Understanding Themes

[Anastasis]

I have looked around in the documentation and also the forums and I am still not really understanding themes.

As I understand it, templates and stylesheets affect the look and feel of your CMSMS website, but what role do themes play?

Is there a simple tutorial somewhere or please can someone explain.

[kermit]

themes are a way to export, import, and share a template and its associated stylesheets and menus. the theme manager is the admin tool used to do those functions.

a "theme" file is an xml file containing (currently) a template, its stylesheet(s), menus (if not 'default' ones), and any images embedded in those stylesheets. that xml file can be shared and reused in (imported into) another cmsms installation.

if you don't plan on doing any of that, you can ignore "themes" and the theme manager completely.

[Anastasis]

Kermit

Many thanks for the clear explanation. I understand now! 

[Dee]

I downloaded a few new 'themes' which came in zip format with HTML, image and CSS files which I unzipped into respective folders. 

Which themes did you download? Is there no install or readme file inside the zip that explains installation?

If there is no XML file for the theme you are probably supposed to install it "by hand".
Paste the contents of the css file in a stylesheet, the contents of the html file in a template and attach the stylesheet to the template.
If there are more html files they're probably menu templates. Create a new menu template for each file (with a name the same as the filename? otherwise check which menu template(s) is(/are) used in the (page) template).
The images should probably moved to the uploads/images/ folder.

But... it's easier to choose a theme that has a .xml file available. 

Regards,
D

[heatherfeuer]

I agree with you, Dee.  Is there any way to ask that be a requirement when uploading themes to the theme site?