, saved-design and Advanced CSS controls are available only in newer deployments. If a named control is absent, use the controls your Brand Kit offers or ask support about availability.
1. Choose a theme for your readers
Open Settings → Brand kit and choose Theme. Compare the available designs against the way people will use the portal: quick answers, a browsable library, or longer reading.
Select a preview knowledgebase and inspect representative pages instead of choosing from the Home page alone.
Use Brand for logo, brand colour, and typeface; Layout for presentation; Welcome for introductory content; and Colours for the available colour roles. All settings exposes the complete controls.
2. Adjust appearance and save a reusable design
In Layout → Site-wide appearance, choose Content spacing, Card treatment, Card corners, Default reading width and Motion. These choices are independent for each theme. Reader width preferences and operating-system reduced motion take priority.
Use Layout → Page backgrounds to adjust Browse, Search, Learning and My work introductions. Use Learning & journeys for cover proportions, crop, step lists and overview blocks. These presentation choices do not change learner requirements or completion records.
Turn on Select to edit above the preview and select a highlighted area to open its controls. Use Edit preview area for keyboard shortcuts; Escape in the preview turns selection off. Turn selection off to test normal navigation.
In Theme → Saved designs, name the current design and choose Save current design. You can keep up to eight designs per theme. Preview applies a saved design to the draft; Restore previous draft undoes that preview. Saving, renaming or deleting a saved design does not publish it.
3. Use Advanced CSS only when needed
Open Advanced → Custom CSS. Use the supported targets, properties and example shown beside the source field. Enable custom CSS to preview valid styling for the selected theme.
Arbitrary CSS, imports, resource URLs, hiding controls and focus or foreground overrides are rejected. Use Colours for accessible text and background pairs. Invalid CSS cannot publish; fix the named error before leaving or reloading because incomplete invalid edits are not durable.
Switch custom CSS off to preserve its source without applying it. Restore published CSS discards source edits. Undo last CSS publish restores the previous source into a draft; review and publish that draft separately.
4. Check the complete Reader experience
Use the page selector to inspect Home, Browse, Learning, My work, Search, and Article where available.
Switch between Desktop and Mobile. Check long titles, category navigation, a long article, search, and learning actions.
Resolve contrast warnings and keep text, links, focus indicators, and controls readable. Check artwork cropping and logo proportions.
Remember that the preview is a draft. Your live Reader stays on the published design while you experiment.
5. Publish the checked design
Choose Review & publish. Check the theme, colour, typeface, and number of affected knowledgebases.
Choose Publish Reader design and wait for the published state. Use Brand Kit actions → Reader portal to inspect the live result.
Check more than one knowledgebase if their content differs significantly. Reader branding does not recolour the Admin or Article Editor shells.
To abandon an unpublished experiment, use Brand Kit actions → Discard changes and confirm Discard draft. Reset Brand Kit is a separate confirmed action that replaces the published Reader design.
Check your result
The selected theme is published across the workspace and its core pages work on desktop and mobile.
If something goes wrong
The preview changed but the live site did not: finish Review & publish → Publish Reader design.
A design works on Home but not on articles: inspect a long representative article and mobile navigation before release.
A draft recovery warning appears: keep the tab open until the draft is safely published or discarded.