New in Rise 360: More Course Customization with Themes
Jul 19, 2022
I’m so excited to share our latest release with you. Today, we shipped a huge update to Rise 360 that gives you more creative ways to customize the look and feel of your projects. Rise 360 now includes a variety of scroll-stopping themes—all created by award-winning designers—with more themes coming soon. Apply themes in just a few clicks, or, for that extra-personalized touch, we’ve added the option to customize many theme elements.
The possibilities are endless, so let’s take a closer look at all the latest Rise 360 goodness.
New Themes
Rise 360 has always been a great option for quickly creating beautiful, responsive courses. And with the addition of Rise 360 themes, you’ve got brand-new ways to add your own unique spin to projects.
Here’s a quick rundown of each theme:
- Rise—our original theme—is modern and clean-lined. It’s a tried-and-true design choice that never goes out of style.
- Apex makes a bold, contemporary statement with striking, angular flourishes.
- Horizon is a great choice when your project needs a design that’s elegant, sharp, and stylish.
You can see all three styles in the image below.
And these stunning new themes are just the beginning. We’ve got even more theme designs in development.
New Theme Customization
Before, Rise 360 theme customization options were found under the Settings menu. Now, we’ve pulled theme settings into a new Theme menu, as you can see below.
|
BEFORE
|
AFTER
|
This change streamlines course creation by nesting all of the theme customization options in one spot. Under the new Theme menu, you’ll click to choose your desired theme and then click Save to apply it to your project. It’s as easy as that.
These striking themes were designed to be used as is to simplify and speed the course creation process. But for that extra-personalized look and feel, we’ve added more options to customize elements like cover page layout, navigation type, lesson headers, accent colors, font pairings, button styles, and more. With so many flexible options, you can style your theme to better meet your learners’ needs and easily create more cohesive, branded learning experiences.
To give you an idea of how these new themes can be customized, explore the following examples. We applied each theme to the same course content—and we customized each version with unique colors, navigation, and lesson header styles.
|
|
|
|
What’s your favorite combination? Leave me a comment below.
Summing It Up
The new Rise 360 themes feature opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And we’re just getting started. There are more stylish theme designs in the works and we’re making progress on giving you the ability to create your own custom themes as well. We’re excited to continue delivering features that empower you to create eye-catching, unique learning experiences in record time.
Want to try out Rise 360 themes for yourself? Head over to your Rise 360 dashboard and start with a new course, a course template, or any existing Rise 360 project. Don’t have Rise 360? Start your free 30-day trial of Articulate 360 now.
Be sure to keep an eye on our Articulate 360 feature road map and the What’s New page to stay up-to-date on what we’re working on.
133 Replies
I'm sorry Crystal but this is completely unacceptable.
As suggested so many times over the years, ensuring access amongst team members is vital - for when people are off sick, away or leave.
Am I now expected to ask my team to now change 10 users per lesson from manager to collaborator for 7,000 lessons?
After this update, I don't have access to most settings anymore, unless I'm the owner. However, in our team, we share all the lessons with each other, and everyone needs to have access to all the settings. So now we have a huge problem. We really need a solution ASAP! Thanks!
Thank you again, folks, for your honest feedback. We've made changes to the cover image behavior that was released with the new Theme features.
Course cards on your dashboard will reflect the option you've selected for your cover page layout. We've also removed the cover image from the outline when editing your course.
This means that if you've selected an option without an image, you won't see any cover image we've suggested on your course cards. I hope this helps, and we'll keep you posted on any changes to collaborators' permissions.
Please let us know how the Theme features are working out for you!
Taking away navigation options from course managers is really an issue. If only one person can be the owner, then only that one person can manage that. A problem in team-based organizations.
Echoing what others have already posted regarding removing Theme settings from Course Managers. This presents a real issue for organizations that have delegated course development to the manager role. Please explain Articulate' s thinking on this change which - as mentioned by others - creates an immediate workflow problem for orgs using this model. Please consider resolving as soon as possible.
