Hello everyone! I’m new here but I’d like to give Discourse a try before deciding what platform to build my community on, since I consider this the most exciting prospect out there. Currently I’m having trouble setting up a consistent workflow. Preferably I’d like to either: a) code in the cloud…

If you want to use Cloud9 to work on Discourse stuff, ask for an invite to The Janitor . It provides a Cloud9 IDE with a dev-mode Discourse.

Thanks, that sounds good. I get an error when trying to log in: Error: Failed to email you and at sign-up I get Already in the waitlist. Is the registration system in a manual approve mode or am I doing something wrong? EDIT: Just saw that I have to wait a bit for approval @ https://discourse.jan…

The theme cli is the way to go. You just need somewhere that you can run it. It doesn’t matter where you’re hosted. You just need to resolve your API key problem.

I’m an admin, I triple checked. See attached images. [Capture2] [Capture]

Tried again with no success on a fresh install using a new API key. Not sure what’s going on really.

What’s the second best way of doing things if I can’t get the Discourse theme CLI to work? Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks.

Using the built-in editor in Admin > Customize > Themes might be the best way if you can’t get the CLI to work. The CLI was built because there really wasn’t an ideal way to develop themes for Discourse previously, so I’d like to help you get that worked out if possible. Are you able to install Dis…

[image] awesomerobot: Using the built-in editor in Admin > Customize > Themes might be the best way if you can’t get the CLI to work. The CLI was built because there really wasn’t an ideal way to develop themes for Discourse previously, so I’d like to help you get that worked out if possible. A…

[image] awesomerobot: Update: Just tried using nodechef and didn’t have any issues with getting the CLI up and running. Interesting. Maybe I should just delete the instance and create a new one on Nodechef? Not sure if I will be charged again if I delete & create a new one though.

[image] Graphiwiz: Not sure if I will be charged again if I delete & create a new one though. Status update (for anyone interested/similar situation): With @awesomerobot ’s assistance we’ve debugged the issue and it seems that Nodechef randomly installed an older version Discourse 2.0.0.beta3 …

Setting up a solid workflow for custom theme development

Development

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) March 14, 2019, 10:28pm 12

See

Topic		Replies	Views
How to create a theme (if I am a pure end user) Support	5	1372	August 18, 2021
Get started with Theme Creator and the Theme CLI Developer Guides how-to , theme-creator , theme-guides	8	12832	May 7, 2026
Designer's Guide to getting started with themes in Discourse Developer Guides tutorial , theme-guides	9	12219	April 8, 2024
Install the Discourse Theme CLI console app to help you build themes Developer Guides how-to , theme-guides	13	31796	August 23, 2025
Discourse Theme CLI is the bomb Praise	0	1557	November 20, 2018

Setting up a solid workflow for custom theme development

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