Customizing your API Portal

How to adjust the look&feel of your portal.

The Frends API Portal provides extensive customization options that allow you to create a branded, professional developer experience that aligns with your organization's identity. From visual appearance to email communications and custom domains, you can tailor every aspect of the portal to match your brand and meet your specific requirements.

Look & Feel Configuration

The Look & Feel settings give you comprehensive control over the visual appearance of your API Portal. These settings allow you to transform the default portal interface into a branded experience that feels like a natural extension of your own digital properties.

You can start by customizing the core visual elements such as your organization's logo, which appears prominently throughout the portal. Upload your logo in the appropriate format and size to ensure it displays crisply on all devices. The portal also allows you to customize color schemes to match your brand guidelines. Configure primary colors, accent colors, background colors, and text colors to create a cohesive visual experience that aligns with your corporate identity.

Beyond logos and colors, you can customize various text elements throughout the portal. This includes headings, welcome messages, footer text, and other static content that appears on portal pages. These customization options let you set the right tone for your developer community and provide information specific to your use case.

Images and graphics can also be customized to create a more engaging visual experience. Upload hero images, background graphics, or other visual elements that help communicate your brand and make the portal more visually appealing to your users.

Advanced Styling with Custom CSS

For organizations that need even more control over the portal's appearance, the API Portal supports custom CSS. This powerful feature allows you to override default styles and create highly customized visual experiences that go beyond the standard configuration options.

With custom CSS, you can fine-tune spacing, typography, layout, and virtually any other visual aspect of the portal. This is particularly useful if you have strict brand guidelines that require specific fonts, precise color values, or unique layout patterns. Your design team can craft CSS rules that transform the portal to match your exact specifications.

The portal also supports custom HTML head tags, which allows you to add additional functionality or integrations to your portal. You can include analytics tracking codes, custom fonts from services like Google Fonts or Adobe Fonts, meta tags for social media sharing, or any other elements that need to be injected into the page head. This flexibility ensures that your API Portal can integrate seamlessly with your broader digital ecosystem and tracking infrastructure.

Email Template Customization

Communication with your API Portal users happens through automated emails for various events such as account verification, access request notifications, invitation emails, and password resets. The API Portal allows you to customize these email templates to ensure consistent branding and messaging across all user communications.

Through the email template configuration, you can modify the text, styling, and structure of each type of email the portal sends. This ensures that users receive communications that feel like they're coming directly from your organization rather than from a generic system. You can adjust the tone and voice of the messages to match your brand personality, whether that's formal and professional or friendly and approachable.

Customizing email templates also allows you to include additional information that might be relevant to your users, such as links to your support resources, contact information for your developer relations team, or reminders about your API usage policies. Well-crafted email communications improve the overall user experience and help set clear expectations for how users should interact with your APIs.

Custom Domain Configuration

While the API Portal works perfectly well with its default URL, many organizations prefer to host their portal on a custom domain that reflects their brand. A custom domain like developers.yourcompany.com or api.yourcompany.com creates a more professional impression and makes the portal feel like an integral part of your digital presence rather than an external service.

To configure a custom domain for your API Portal, you'll need to work with Frends support to complete the technical setup. The process begins with obtaining an SSL certificate for your desired domain. This certificate ensures that your API Portal remains secure with HTTPS encryption, which is essential for protecting user credentials and API tokens.

Once you have your SSL certificate, provide it to Frends along with your desired domain name. The Frends team will configure the necessary domain routing to point your custom domain to your API Portal instance. This process typically involves updating DNS records and configuring the certificate on the portal infrastructure.

After the technical configuration is complete, your API Portal will be accessible at your custom domain. All portal links, emails, and references will automatically use your custom domain, creating a seamless branded experience. Users accessing your portal will see your domain in the browser address bar, reinforcing that they're interacting with your organization's official developer portal.

Best Practices

When customizing your API Portal, following a few best practices will help you create a polished, professional developer experience that serves your users well and remains maintainable over time.

Planning Your Customization

Start by gathering all your brand assets including logos, color codes from your brand guidelines, and any specific fonts or visual elements you want to incorporate. Consider involving your design team early in the customization process, especially if you plan to use custom CSS, to ensure the portal maintains good usability and accessibility standards.

For email templates, review the user journey and think about what information users need at each stage. Crafting these messages thoughtfully improves the overall experience and reduces confusion. If you're planning to use a custom domain, coordinate with your IT and security teams early in the process for certificate procurement and DNS configuration.

Maintaining Brand Consistency

Ensure your API Portal remains consistent with your other digital properties by carrying through your colors, fonts, and visual patterns. This helps users feel confident they're interacting with your official resources. However, remember that developer portals benefit from a cleaner, more focused design that prioritizes readability and ease of navigation. Find the right balance between brand consistency and functional design that serves your developer audience, and regularly review your customizations as your brand evolves or as you receive user feedback.