Creating and Editing Themes - Vanilla Success
<main> <article class="userContent"> <p>Your theme stores your unique settings for your community's appearance. <strong>Higher Logic Vanilla</strong> (<strong>Vanilla</strong>) offers three options for creating and editing a theme:</p><ul><li>Theme Editor</li><li>Theme API</li><li>File-based Theme</li></ul><h2 data-id="method-compatibility">Method Compatibility</h2><p>All Vanilla themes share the same basic structure. Also, each of the options described below is compatible with the others, so they can be used in conjunction with one another. For example:</p><ul><li>You could create a file-based theme and then copy it within your dashboard and edit it with the Theme Editor.</li><li>You could use the Theme API to download the individual assets of a theme and then continue it as a file-based theme.</li></ul><p>Read on to learn about the options that you have so that you can decide which is the best option (or options!) for creating and editing your community themes.</p><h2 data-id="theme-editor">Theme Editor</h2><p>Theme Editor is an easy-to-use interface, which makes it the ideal way to get started working with your theme. It is accessible via the Dashboard, and is the main and most common way to:</p><ul><li>customize your Foundation theme,</li><li>add new themes, and</li><li>edit existing themes.</li></ul><p>To learn about Theme Editor, see:</p><div class="js-embed embedResponsive" data-embedjson="{"body":"Foundation is Vanilla’s newest theme and our recommendation as the best option when creating your new theme, or for updating an existing theme. Our new Theme Editor makes it easy to create and modify custom theme templates so that your community and knowledge base can match your unique brand. Legacy Clients New Vanilla…","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6030677\/uploads\/VWGAXAF5OFCO\/microsoftteams-image.png","url":"https:\/\/success.vanillaforums.com\/kb\/articles\/279","embedType":"link","name":"Theme Editor Overview - Vanilla Success"}"> <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/279" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc"> https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/279 </a> </div><h2 data-id="theme-api">Theme API</h2><p>Vanilla offers a full RESTful API for its theming engine, which is intended for use by experienced developers. Typically, you won't create an entire theme via this API, but having it presents some interesting advanced scenarios for customers with a developer resource. For example:</p><ul><li>Maybe you have a header that you use across all of your sites and you want to be able to update it everywhere.</li><li>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.</li></ul><p>To learn about the Theme API, see:</p><div class="js-embed embedResponsive" data-embedjson="{"body":"This document is an up-to-date API reference for all of Vanilla's public APIv2 endpoints.","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6030677\/uploads\/VWGAXAF5OFCO\/microsoftteams-image.png","url":"https:\/\/success.vanillaforums.com\/kb\/articles\/202","embedType":"link","name":"API v2 Reference & Endpoints - Vanilla Success"}"> <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/202" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc"> https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/202 </a> </div><h2 data-id="file-based-theme">File-based Theme</h2><p>📝 <strong>NOTE</strong>: This option is available only for certain Enterprise customers with a private cluster and developer resources.</p><p>You can create a theme on your file system and place it in your local <strong>\themes</strong> folder. Then, you can publish it with Vanilla's Enterprise Theme push feature.</p><p>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.</p><p>To learn about using File-based Themes, see:</p><div class="js-embed embedResponsive" data-embedjson="{"body":"The forum was not built from the ground up with this system. However, we’ve made a theme (Foundation) to benefit from the new theming system. This theme has an extra layer of compatibility built on top of it to apply the new styles with our legacy system. These styles layer over top of the exiting styles, so we can get…","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6030677\/uploads\/VWGAXAF5OFCO\/microsoftteams-image.png","url":"https:\/\/success.vanillaforums.com\/kb\/articles\/275","embedType":"link","name":"Theming the Forums with Foundation - Vanilla Success"}"> <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/275" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc"> https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/275 </a> </div><p>...and:</p><div class="js-embed embedResponsive" data-embedjson="{"body":"This documentation is meant for developers using GitHub to create file-based themes. This feature is only available to Enterprise clients with their own cluster on Vanilla Cloud. The easiest way to get started is to start from another theme. Foundation is a good theme to use, as it is what our theming system is based on.…","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6030677\/uploads\/VWGAXAF5OFCO\/microsoftteams-image.png","url":"https:\/\/success.vanillaforums.com\/kb\/articles\/168","embedType":"link","name":"Theming Quickstart - Vanilla Success"}"> <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/168" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc"> https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/168 </a> </div><p><br></p> </article> </main>