# Can a Discourse theme/template be customised to have this format?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-a-discourse-theme-template-be-customised-to-have-this-format/100007>\
**Category:** UX\
**Created:** [October 19, 2018, 3:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-a-discourse-theme-template-be-customised-to-have-this-format/100007 "2018-10-19T15:42:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![dolanator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9e8a1a/32.png) [@dolanator](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dolanator)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2018, 4:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-a-discourse-theme-template-be-customised-to-have-this-format/100007/3 "2018-10-19T16:55:05Z")

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@awesomerobot Thanks for the reply.

I have some experience in working with website (and forum) front-ends and some familiarity with JS backends. I’ve installed and customised phpBB3-based forums before. But I’ve no idea what’s the exact stack on which Discourse is built. From what I could gather it’s based on a ruby/JS app with a JS backend, a Postgres database – all configured to run in a Docker container.

Can you tell me in just a few words how templating and layout is handled by Discourse? Or maybe point me to the link where this is explained in the documentation. Maybe I can get an idea on how such a layout can be achieved. Is it based on Pug or some similar templating engine?

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