Header, Footer and Share Buttons on Support Pages
Core Support draws its docs, changelog and support portal pages without your theme. That keeps them fast and clean, but it also drops your site’s navigation. A customer reading a doc has no obvious way back to your pricing page or your contact form unless you put one there.
Core Support → Settings → Header and footer gives each of those page types its own header and footer, and adds share buttons to docs and changelogs. The defaults match how these pages looked before the settings existed, so nothing changes until you edit them.
Which Pages These Settings Cover
The tab has a card for each page type:
- Docs pages: the docs home, every collection and every doc.
- Changelog pages: the changelog index, each product’s changelog and each release.
- Roadmap pages: the roadmap index and each roadmap, while the Roadmaps module is on.
- Support portal: the support page Core Support set up.
Blocks you place on your own pages keep your theme’s header and footer, so these settings don’t touch them. The tab saves as one form, so any card’s Save button saves every card. View page opens that page.
The Other plugins on docs pages card, on Settings → Docs, decides which plugin scripts and styles load on docs. Docs Pages, Your Theme and Other Plugins covers it.
Header Settings
- Show the logo: the logo set under Branding. On by default.
- Show the site name: the brand name set under Branding. On by default. When it’s off, the name stays in the page for screen readers.
- Label: a small tag beside the name. Default “Docs” on docs pages, “Changelog” on changelog pages and empty on the support portal. Up to 30 characters. Leave it blank to hide it.
- Show the search box: docs pages only, on by default. Visitors can still press
/to search the docs when it’s hidden. - Header links: links and buttons on the right of the header, in the order you list them.
When the logo, the name and the label are all off, the left side stays empty and the links keep their place on the right. Brand the Help Desk is where the logo and name themselves are set.
Add Header Links and Buttons
Each header link has a label, an address and a style. You can add rows with Add a link, or type straight into the text box, one link per line:
Pricing | /pricing/ | link
Contact support | {support} | button
Buy now | https://example.com/checkout/ | primary- Style: Link, Button or Primary button (
link,buttonorprimaryin the text box). A missing or unknown style becomes a plain link. - Limits: up to 8 links per page type, labels up to 40 characters and addresses up to 300.
The defaults for each page type are:
- Docs pages: Contact support (
{support}, button) and Website ({home}, link) - Changelog pages: Docs (
{docs}, link), Website ({home}, link) and Contact support ({support}, button) - Support portal: Back to website (
{home}, button)
On tablets, plain links move into a menu and buttons stay in the header. On phones, a header with more than one link or button shows only the menu, while a single button stays as it is.
Addresses You Can Use
- a full address, such as
https://example.com/pricing/ - a path on this site, such as
/pricing/ - a
mailto:ortel:address, such asmailto:support@example.com - an anchor, such as
#pricing - a Core Support page, written in braces
The address field suggests the Core Support pages as you type:
{home}: your website’s home page{docs}: the docs home{changelogs}: the changelog index{support}: the support portal{privacy}: the privacy policy page
You can add more of the path after a page, so {docs}my-plugin/ points to that address under the docs home. A link to a page with nothing to show yet is left out on its own. That covers {docs} before your first docs collection, {changelogs} before your first published changelog and {privacy} while no privacy policy page is published.
Footer Settings
- Show the footer: on by default.
- Footer text: plain text, empty by default, up to 200 characters.
{year}becomes the current year and{site}becomes the brand name, so© {year} {site}stays current on its own. - Show the footer credit: the footer credit set under Branding. On by default.
- Footer links: plain links, one per line as
Label | address. DefaultPrivacy policy | {privacy}. The same address rules and the 8-link limit apply, and footer links have no style.
When there’s no text, no credit and no links to show, the page has no footer at all.
Footer Widgets
For more than a line of text and a few links, Core Support adds 3 widget areas under Appearance → Widgets:
- Core Support footer, column 1
- Core Support footer, column 2
- Core Support footer, column 3
Widgets in them show above the footer on every docs, changelog, roadmap and support portal page. Only columns with widgets take up space, and they share the width between them, so one column of widgets runs full width and 3 sit side by side. On a phone they stack.
- Go to Appearance → Widgets.
- Add blocks or widgets to one or more of the Core Support footer columns.
- Choose Update.
A column of product links, one of help links and a short newsletter sign-up is a common shape. The widget areas show up under Appearance → Widgets even on a block theme, because Core Support registers them.
Header and Footer Link Colors
Header and footer links use the text colors of light and dark mode by default, so they read well on either background without picking up the accent color. Footer links get a soft underline that turns solid on hover.
- Go to Core Support → Settings → Header and footer.
- In the Header and footer link colors card, choose a Header link color and a Footer link color.
- For Custom colors, set Custom color in light mode and Custom color in dark mode for that part.
- Choose Save.
Each part has 3 choices:
- Contrast: the default. Header links are the muted gray and footer links the body text color of each mode, and both turn to the heading color on hover.
- Accent color from Branding: the accent, in the lighter shade Core Support uses on dark backgrounds.
- Custom colors: one color for light mode and one for dark mode. Hover keeps the same color.
Buttons in the header keep the accent color whatever you choose here. The setting covers the footer bar and the footer widget columns, on every docs, changelog, roadmap and support portal page.
Share Buttons on Docs and Changelogs
The Docs pages and Changelog pages cards each have a Sharing section with a Share buttons list. The support portal has none.
- Go to Core Support → Settings → Header and footer.
- In the Docs pages card, tick the networks under Sharing.
- Choose Save.
- Repeat in the Changelog pages card if you want buttons there too.
The networks show in this order:
- X
- Bluesky
- Threads
- Copy link
How the buttons behave:
- None are ticked by default, so no buttons show until you choose some.
- On docs, the buttons sit under each doc and share its address and title.
- On changelogs, they sit beside each product’s changelog and share its address with the title “{Product} changelog”.
- Each one is a plain link to that network’s share page, opened in a new tab. No scripts or tracking from the networks load on your pages.
- Email opens the visitor’s mail app with the title as the subject and the address in the body.
- Copy link copies the address and confirms with “Link copied”.
Show the WordPress Admin Bar
These pages leave out the WordPress admin bar by default, whoever is signed in. To bring it back, turn on Show the admin bar in the Admin bar card on the same tab and choose Save.
The setting covers docs, changelog, roadmap and support portal pages. People who see the admin bar elsewhere on your site then see it here too, and visitors who aren’t signed in never do.
For Developers
The core_support_header_links and core_support_footer_links filters change a page’s links before they’re drawn. Each receives the list of links (label, url, style) and the page type: docs, changelogs or portal. Footer links are always drawn as plain links, whatever style a filter gives them. The Hooks and Filters Reference lists the rest.