Getting Started

Firstly you should copy an existing theme from the theme directory 'assets/themes', the Cappuccino or Innocent theme will give you a good base to work from. Once you have your new theme directory, rename it to the name you want for the theme (for example, 'foobar').

File Structure

Within your new theme directory, there should be various HTML, CSS and XML files which you will need to edit to create your theme. An explination of these files is below:

XML Files

details.xml

Contains various textual details of the theme, such as Author, Description, Title and Name.

sectors.xml

Describes what sectors the theme has. Each sector can have a human readable description.

HTML Files

main_template.html

The main template/page structure of your theme. We highly suggest you use HTML 4.01 Strict.

module_wrap.html

Every module that is attached to a sector gets 'wrapped' in this file, and then attached to the sector within the main_template.html file.

CSS Files

While you can name your CSS files anything you want, we'd suggest sticking to the following structure:

base.css

Contains styles for common elements, such as textboxes, tables, paragraphs, captcha, pagination etc.

module.css

Specific rules to style a certain modules output.

screen.css

CSS used for the 'screen' media type, should contain everything to do with styling your template/design.

Theme Details

The 'details.xml' file now needs to be edited to reflect the changes you require. An explination of the elements that you need to edit is below.

name

The 'clean name' of the Title (see below), should consist of alphanumeric chars, lower case and spaces converted to underscores. e.g; 'foobar'.

title

Title of the theme, such as 'Foo Bar'.

author

The author of the theme.

description

A short description of the theme.