How tos for: Installing and Developing a theme for 6.5 CE

[Darkstar1]

The title of my post is misleading but for now I can't think of how to word it. Essentially I'm new to 6.5 and I am chasing down material on theme development. I decided to install the ModernAqua theme on my local installation which has borne 0 fruit so far (despite some positive comments on sugarforge) I tried changing the manifest and themedef php files to allow it to be compatible with 6.5 but I just get a cryptic error message, so I installed it manually by copying the theme folder into the custom theme directory, this got it to show on the theme list but selecting it in the backend doesn't do anything. So if anyone has managed to successfully install this theme or another I would greatly appreciate the help.
The reason I am trying to install a theme is so that I have a custom theme I can use for reference when developing my own, to this end I would like to know if there have been radical changes to theme development since 6.0 because I am planning on using this: Sugar DeveloperZone - SugarCRM Developer Documentation, Sugar Documentation as the document guide to learning.
Thank you all for your time

[dhew]

I was in your shoes a few months ago when I first started messing around with Sugar CE for a real project.

Got no help. I was a bit surprised given the open source nature of the software, but I guess its because a lot of the developers here are so use to the paradigm that Sugar is business software, so unless a business wants to shell out big $$$ for a custom theme, themes are not worth it. Maybe I'm wrong, but if you search around you will find many, many threads looking for template help that have gone unanswered.

Anyways, I'll try and help where I can.

First off, Modern Aqua is an old theme and, in my opinion, not worth trying to make work with v6.+. I think it was a great theme in its day, but you will be better off making your own from scratch, as its not that difficult (if you really, really must have modern aqua, all you need to do is change the themedef file to include version 6 and upload it manually).

Sugar basically uses smarty templates, with seemingly random surprises for you to find once you get into editing things.


First, you typically install themes like you do any other module--by uploading a zip file using module loader. But you don't have to. You can easily just upload a new folder to your /themes/ directory. In that folder you must have a themedef.php file with the following content:

$themedef = array(
    'name'  => "New Theme",
    'description' => "My New Theme Description",
    'version' => array(
        'regex_matches' => array('6\.*.*'),
        ),
    'group_tabs' => true,
    );

then css, images, js, and tpls folders...just like the "Classic" theme.

In fact, you should just duplicate the Classic theme and go from there. Modify the tpl files and CSS, and thats all you need. That documentation link you included has a good image of the basic theme compartments, which correspond to the tpl files nicely (but almost everything else in there is too much info. you wont use for your first theme).

Just start modifying those and you'll be able to get a pretty good start.

If you have any specific questions along the way, I'll try to answer them (but I'm no expert by any means). I have developed my own theme that feels much more modern than the classic theme, but isn't drastically different layout wise. I'll share it with you if you want.

[Darkstar1]

Thanks for the reply. I had all but given up and I'd forgotten about this post (found it by accident whilst googling). I will take up your advice because I had all but given up on doing this as I am getting mixed results and advice. I was told that in order to develop my own theme I had to over-ride another them by copying the default theme + the theme I wanted to over-ride in the custom path. Of course this has brought mixed results so far not to mention strange-ish behaviour especially when I tried to apply the Modern Aqua theme. If you come across good texts pls let me know and I will do so likewise.

[gunni]

Copying the classic theme was the way i tried it, but for me with a copied theme on some modules the module menu ( create, import etc. ) is missing with this copied theme. Dont know why.

[agcopley]

Copying the classic theme was the way i tried it, but for me with a copied theme on some modules the module menu ( create, import etc. ) is missing with this copied theme. Dont know why.

Have a look at this.
I managed to get it to work without too many problems

SugarForge: KOSS Green Theme: Project Info

Rgds
Andrew

[Wx3 - Jimmy Gehrke]

I've modified the KOSS-files to work with 6.5 CE. But once uploaded and installed, the theme showes up under "Themes" and I can set the default-theme.
But I can't seem to save it as the default theme. Doing so doesn't change the smallest thing..

I've also installed SpecBlue theme compatible for my version 6.5.7, but even that theme can't be changed to the default theme. Well it can, but the system still uses the classic theme and I can't disable the classic theme. Moving Classic theme to the disable field is ok, but saving the change moves the classic theme back to enabled themes....

What do I do?

I've tried to use the repair-module and update some information which worked well doing some translation issues, but not this. Please can anyone advice!