Today we announced the beta release of a new site-wide theme (and matching blog theme) named Basic.
Thoughts?
One is glad to be of service...
Any chance of posting a screenshot or installing this to themes.communityserver.org so we can what the theme looks like.
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As someone who submitted a theme for the contest let me share what would have been helpful.
For Track 1 (everthing must be in the exported theme file), you don't seem to have a lot of images to work with. At least that was my experience. Since the rules were that you had to create an export file that worked with one of the two default themes, you were limited in your design options by what images were available in the /Themes/[selected theme]/Images folder (at least as far as I could tell--maybe I missed somthing?).
What would really have been useful for creating simple themes that only required importing a theme file, would have been the availability of more "utility" images in the default theme folders. For example, I accessed the toolbar and sidebar .png files to create gradient effects in other areas but, aside from changing fonts, colors, and sizes of stuff, that's all I could think of to do.
This basic theme is helpful if you want to start from scratch with a full on theme but a reverse approach would be helpful if you just want to use the online theme tools. Adding a bunch of utility images to the default theme folders would have been helpful. Icons sets, more gradient PNGs, stuff like that...
Hi jstengel,
jstengel:Since the rules were that you had to create an export file that worked with one of the two default themes, you were limited in your design options by what images were available in the /Themes/[selected theme]/Images folder (at least as far as I could tell--maybe I missed somthing?).
Actually, you can use *any* images you want (assuming you have the rights to use such images). We serialize your images into the export so it's still a valid tweak for Track 1.
Sorry for the confusion. Hope this helps...
Looks nice, very similiar as Ben's site.
Is it div+css, and tabless?
May god let you know what English I'm speaking...:D
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I submitted my theme at the end of April and there still wasn't much documentation so perhaps I missed something. Are you saying that I can use the theme engine to serialize custom images other than the basic logo, background images, footer image, etc.?
I tried to go down this path by modifying the themes.config file to try to add a custom property for a custom image but, for whatever reason, I decided it wasn't worth the time and effort at the time--maybe I'll revisit this.
Where might I find more information about this? The "Theme Configuation" page seems to be a little thin on this topic.
I had similar problems with my theme. I wanted to put some images in by adding background-image: to various elements in the CSS overides but I couldn't work out how to export images that weren't defined in the theme config (i.e. I could export logo, header background and body background but not one I defined for quotes in CSS Overides).
I'm just going to post this in case I'm not the only one who didn't get this. It's actually quite simple and I don't know why I was having problems when I was trying to do this before.
Add the following new property group to your theme.config file:
<propertyGroup id="customimages" text="Images"><propertySubGroup text="Custom Images">
<property id="CustomImage1" text="Image 1" dataType="url" defaultValue="" descriptionText="Enter/Upload the image" descriptionImageUrl="" controlType="CommunityServer.Controls.SiteFileUrlControl, CommunityServer.Controls" />
</propertySubGroup></propertyGroup>
This will add an "Images" tab on your theme configuration page in the Control Panel and, from what I can tell, will give you an upload box that will copy the files to "~/Sites/1000/myImage.gif". On theme export, the files will be serialized into the them file. Add more properties for more upload boxes.
Somebody stop me if I'm wrong. What happens if I import this theme on a site that doesn't have the modified themes.config file?
Sorry for the confusion, let me clarify...
jstengel:Are you saying that I can use the theme engine to serialize custom images other than the basic logo, background images, footer image, etc.?
For Track 1, you can *only* use the built-in tools (in the Control Panel) to modify either the Default or LeanAndGreen themes. What i was saying earlier is that you can use *any* image in the locations that we allow images. Modifying theme.config is okay for Track 2, but is outside the scope of Track 1.
Do you have an exported config file with extra images in. I would be most interested in testing out whether this modification would work when importing into non modified themes.
afscrome: I had similar problems with my theme. I wanted to put some images in by adding background-image: to various elements in the CSS overides but I couldn't work out how to export images that weren't defined in the theme config (i.e. I could export logo, header background and body background but not one I defined for quotes in CSS Overides).
That's correct. For Track 1 entries, you can *only* include images that are already defined in the theme.config file.
jstengel:This will add an "Images" tab on your theme configuration page in the Control Panel and, from what I can tell, will give you an upload box that will copy the files to "~/Sites/1000/myImage.gif". On theme export, the files will be serialized into the them file. Add more properties for more upload boxes.
You are correct in *how* to customize a theme. But I want to clarify that for the sake of the Theme Extravaganza, modifying the theme.config is only allowable in Track 2.
Damn, within a minute you put an end to any chance of getting in extra images
Not sure why I didn't get a 'you have been beaten' message though - when I pressed reply, you'r reply wasn't there but when I came back to check now, you've snuck in before my reply
Edit: I know this is slightly off topic but didn't the beta / RC candidate stages of CS2007 expire months ago. Shouldn't the Community Server 2007 Release Candidate Forum just become the Community Server 2007 forum?
Jose Lema:That's correct. For Track 1 entries, you can *only* include images that are already defined in the theme.config file
That was my original point. There wasn't much to work with in there and a few more utility images would have been helpful. Thanks for clarifying.
As for importing themes generated from a modified themes.config...Only the properties that exist on the importing system will be imported. I tried to export a theme with 5 custom images and re-importing to a system with the default themes.config and none of them came through.
Now that I did this, I just realized why I gave up on this in the first place, you can't use customized exported themes on non-customized system and therefore it wouldn't work for the contest.
I should clarify something...
Since the rules said you had to base your Track 1 theme off of one of the two existing themes, I interpreted that to mean that I could also access the existing images for that theme--not just the images defined in the themes.config.
So, I used some of the utility images in the /Themes/Default/Images as backgrounds in my CSS. If there were more images (i.e., gradients, icons, etc.) in this folder, I would have had more options.
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