History: Three Ways to Make a New Theme

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            !! File arrangements 
First, establish the basic file arrangement of your new theme. (See also ((Theme Options)) ).

!!! First steps
* Pick a name for the theme.  Check the ''themes'' directory to make sure there's not an existing theme (i.e., themes/NewThemeName/css/NewThemeName.css file) with the same name. 
* There is no authoritative register of Tiki theme names but, if you intend to share your theme, it would be good to check at themes.tiki.org and in the standard Tiki download package to make sure no theme already exists with the same name.

!!! CSS file
There are a couple of ways to add a new theme to a Tiki site.
# Create or locate a new CSS file that is a variant of a bootstrap.css file. For example, this can be produced at [http://getbootstrap.com/customization]. Then select "Custom theme by specifying URL" in the "Theme" selector of the Look and Feel admin page. Enter the URL of that file in the "Custom theme URL" field, or
* Create a new CSS file with the theme name you chose and place it (using a file transfer application, etc.) in the ''themes'' directory. As of Tiki 14, the themes directory contains a sub-directory (folder) for each theme, which in turn contains at least a css directory (like ''themes/NewThemeName/css/newtheme.css''). This is probably the best choice especially if the theme has images, icons or other components. (See ((CSS Overview)) for more details.)

Tiki uses basically two stylesheets to produce the layout and look of the site. One is ''tiki_base.css'', which covers things that are unique to Tiki or otherwise outside the scope of bootstrap.css. The other, because Tiki now incorporates the Bootstrap CSS framework, is essentially a bootstrap.css variant. "Bootstrap" stylesheets made for other web applications such as Wordpress may be able to be used with Tiki but probably the HTML they were written for is quite different from Tiki's, so some modification will be necessary. We will test and document this in the near future.

!!! Template (.tpl) files
* If at all possible, you should try to use the default template (.tpl) files for your new theme, since having custom files makes it harder to update your theme when the default files are upgraded. But if your new theme does use its own variants of the default templates, these must be placed in  a sub-directory in the new theme's directory (like '' themes/NewThemeName/templates/'').
* Copy any files that you want to modify from the ''templates'' directory or from an existing theme's templates directory to your theme's templates directory. 

Once its CSS file is in place, your new theme has been added to your site. If you go to the Look and Feel admin page or __User Preferences__ and check the drop-down menu for __Theme__, you'll find your theme listed. 

See next: [tiki-index.php?page_ref_id=7|CSS Overview] and [tiki-index.php?page_ref_id=5|Template Overview]. 

!!! Related information
!! Allow users to set the theme
On __Admin > Look and Feel (Theme tab) you can activate __"Users can change theme"__.

Once activated users can change their theme in their Preferences page under __My Tiki__ menu.

Under [http://doc.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=Modules|Modules] you can also activate the __switch_theme__ module which makes it very easy for any user to change themes.

!! Using multiple themes on your Tiki site
[http://www.doc.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=Theme+Control]  at doc.tikiwiki.or describes how to assign themes to
* A Tiki category 
* A Tiki section 
* An individual Tiki object (i.e., an individual wiki page, blog, gallery, etc.)

If you enable Theme Control, you will see a link to Theme Control in the Admin section of the application menu.

User groups can also be assigned a specific theme. Check doc.tiki.org for details.

''(from [http://doc.tiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=Styles and Themes])''