Ways To Edit Themes - Vanilla Success

/* * These styles apply ONLY to the header and footer assets. */ * { padding: 0; margin: 0; box-sizing: border-box; } .footer { background: #f5f5f6; color: #555a62; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 18px 0; } .footer-wrap { padding-left: 18px; padding-right: 18px; max-width: 1236px; margin: 0 auto; } .footer a { color: #0291db; } .footer a:hover { color: #0276b3; } .footer-row { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; justify-content: space-between; align-items: center; margin: -3px; } .footer-col { padding: 0 3px; } .footer-col-copyRight { justify-content: flex-start; } .footer-col-logo { justify-content: flex-end; } .footer-col-copyRight, .footer-col-logo { flex: 1; display: flex; } .logo { width: 120px; height: 28px; opacity: 0.6; } @media screen and (max-width: 768px) { .footer-row { display: block; } .footer-col { width: 100%; text-align: center; margin: 6px 0; } .footer-col:first-child { margin-top: 0; } .footer-col:last-child { margin-bottom: 0; } .footer-col-copyRight, .footer-col-logo { justify-content: center; } .logo { margin: 0 auto; } } /*# sourceMappingURL=styles.css.map */

Vanilla offers three ways of creating and editing a theme:

Theming Editor UI

The theming editor UI is the main and most common way to customize your foundation theme.

You can add a new theme and edit existing themes in your dashboard via a theming UI. This is the easiest way to get started theming and make small tweaks to existing themes.

Theme API

Vanilla offers a full RESTful API for its theming engine, which is meant for developer use. Typically, you won't create an entire theme via the API, but having an API unlocks some interesting advanced scenarios for customers with a developer resource. Maybe you have a header that you use across all of your sites and you want to be able to update it everywhere. Maybe you have several themes for multiple nodes or subcommunities that are mostly similar and you want to write some automation scripts to synchronize them when you make an update.

File Based Theme

This option is only available for certain Enterprise clients with a private cluster and developer resources.

You can create a theme on your file system and drop it in your local \themes folder, then publish it with Vanilla's enterprise theme push feature. File based themes are a good option if you are a dedicated theme developer and want to use source control, or if you want to take advantage of your own build pipeline.

Using multiple methods

The great thing about all of these theming methods is they are all compatible with each-other. You could make a file based theme and then copy it within your dashboard to edit it with the theme editor afterwards. You could use our API to download the individual assets of a theme and then continue it as a file based theme. All themes share the same basic structure.