How to create a theme: Part 1: CSS / Design ================================================================================ 1. Copy this "default" theme folder and rename it to your new theme name. 2. Open the "about.php" file and edit the information to reflect your theme. Be sure to change the array key like this: $ThemeInfo['YourThemeNameHere']. 3. Create a "design" subfolder and copy /applications/dashboard/design/style.css and /applications/vanilla/design/vanilla.css into it. 4. Any background images you want to continue using (like the star png images for bookmarking) should be copied along with their respective stylesheets. 5. Go to your Dashboard, Themes, and apply your new theme. 6. Edit the copied CSS files to look however you wish! Other things you should know: + All non-forum pages should be edited in the global "style.css" file. + If you want to edit the look & feel of the administrative screens, also copy /applications/dashboard/design/admin.css in step 3. Similarly, you can copy other CSS files like /applications/vanilla/design/vanillaprofile.css to customize those pages as well. Part 2: HTML / Views ================================================================================ If you want to customize the HTML, you can edit that too. Our pages are made up of two parts: 1. Master Views - these represent everything that wraps the main content of the page. If all you want to do is add a menu or banner above Vanilla, this is all you need to alter. To do so, copy the default master view from /applications/dashboard/views/default.master.php to /themes/yourtheme/views/default.master.php and edit it there. 2. Views - these represent all of the content in each page. Every application has a "views" folder that contains all of the HTML for every page. So, for example, if you wanted to edit the HTML for the Discussions list, you could copy the views from /applications/vanilla/views/discussions to /themes/yourtheme/views/discussions and edit them there. You can avoid naming conflicts between applications' views and specify which app a view is for by optionally adding a subfolder with the app's name in /themes/yourtheme/views/ (e.g.: /themes/yourtheme/views/appname/) and placing views there rather than directly in the "views" folder.