Now located under Themes, Navigation
This post was removed by the author
This post was removed by the author
I also want to voice my frustration that Course Managers cannot access the new Themes feature. This does not work for collaboration. As others have said, everyone on our team needs to be able to access the theme settings for all the courses we share with one another.
Thank you everyone for your honest feedback! We just released a fix to allow course managers to also edit Themes!
Note: Edits you make in the theme or settings menus can potentially override another user’s. Make sure to coordinate with your team so that you’re not modifying a course simultaneously.
Please let us know how else the new Theme features are working out for you!
As others have stated above, limiting the Theme setting to the course owner is very restrictive. We like may others have multiple people working on our course library and will be reviewing themes for all our course using the new settings. Please make a change to have all course managers and collaborators to be able to make changes to theme settings. This restriction makes absolutely no sense at all. Thanks
gee that was quick - haha - added my post them when I saved it the thread was updated with the fix - great work!
Hi Still the page level Theme is not implemented to the latest release , do we have any update if the page level themes like black theme option can be release soon?.
It looks like the "Details" button that was at the top next to the Start button is missing in this new version. Was it removed? Gone for good? There is nothing about this in the release notes.
Hey there, Nejc. Yes, the details button has been removed from the course cover page.
Your details text appears front-and-center on your main page, making it easy for learners to read more about your content. You can even apply and preview different themes to see how the details are displayed with a different layout!
Themes takes up so much real estate space on the landing page. Is there a way to change the size to the way it was in the previous version?
It's under Theme now. Click Navigation and you will see it.
I like this update, but am a little disappointed in the customization options.
1. I was so excited for the Lesson Headers with the image option, but then was really disappointed when the image applied is the same for all lessons. For now, I will continue to use "Text on image block", as I can customize it per lesson.
2. Can't mix and match theme options. I like the Rise sidebar the most of the 3 themes and I like the Apex buttons better for the navigation. I can't have both and wish I had more choice when customizing.
I hope you will consider adding these options. Thanks!
I would love a cancel button. I changed a theme and immediately wanted to cancel it (from Apex back to Rise). When I went to "change theme" and then "Rise", it wasn't the same version of Rise as before. Sometimes we want to look at something and change it back immediately. This has been a pain.
Is there a way I could turn off the new theme updates? The new resolution for the banners crop my existing banners.
Hi there, Lisa! Thanks so much for checking out the Themes feature, and I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Can you share a screenshot of the landing page that is taking up too much space?
If you use the Standard Rise theme, you course cover page should appear the same as it did before. You can find this option by clicking Theme > Change theme.
Let me know if that's not what you had in mind!
Hey Austin! It sounds like you still need a feature that will allow you to use a different header image on each lesson. Using a "Text on image block" is a smart alternative in the meantime!
For your second question about using the Apex theme + a sidebar, you should be able to combine those two options! Here's a sample course where I applied the Apex theme with a sidebar.
If that's not what you had envisioned, please share a screenshot or two of the settings you want to combine. Thanks!
Hello! I wanted to provide feedback regarding accessibility options with theming. I was a little surprised to see that some of the default color options are not considered accessible to all. For example, the orange will never pass an accessibility test. In fact, several of them don't. I realize you can customize with your own colors but I think maybe the default offerings should be revisited to ensure the color combinations are equally accessible to all learners. Thanks!
Hi Sonja! I'm sorry you've hit a roadblock here. I recorded this short video for you (1:26) to demonstrate how you can go back to the original Rise 360 cover page layout after trying out a different theme.
The key is to use the Rise Standard layout with a Left or Left overlay cover page layout. Please let me know if this helps you!
Hi Lorein!
While there isn't a way to turn off the Themes feature, you can continue to use the original cover page layout that you're accustomed to in Rise 360.
Simply use the use the Standard Rise theme, plus the Left overlay cover layout. Doing this should ensure your cover images aren't cropped differently.
Let me know if you're seeing something else from your side when you try this combination!