# How to modify the header HTML, but still remaining the default founctions
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-modify-the-header-html-but-still-remaining-the-default-founctions/88291
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [23.Май.2018 19:28:45 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-modify-the-header-html-but-still-remaining-the-default-founctions/88291 "2018-05-23T19:28:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 4
### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [25.Май.2018 01:26:12 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-modify-the-header-html-but-still-remaining-the-default-founctions/88291/4 "2018-05-25T01:26:12Z")
Customizing Discourse isn’t the easiest way to learn programming for beginners, but there’s a lot of existing material here to reference.
One of the most helpful things might be to learn by example, we have a lot of existing [themes and theme components](https://meta.discourse.org/c/theme) — check out the source and see how other people are doing it.
There are also useful posts in #howto :
> [@Structure of themes and theme components](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-develop-custom-themes/60848/):
>
> Discourse supports [native themes](https://meta.discourse.org/t/native-theme-support/47494/26) that can be sourced from a .tar.gz archive or from a remote git repository including [private repositories](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-source-a-theme-from-a-private-git-repository/82584). An example theme is at: [GitHub - discourse/discourse-simple-theme: Sam's simple discourse theme · GitHub](https://github.com/SamSaffron/discourse-simple-theme) The git repository will be checked for updates ([once a day](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/app/jobs/scheduled/check_out_of_date_themes.rb)), or by using the Check for Updates button. When changes are detected the Check for Updates button will change to the Update to Latest. [image] To create a theme you need to foll…
> [@Using Plugin Outlet Connectors from a Theme or Plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/adding-plugin-outlets-using-a-theme/32727):
>
> Discourse includes hundreds of Plugin Outlets which can be used to inject new content or replace existing contend in the Discourse UI. ‘Outlet arguments’ are made available so that content can be customized based on the context. Choosing an outlet To find the name of a plugin outlet, search Discourse core for “\. These allow you…
> [@A tour of how the Widget (Virtual DOM) code in Discourse works](https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-tour-of-how-the-widget-virtual-dom-code-in-discourse-works/40347):
>
> This is out of date. See [Widgets, the Widget API and their roadmap?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/widgets-the-widget-api-and-their-roadmap/292624) The latest builds of Discourse are much faster at rendering topics thanks to our [re-written post stream](https://eviltrout.com/2016/02/25/fixing-android-performance.html). I’ve written up [our new plugin API](https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-new-versioned-api-for-client-side-plugins/40051) but so far haven’t explained how the code all fits together. The purpose of this topic is to allow Discourse developers to understand how the new code works. What’s a Virtual DOM? A Virtual DOM is a data structure that enables browsers to re-render dynamic content very quickly. The techniq…
> [@Using the JS API](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-the-pluginapi-in-site-customizations/41281):
>
> Discourse’s JavaScript API allows themes and plugins to make extensive customizations to the user experience. The simplest way to use it is to create a new theme from the admin panel, click “Edit Code”, and then head to the JS tab. For file-based themes, the API can be used by creating a file in the api-initializers directory. For theme’s that’s {theme}/javascripts/api-initializers/init-theme.gjs, and for plugins, it’s {plugin}/assets/javascripts/discourse/api-initializers/init-plugin.js. The c…
> [@A versioned API for client side plugins](https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-new-versioned-api-for-client-side-plugins/40051):
>
> Later today I am going to be merging our [new post rendering engine](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-us-test-our-new-post-rendering-engine/39221/101) into master. Swapping out Ember/HTMLBars for a virtual-dom based renderer provides us with a huge performance increase, but it also has the side effect of being incompatible with how plugins were previously made. While doing this work, it occurred to me that we made a fairly big mistake in the past by not providing a mechanism for versioning the public APIs used by client side code. We used to encourage people to just dump in w…
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