Structure of themes and theme components

[Discourse]

Discourse supports native themes that can be sourced from a .tar.gz archive or from a remote git repository including private repositories.

An example theme is at: GitHub - discourse/discourse-simple-theme: Sam's simple discourse theme

The git repository will be checked for updates (once a day), or by using the Check for Updates button. When changes are detected the Check for Updates button will change to the Update to Latest.

To create a theme you need to follow a specific file structure. These are the files you may include:

about.json (required)

common/common.scss
common/header.html
common/after_header.html
common/footer.html
common/head_tag.html
common/body_tag.html
common/embedded.scss

desktop/desktop.scss
desktop/header.html
desktop/after_header.html
desktop/footer.html
desktop/head_tag.html
desktop/body_tag.html

mobile/mobile.scss
mobile/header.html
mobile/after_header.html
mobile/footer.html
mobile/head_tag.html
mobile/body_tag.html

locales/en.yml
locales/{locale}.yml

stylesheets/{anything}/{anything}/{anything}.scss

javascripts/{anything}.js
javascripts/{anything}.hbs
javascripts/{anything}.hbr

assets/{asset_filename}

settings.yml

Any of these files are optional, so you only need to create the ones you need.

For those looking to split theme SCSS into multiple files, that’s now possible.

Split up theme SCSS into multiple files

Themes and theme components are becoming steadily more powerful, and developers are getting more and more ambitious. To make things easier for developers, themes can now split their SCSS into multiple files. When creating a new theme with the theme CLI, or sharing a theme on github, simply create a new folder called scss. Fill it with your .scss files, following any folder structure, and all the files will be available for you to import in the common / desktop / mobile SCSS sections of your t…

For those looking to split up theme into multiple JS files, just add the JS files you want into the javascripts directory.

The about.json file structure is:

{
  "name": "My Theme",
  "component": false,
  "license_url": null,
  "about_url": null,
  "authors": null,
  "theme_version": null,
  "minimum_discourse_version": null, 
  "maximum_discourse_version": null,
  "assets": {
    "variable-name": "assets/my-asset.jpg"
  },
  "color_schemes": {
    "My Colour Scheme": {
      "primary": "222222",
    }
  }
}

Instructions on how to add settings to your theme available here: Add settings to your Discourse theme.

To tell Discourse that you are going to add a theme component and not a full theme just add the line "component": true to the about.json file

The file structure matches the theme custom CSS / HTML.

Further reading

Check out the other articles with the #themes::tag tag.

See also:

• Beginner's guide to developing Discourse Themes
• Install the Discourse Theme CLI console app to help you build themes
• Include assets (e.g. images, fonts) in themes and components

---

Last Reviewed by @SaraDev on 2022-08-15T21:00:00Z

---

This document is version controlled - suggest changes on github.

Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-05-26T12:27:32Z

Check document

Perform check on document: