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I woke up today with all of my customer forums showing an absolutely horrible new default design that was a mixture of our previously set custom design plus some new  icons, fonts and colors that Freshdesk automatically applied to our site.  The new default design now also includes a prominent advertisement for Freshdesk and I cannot find any way to remove it.


Freshdesk - IMHO this is a major mess. You should not have changed our customer-facing website without at least warning us in advance and ensuring that we could revert or immediately match the design we have been using since we signed up for our service.


How can I fix the following problems:


1.  The original forum icons were clean and neutral in design so they could easily be used with multiple custom page designs.  The new icons are too large and the colors are too bright and loud (orange, bright green, bright blue etc.) with the result that they clash with any subdued corporate style.  Can you please allow us to choose between using the previous icon set or the new set.


2. On the main Forums page, the top of each Category section now has a thick line in bright orange that clashes with our corporate colors.  How can I either change the color of this line or remove it altogether..


3.  The reason we use a sub-domain of our corporate site as the support URL and customize the Freshdesk portal is so that the support portal looks as though it is an integral part of our corporate website and not a third-party platform.  If we are forced to include a Freshdesk advertisement on the login screen and on every page this defeats the primary benefits of customization  Also, as a paying customer, why am I forced to advertise the Freshdesk service. How can I remove the Freshdesk advertisement from the login screen and the bottom of every page?

Completely agree with Richard on this. Even I was shocked to see the new look.... How can you change the customer facing UI unilaterally?? If you think that you have come up with a better UI ( which I think it is not ) this should have been an option that customers who want it could turn it on for their portals.

I too want the old look back for my portal. 

BTW, I tried to customize it to get back the old look... could not find any way to remove the orange lines or change the size of fonts, remove bright new icons, etc.  Also, "Help Desk Software by Freshdesk" used to be a subtle message earlier in small fonts and light colors.. It has become bigger and brighter which I do not like at all.

I think this move has turned out to be a big disaster. Hope you are already in damage control mode and are trying to get us out of the mess you put us in.
Hi Freshdesk team - Would it be possible, please, to roll back the new customization features so we all go back to where we were before you released the upgrade.  This woud lat least protectus from any further damage with our customers while you work out how to deploy the new functionality safely.

Then, perhaps you could release the new customization features in a way that notes for each user what their pre-release design settings are and automatically makes the settings on the new customization functionality match what existed before.  That way, nobody is adversely affected but anybody who wants to can make more detailed changes using the new functionality.

I am sure you don't want to roll backwards but I have to say that we are already meeting strong resistance to Freshdesk from some important customes because they cannot reply to forum posts by email and must manually monitor every individual topic in every forum.  This latest change to the look and feel has already prompted one customer complaint, making this problem very important and very urgent.  Please, you must fix this quickly.

 

Hi Freshdesk,

 

I have to agree with Richard and Rakesh. At least a warning in advance was appropriate. I have found a way to change the collors of the web page in the admin --> Helpdesk rebranding --> customize Portal.

 

The biggest issue I have is that in the solution section, all topics are below each other. This is not very clear!! I also mis the option to search in a specific category, as it was possible before and it was very handy. Now it looks that all the 3-level hierarchy layers are on the same page, and before this was more structured. You need to do something about that! Also as a paying customer, it is not very nice to have advertisement of freshdesk on our page.

 

I agree with Richard, that there should be an option to for the customers to follow a specific category in the forum. This would be a real benefit.

 

I hope you (freshdesk) will do something with our feedback...

 

 



I am a little bit disillusioned, too. I agree with all previous users, that more information in advance would be good. And I have one more problem, that I prepared translation of all phrases to the Czech language a few week ago but this new look doesn't accept it and (moreover) there are about 500 new phrases. And last but not least there are no information in Forums / Announcement about changes which was made! 


PS: But I like (a little) the new design of Home page... ;-)



Freshdesk's CEO and two of their support team have already been in contact with me today.  I am impressed by the speed and obvious sincerity of their response so it is clear that they are taking these comments seriously.

 

I also have to agree. Unfortunately the migration to the new layout has failed with us, so we now only have a partly working solution. We can change colors, but can't change stylesheets at all. Unacceptable.

Hi Guys,


We sent out a notification last week announcing the new theme, but I understand emails are easy to miss. Here are a few good things about the new theme (and why we went with that):

a. The new theme is designed for more flexibility and user friendliness. For example, you might find a neat overview of your latest solution categories and folders right from the home page.

b. This theme is also more SEO friendly. An overview of solutions appears right on the home page, adding to the content juice. 

c. We tried to make the theme more bare-bones so it would be easy for you to customize your own themes without rewriting the whole layout again.


Advanced customization options for your portal

That said, I understand that design is pretty subjective - what looks like a visual poetry to one person might look like a total mess to the other. If you are on the Estate Plan, you might find this Guide to customizing your own FreshThemes useful.


Like Stefan pointed out, you can customize your portal by going to Admin>>Helpdesk Rebranding and clicking on the "Customize Portal" option at the bottom. Here is a quick overview of what you can do at each plan:

At the Sprout and Blossom Plan: You can use the advanced color and font customization options to change the color of each element in your portal and their typefaces.

At the Garden Plan: You can bring in your own stylesheets to override the default CSS and customize the portal to look the way you want. 

At the Estate Plan: You can get down and change the layout of each page, and choose how you want each specific element to appear in your portal.


Getting rid of the "Help Desk Software by Freshdesk" message

If you are on a paid plan, you can remove the "Help Desk Software by Freshdesk" message by opening Admin>> Helpdesk Rebranding >> Customize Portal and clicking on "Save and Publish". You don't have to make any changes here - just hit "Save and Publish" and the footer will be removed.

[Edit: We've now removed the message from all paid accounts by default]

 

Getting back the Old Theme

If you'd like to just go back to the old theme, we'll be sharing the layout and CSS for that in a few hours (our team is now working on bringing the same look of the old theme, without losing some of the cool capabilities we've added in the new one). If you are on the Estate Plan, you can get the old layout and design completely, and if you are on the Garden Plan you will be able to revert to the old styles and look & feel.



I saw the notification and as I am a blossom plan user I appreciate why you wont let me do full CSS optimisation on my site. So I have no problem with what you did,  I just don't like how you have done it. Specifically I don't think you've allowed those of us on the Blossom or Sprout plans quite enough customisation options of the stock theme we are allowed to use.


You new stock theme with my existing logo and colours applied looked absolutely terrible and so I had to completely change the colours I had set and the logo. For instance the font size and boldness of the site title looks fine on your freshdesk site where you use white writing on a black header bar but, it looked absolutely horrible on my site where we had black lettering on a white header. I had to change my colour usage completely to accommodate light on dark to make it look at all reasonable. You need to let us change font sizes and em levels in addition to just the colours.


Also the way you automatically size and position the logo is inconsistent between the Agent view of the portal and the customer view of the portal. I found it impossible to make my existing logo look good on both the agent view and the customer view so I have had to change the logo to a square one like you guys use.You need to fix the automatic size and positioning to work well with different aspect ratio logos or give us the ability to load a different sized logo for each view.


It seems to me that when you designed the new stock theme you only took into account how it would look with your type of colour scheme and logo. 

RE (Rakesh Tikku, Richard Dune): problem with colour of dividing orange lines in home page


In our Blossom version is possible to change this color via Admin/Rebrand/Portal Customization/ and it is color of "Heading divider & Input focus glow"


JJ



Guys,


If you are still revving for the previous theme in your Freshdesk Customer Portal here's some good news for you. We've designed a FreshTheme (called Vintage) that looks like the old portal, feels like the old portal, but has all the layout and SEO goodies that we now have. 


If you are on the Estate Plan, you can go ahead and use this theme to completely modify your portal - pages, styles, design et al, just like before. Download the Vintage FreshThemes zip file (attached), and follow the instructions here to get the old style back.


If you are on the Garden Plan, you will not be able to modify the layout of your customer portal which means you will not be able to change "What comes where", but you can still change the styles and define "What it should look like" with the stylesheet file attached. 


Here's what you should do to get the new theme up and running:

Open up Admin >> Helpdesk Rebranding; click on "Customize Portal"

1. If you are on the Garden Plan, download the "Stylesheet.txt" file and pase its contents inside the text box under the Stylesheet tab

2. If you are on the Estate Plan, download the "VintageFreshTheme.zip" file and follow the instructions here.


Make sure you hit Preview and check if everything looks ok, before you publish the theme to your customers. Hope this theme breaks the nostalgia :D

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