Theme Development Process

[pentastich]

Say I want to develop a new new theme based on "Blank", as suggested in the developer documentation. It looks like the first step is to name the theme in config.json, and also to rename the "blank.lang.json" file to match the new theme name. I was wondering what a good process for making changes to the new theme is. From what I can see, and from peeking at the Publii source code, when a new theme is "installed" on a site and the site is rendered, the files are copied down and the style.css file is automatically generated. It looks like the system leaves the theme files alone until the next time the theme is "installed" (even if the version number isn't bumped).

So the options seem to be:

• Do the development in a totally seperate directory tree, create a tar file, and update the theme every time it changes (which seems painful).
• Do the development in the "Publii/themes/XXX" directory and "reinstall" the theme for the site after each change.
• Do the development right in the "Publii/sites/YYY/input/themes/XXX" directory and live dangerously, since "reinstalling" would wipe files (source code management would help, though). This would save the step of having to reinstall the theme after each change.

What do most people do? Also, are there any guides on the development process itself? I found lots of documention on the elements that go into a theme, but not so much on the process of developing and deploying a theme. It _looks like a deployed theme is just an archive of the same theme files that would be kept in GIT, including the auto-generated style.css file, but I didn't find that documented anywhere (which is not to say it doesn't exist).

Thanks!

[candidexmedia]

Now, I don't know what most people do, but I'll tell you what I do: option 3 (living dangerously 😂). I've never tried the other two.

I usually pick an existing theme whose layout is closest to what I've designed in Penpot, and create all kinds of theme overrides to match the styling. I never work from blank because I'm lazy I find it more efficient to work from an existing, well built theme. Here's a previous writeup on that process.

That said, my latest project requires a standalone custom theme, so I've been making changes directly to the theme files in the site's input folder, and renamed the theme (I've started slowly documenting that process here for myself).

What do most people do? Also, are there any guides on the development process itself?

Earlier in my theme customization days, I found this tutorial helpful (note: some of the content is outdated): https://github.com/SimonPadbury/Publii-Bootstrap-Starter/tree/master/TUTORIALS

[candidexmedia]

One more thing: I've definitely made the mistake of uninstalling/wiping my current custom theme, so I'm looking into source code management (maybe adding git in the site's theme folder?)

[pentastich]

Thanks! I'll check out the links you provided.

[candidexmedia]

@pentastich I hope it helps! If you come across anything on your end, or end up writing a guide of your own experience, please share 🙂