Summary

Tiki uses the Smarty template engine, so pages generally have a PHP file (.php) and a Smarty template (.tpl) associated with them. These produce the XHTML for the page, which is then given visual styles with CSS. The CSS is provided by a combination of some feature-specific stylesheets, default layout and design stylesheets, and theme stylesheets.

Concept

There are several features that determine which theme is displayed for a given screen.

Site theme

User theme

If preference change_theme is enabled than users are allowed to change theme. It is possible to limit the themes users can pick from.

Available themes

Theme Control feature

Perspective feature

Group theme feature

Theme is selected as follows

If Theme Control feature is enabled:
- If a theme is assigned to the individual object that theme is used
- If not then if a theme is assigned to the object's category that theme is used
- If not then a theme for the section is used
- If none of the above was selected the user theme is used
- Finally if the user didn't select a theme the default theme is used

Developer info

The different theme settings are stored in preferences and can be accessed smarty variable

Main prefs:
$prefs['theme_active'] - this is the theme that will be displayed. This pref is not stored in the database, it is set dinamically depending on enabled features (eg: change_theme)
$prefs['theme_site'] - the theme setting for the site stored in tiki_preferences table
$prefs['theme_option_site'] -  the theme option setting for the site stored in tiki_preferences table
$prefs['available_themes'] -  list of themes available for users to pick their preferred theme for the site stored in tiki_preferences table
$prefs['user_theme'] - the user's theme preference stored in tiki_user_preferences table
$prefs['user_theme-option'] - the user's theme preference stored in tiki_user_preferences table
$prefs['tc_theme'] - the user's theme preference