Create and share a color scheme

Discourse now supports importing color schemes from remote repository. Here I will demonstrate how you would go about doing this.

Navigate to colors and add a color scheme.

Head to /admin/customize/colors on your site and create a color scheme.

Tips:

  • I used a chrome plugin (color picker) to select colors from an existing image of a palette on the web.

  • If you create a theme, assign the color scheme to the theme and preview it, changes will be reflected live.

Create a new git repository with the color scheme

mkdir my-awesome-scheme
cd my-awesome-scheme
git init .
vim about.json

For about.json add a skeleton config file

{
   "name" : "My awesome color schemes",
   "about_url" : "",
   "license_url": "",
   "color_schemes": {
   }
}

Add a LICENSE file, I usually use MIT

vim LICENSE

Push changes to GitHub

Check in all your changes:

git add LICENSE
git add about.json
git commit -am "first commit"

Create an account on GitHub.com and then create a new repository.

(Optional) create a topic on Discourse as a home to discuss your colors

Ideally you would create a topic in the #plugin:theme category with some screenshots of your color scheme. You will use this as your about_url

Fill in the missing information in your about.json file

  • Navigate to your LICENSE page on GitHub, fill in that URL as your license_url

  • Either use the GitHub project URL or Discourse topic URL as your about_url

  • Press Copy to Clipboard on your color scheme and paste that in to the color_schemes section

At the end of the process your about.json file will look something like:

{
   "name" : "Solarized",
   "about_url" : "https://github.com/SamSaffron/discourse-solarized",
   "license_url": "https://github.com/SamSaffron/discourse-solarized/blob/master/LICENSE",
   "color_schemes": {
      "Solarized Light": {
        "primary": "586E75",
        "secondary": "EEE8D5",
        "tertiary": "268BD2",
        "quaternary": "CB4B16",
        "header_background": "002B36",
        "header_primary": "93A1A1",
        "highlight": "B58900",
        "danger": "CB4B16",
        "success": "859900",
        "love": "DC322F"
      }
   }
}

Check in the change and push to GitHub

git commit -am "added more details"
git push

Test your color scheme is correct

  • Delete your local color scheme
  • In the admin/customize/theme screen import your theme from GitHub

  • Visit admin/customize/colors and ensure your color scheme looks correct.

:confetti_ball:

You can now easily share your color scheme with others!

See also:


Last Reviewed by @SaraDev on 2022-06-03T01:00:00Z


This document is version controlled - suggest changes on github.

Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-05-25T10:21:10Z

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