Theme components

A Tiki theme can be made of several components. as there is at least a CSS style sheet, as well as background images, fonts and, in the future, icons, and possibly one or more theme-specific Smarty templates although having customized templates is not encouraged due to potential compatibility problems.

As Tiki contains a full set of default templates, the minimum requirement to create a custom theme is a custom CSS stylesheet.

As of Tiki 14, themes are deployed in the directory "themes," which is a subdirectory of the Tiki root installation directory.

Every theme has its own directory that contains the components of the theme. The name of the theme's directory is the same as the name of the theme.

The following is an example of the directory structure:

• themes
  • mytheme
    • css
      • mytheme.css
        • The .CSS file has to be named the same as the theme's directory, eg: "mytheme.css" - Tiki names the theme from the containing theme-specific folder.
        • The mytheme.css is usually compiled from the less files which are in the less directory.
      • custom.css
        • The custom.css file contents override and complete mytheme.css. This is the place for hand-made CSS changes.
    • fonts
      • This is the place to store your fonts which have to be provided for webmasters who do not want to use a font-API
    • icons
      • This is not in use yet, but will likely be the place for .SVG icon sets, if no glyphs will be used. Alternative glyphs might be stored here or in fonts, which is not desided yet. To be updated, please contact the Tiki artwork-list on sourceforge
    • images
      • This is the place to store theme-related images for backgrounds and other purposes.
    • less
      • tiki.less
      • This directory contains the Less files from which, along with global Less files, are compiled the theme style sheet.
    • options
      • Themes can have options by adding a css file (eg: myoption.css) in the option folder which could easily be created with less and then would be loaded additionally to the main theme's css file. To be updated, please contact the Tiki artwork-list on sourceforge
    • templates
      • Any customised template stored in this directory overwrites the default template with the same name.

Activating your new theme

Once you create a directory structure and add it to the Tiki file structure in the location described above, which contains at least a style sheet file named as the theme's folder (eg: mytheme.css) in the folder themes/mytheme/css, you will find the theme in the "Theme selection" selector in Admin -> Look&Feel -> Theme.
Please mind to reload the page after you add the theme to the server and to clear the Tiki caches each time you apply a different theme (/tiki-admin_system.php?do=all).

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