ElkArte Community

Elk Development => Theme development => Topic started by: Allan on September 10, 2014, 08:57:22 pm

Title: Creating theme
Post by: Allan on September 10, 2014, 08:57:22 pm
When creating a theme do you always have to create a variant of a default theme.
I just got done making a theme and it was a variant of _light so some of the css changes had to be done in _light css and the index css. I was thinking I was doing something wrong.
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: CrimeS on September 11, 2014, 03:12:01 am
Aa emanuele or spuds said one time. The variant gives the look and the other CSS is like a skeleton (actually can't remember how it went). You will be editing both of them to achieve what you want.
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: Allan on September 11, 2014, 07:49:21 am
I was thinking that would be the case, Thank you.
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: IchBin on September 11, 2014, 11:10:13 pm
If it were me, I would just include my own CSS file, and put all customization's I make into that file. This way, you don't have to find the things you need, and edit them. You just override the styles with your own, and have them all organized into your own file. But that's just me. :)  This might not be so handy with the minimizing feature that Elk has to make the JS/CSS footprint lighter.

No you don't have to create a variant. You can of course create a completely custom theme. As long as you have the necessary template_* functions.
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: emanuele on September 12, 2014, 04:46:07 am
What I did for the theme I'm killing (http://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=1946.0) (lol) (and that is a kind of answer for @meetdilip as well on the topic here (http://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=1984.0)), is:
create a new theme with all the templates (for what I'm doing there this is the most sensible way because I'm pretty sure I have to change all of them),
erase all the variants (I wanted to create just a "plain" theme)
[1],
cleaned up completely index.css,
then I started from the top of the board index heading to the bottom adding classes and changing the html.
Darn, every time I speak about themes, color, and so on I always think about the idea of "modularity" of themes' color and structure....
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: meetdilip on September 12, 2014, 06:06:12 am
I know it is a bit over stretching you at the moment. But a bare bone / skeleton theme on which amateur theme maker can work will be good.
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: CrimeS on September 12, 2014, 06:26:32 am
I was thinking about preparing a theme like that, just pure with no variants and simple code, but time is a killer :)
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: Allan on September 12, 2014, 07:49:21 am
Thanks all for the input, things to think about for the next one.
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: meetdilip on September 12, 2014, 10:02:45 pm
@emanuele @Spuds

Need your help here (http://adminforum.in/index.php?/topic/148-guide-how-to-make-a-bootstrap-3-theme-from-scratch-simple-method/)
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: emanuele on September 16, 2014, 03:17:32 am
heh... my help on themes matters is not very helpful... lol

Anyway, the best answer I can give you about using bootstrap is the one one I posted just above, I don't have a better one.
Using bootstrap basically means entirely rewrite (or at least re-organize) the entire theme using the classes and the markup "preferred" by bootstrap...
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: meetdilip on September 16, 2014, 03:48:43 am
Is it possible to create a framework theme ? That is what they asked when I asked for help from Bootstrap guys. 
Title: Re: Creating theme
Post by: emanuele on September 16, 2014, 06:14:05 am
Well, a bootstrap-based theme is what I'm kind of doing in the other topic (I have to clean up the code and push it to a repository).
Yes, it's possible. It's a long work.