DocumentationAPI Reference

Build and test your theme

Build and test your theme

Use your sponsored Zendesk Support account to build and test your theme. If you haven't built a theme yet, see the resources below for more information.

General resources

For questions and answers, see the Zendesk community.

You can also join the Zendesk Platform Developer Slack channel.

Theme resources

Reviewing your theme

A theme submitted or updated in the Marketplace developer portal undergoes a review process. To help with a smoother review process, here's a few tips and requirements when developing your theme:

  • During development, preview your theme using the Zendesk Command Line Interface (ZCLI) or by uploading the theme to Guide. For more information, see Previewing theme changes locally, Importing a help center theme, and Adding a help center theme to Guide
  • Define the theme's Settings panel and version in the manifest.json file. For more information, see Customizing the Settings panel
  • Check that you have the appropriate IP licensing for the theme
  • The theme should be branded appropriately and custom to the theme. If you are using the Copenhagen theme or another theme as a starting point, make sure that all theme elements such as the default assets, the theme name, and code references reflects the theme being submitted
  • Any images used for theme settings or assets should be a suitable size to ensure good performance
  • Follow templating best practices. For example, asynchronous API calls should only fetch the data that is going to be shown in the UI when it loads, and save the data in local storage for future use
  • Scripts hosted by third parties should be well known libraries. Check using Google’s audit tool https://web.dev/measure/. A list of front-end JavaScript libraries with known security vulnerabilities is shown in Best Practices.
  • HTTPS encryption for all web traffic
  • No script tracking activity on behalf of the partner or anyone that is not the purchaser of the theme
  • No hard coded secrets in the source code
  • Check all theme pages are responsive according to the Google mobile friendly test
  • Check your theme package is valid using the Templating API

Guidelines for JavaScript minification and uglification

During the review process, Zendesk will consider the following points regarding code minification/uglification:

  • Open-source code from well-known libraries can be minified, if provided via well-known CDNs
  • You can provide minified code in the assets folder if you don't expect customers to edit these files. In this case, you need to provide an extra folder called src at the theme package root with unminified files for review. This folder is automatically removed by Zendesk on theme installation, thus not provided to customers
  • The file script.js cannot contain minified/uglified code
  • The theme description of themes with minified JavaScript must disclose which features cannot be customized with a Developer license

Next steps: Create theme branding assets