ikiwiki/doc/themes/discussion.mdwn

I would like to contribute a theme I created and posted on github:

[[https://github.com/AntPortal/ikiwiked]]

For an example of the theme in action, see: [[https://antportal.com/wiki/]]

> Shouldn't we just make people post their themes in the [[themes]] page? Or maybe we should make a [[theme market]]? --[[anarcat]]

> I did just that. -- [[anarcat]]

What is the process for merging a theme in Ikiwiki? It seems to me the
[[Bootstrap theme|http://www2.tblein.eu/posts/How_to_have_a_nice_design_for_ikiwiki/]]
could improve the options a lot... See the [[theme market]] for the
links to the actual theme. -- [[anarcat]]

> Step 1 is to not need two versions of page.tmpl to be maintained.
> This is, unfortunately, the reason why I have not pulled in the bootstrap
> theme yet. I recently made `<TMPL_IF THEME_$NAME>` be available,
> so the page.tmpl could use that to do different things if the boostrap
> theme was enabled. --[[Joey]]

---

I have a question.

Where should I put a custom theme other than `/usr/share/ikiwiki/themes/`?

I put `.pm` plugins on `~/.ikiwiki/Ikiwiki/Plugin` and it works well.

How would I go about not tampering with the root filesystem to install a theme?

--[[desci]]

Also, I have another question:

I have a complex theme I'm working on, and it doesn't even have a `style.css`, because it is about editing `.tmpl` files and relying on the bootstrap files, so I want to know if the theme plugin will understand this structure:

```
/usr/share/ikiwiki/themes/
└── my-theme/
    ├── basewiki/
    │   ├── bootstrap/
    │   │   ├── css/
    │   │   │   └── bootstrap.min.css
    │   │   ├── js/
    │   │   │   ├── bootstrap.js
    │   │   │   └── bootstrap.min.js
    │   │   └── fonts/
    │   │       ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.eot
    │   │       ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.svg
    │   │       ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.ttf
    │   │       ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.woff
    │   │       └── glyphicons-halflings-regular.woff2
    │   └── index.mdwn
    └── templates/
        ├── page.tmpl
        └── whatever.tmpl
```

**Edit:** no, it doesn't. When i change theme in the config to `my-theme`, the engine only uses the `templates` subfolder under `theme/my-theme`, and not `basewiki`. So the workaround is doing like [IkiStrap](https://github.com/gsliepen/ikistrap) proposed, suggesting the user to alter the `underlaydir` and `templatedir` configs instead of choosing a theme via the old fashioned `theme` config.

This feels more like an overhaul than a theme for me, could we clarify what is a theme, a template, an overhaul, a change to the look and feel, a change to the frontend, a change to the design, etc.?

-- [[desci]]