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README.rst

Comprehensive Theming

Comprehensive Theming lets you customize the appearance of your Open edX installation. You can override Sass and CSS settings, images, or entire HTML templates.

Eventually, Comprehensive Theming will obsolete existing theming mechanisms, but for now they co-exist peacefully. This document describes how to use Comprehensive Theming, and also the changes you'll need to make to keep other theming mechanisms working.

Creating a theme

A theme is a directory of assets. You can create this directory wherever you like, it does not have to be inside the edx-platform directory. The structure within this directory mirrors the assets in the edx-platform repo itself. Files you provide in your theme are used in place of the same-named files in edx-platform. Here's a sample:

my-theme
└── lms
    ├── static
    │   ├── images
    │   │   └── logo.png
    │   └── sass
    │       ├── _overrides.scss
    │       ├── lms-main-rtl.scss
    │       └── lms-main.scss
    └── templates
        ├── footer.html
        └── header.html

The top directory is named whatever you like. This example uses "my-theme". The files provided here override the files in edx-platform. In this case, the my-theme/lms/static/sass/lms-main.scss file is used in place of the edx-platform/lms/static/sass/lms-main.scss file.

Images

Images can be substituted simply by placing the new image at the right place in the theme directory. In our example above, the lms/static/images/logo.png image is overridden.

Sass/CSS

Most CSS styling in Open edX is done with Sass files compiled to CSS. EdX is converting over to use Bootstrap Theming, so you can follow the instructions defined here:

There are two example themes provided within edx-platform's themes directory:

  • red-theme: switches Open edX's primary color to red instead of blue
  • dark-theme: uses a dark background and light foreground colors

For more details, see Changing Themes for an Open edX Site.

HTML Templates

You can make changes to HTML templates by copying them to your theme directory in the appropriate place, and making the changes you need. Keep in mind that in the future if you upgrade the Open edX code, you may have to update the copied template in your theme also.

Template Names

Here are the list of template names that you should use in your comprehensive theme (so far):

  • header.html
  • footer.html

Installing your theme

To use your theme, you need to add a configuration value pointing to your theme directory. There are two ways to do this.

  1. If you usually edit server-vars.yml:

    1. As the vagrant user, edit (or create) /edx/app/edx_ansible/server-vars.yml to add the edxapp_comprehensive_theme_dir value:

      edxapp_comprehensive_theme_dir: '/full/path/to/my-theme'

    2. Run the update script:

      $ sudo /edx/bin/update configuration master
$ sudo /edx/bin/update edx-platform HEAD

  2. Otherwise, edit the /edx/app/edxapp/lms.yml file to add the COMPREHENSIVE_THEME_DIRS value:

    "COMPREHENSIVE_THEME_DIRS": ["/full/path/to/my-theme"],

Restart your site. Your changes should now be visible.

Comprehensive Theming

  • The PROFILE_IMAGE_DEFAULT_FILENAME Django setting is now ignored.

"Stanford" theming

If you want to continue using the "Stanford" theming system, there are a few changes you'll need to make.

Create the following new files in the sass directory of your theme:

  • lms-main.scss
  • lms-main-rtl.scss
  • lms-course.scss
  • lms-course-rtl.scss
  • lms-footer.scss
  • lms-footer-rtl.scss

The contents of each of these files will be very similar. Here's what lms-main.scss should look like:

$static-path: '../../../..';
@import 'lms/static/sass/lms-main';
@import '_default';

Each file should set the $static-path variable to a relative path that points to the lms/static directory inside of edx-platform. Then, it should @import the sass file under lms/static/sass that matches its name: lms-footer.scss should import lms/static/sass/lms-footer, for example. Finally, the file should import the _default name, which refers to the _default.scss Sass file that should already exist in your Stanford theme directory.

If your theme uses a different name than "default", you'll need to use that name in the @import line.

Run the update_assets command to recompile the theme:

$ paver update_assets lms --settings=production

Microsites

If you want to continue using the "Microsites" theming system, there are a few changes you'll need to make. A few templates have been renamed, or folded into other templates:

  • header_extra.html has been renamed to head-extra.html. This file was always inserted into the <head> element of the page, rather than the header of the <body> element, so this change makes the name more accurate.
  • google_analytics.html has been removed. The contents of this template can and should be added to the head-extra.html template.
  • google_tag_manager.html has been renamed to body-initial.html.

In addition, there are some other changes you'll need to make:

  • The google_analytics_file config value is now ignored. If your Open edX installation has a Google Analytics account ID set, the Google Analytics JavaScript will be included automatically on your site using that account ID. You can set this account ID either using the "GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ACCOUNT" value in the Django settings, or by setting the newly-added "GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ACCOUNT" config value in your site configuration.

  • You can set the google site verification ID in the GOOGLE_SITE_VERIFICATION_ID in your site configuration. Otherwise, edit the /edx/app/edxapp/lms.yml file to set the value for GOOGLE_SITE_VERIFICATION_ID. Setting the value for GOOGLE_SITE_VERIFICATION_ID will add the meta tag for google site verification in the lms/templates/main.html which is the main Mako template that all page templates should include.

  • If you don't want the Google Analytics JavaScript to be output at all in your site, set the "GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ACCOUNT" config value to the empty string. If you want to customize the way that Google Analytics is loaded, set the "GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ACCOUNT" config value to the empty string, and then load Google Analytics yourself (with whatever customizations you want) in your head-extra.html template.

  • The css_overrides_file config value is now ignored. To add a CSS override file to your site configuration, create a head-extra.html template with the following content:

    <%namespace name='static' file='../../static_content.html'/>
<% style_overrides_file = static.get_value('css_overrides_file') %>

% if style_overrides_file:
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="${static.url(style_overrides_file)}" />
% endif

    If you already have a head-extra.html template, you can modify it to output this <link rel="stylesheet"> tag, in addition to whatever else you already have in that template.