When installing an Alaveteli site, there are a few things that you might want to do to customise it, beyond the available settings in the `config/general` file. The most common requirement is to brand the site: at a minimum, inserting your own logo and colour scheme. You may also want to tweak the different states that a request can go through. You'll also want to edit the categories that public bodies can appear in (i.e. the groupings on the left hand side of the "[View authorities](http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/list/all)" page on WhatDoTheyKnow. There may also be other things you want to customise; drop a line on the developer's mailing list to discuss, if so. We're still working out the best way of doing these kinds of customisations! In any case, the important principle to bear in mind is that the less you override and customise the code, the easier your site will be to maintain in the long term. Any customisation is possible, but for each customisation beyond the simple cases documented here, ask yourself or your client, "can we possibly live without this?" If the answer is "no", then consider starting a discussion about a pluggable way of achieving your goals, rather than overriding any of the core code. # General principles We try to encapsulate all site-specific functionality in one of these places: * Site configuration (e.g. the name of your site, the available languages etc -- all in `config/general`) * Data (e.g. the public bodies to whom requests should be addressed) * A rails "plugin", installed in `vendor/plugins/`. We call these "themes". This document is about what you can do in a theme. By default, the sample theme ("alavetelitheme") has already been installed. See the setting `THEME_URLS` in `general.yml` for an explanation. You can also install the sample theme by hand, by running: bundle exec rails plugin install git://github.com/mysociety/alavetelitheme.git The sample theme contains examples for nearly everything you might want to customise. You should probably make a copy, rename it, and use that as the basis for your own theme. # Make sure your theme is as lightweight as possible The more you put in your theme, the harder it will be to upgrade to future versions of Alaveteli. Everything you place in your theme overrides things in the core theme, so if you make a new "main template", then new widgets that appear in the core theme won't appear on your website. Therefore, you should consider how you can brand your website without changing much in the core theme. The ideal would be if you are able to rebrand the site by only changing the CSS. You will also need to add custom help pages, as described below. # Branding the site The core templates that comprise the layout and user interface of an Alaveteli site live in `app/views/`. They use Rails' ERB syntax. For example, the template for the home page lives at `app/views/general/frontpage.html.erb`, and the template for the "about us" page is at `app/views/help/about.html.erb`. Obviously, you *could* edit those core files directly, but this would be a Bad Idea, because you would find it increasingly hard to do upgrades. Having said that, sometimes you may want to change the core templates in a way that would benefit everyone, in which case, discuss the changes on the mailing list, make them in a fork of Alaveteli, and then issue a pull request. Normally, however, you should override these pages **in your own theme**, by placing them at a corresponding location within your theme's `lib/` directory. These means that a file at `vendor/plugins/alavetelitheme/lib/help/about.rhml` will appear instead of the core "about us" file. Rails expects all its stylesheets to live at `/public`, which presents a problem for plugins. Here's how we solve it: the stylesheet and associated resources for your theme live (by convention) in `alavetelitheme/public/`. This is symlinked from the main Rails app -- see `alavetelitheme/install.rb` to see how this happens. The partial at `alavetelitheme/lib/views/general/_before_head_end.html.erb` includes the custom CSS in your theme's stylesheet folder (by convention, in `alavetelitheme/public/stylesheets/`), with: <%= stylesheet_link_tag "/alavetelitheme/stylesheets/custom" %> ...which will, usually, need changing for your theme. # Adding your own categories for public bodies Categories are implemented in Alaveteli using tags. Specific tags can be designated to group authorities together as a category. There's a file in the sample theme, `alavetelitheme/lib/public_body_categories_en.rb`, which contains a nested structure that defines categories. It contains a comment describing its structure. You should make a copy of this file for each locale you support. # Customising the request states As mentioned above, if you can possibly live with the [default Alaveteli request statuses](https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli/wiki/Alaveteli's-request-statuses), it would be good to do so. Note that you can set how many days counts as "overdue" in the main site config file. If you can't live with the states as they are, there's a very basic way to add to them (which will get improved over time). There's not currently a way to remove any easily. There is an example of how to do this in the `alavetelitheme`. To do add states, create two modules in your theme, `InfoRequestCustomStates` and `RequestControllerCustomStates`. The former must have these methods: * `theme_calculate_status`: return a tag to identify the current state of the request * `theme_extra_states`: return a list of tags which identify the extra states you'd like to support * `theme_display_status`: return human-readable strings corresponding with these tags The latter must have one method: * `theme_describe_state`: Return a notice for the user suitable for displaying after they've categorised a request; and redirect them to a suitable next page When you've added your extra states, you also need to create the following files in your theme: * `lib/views/general/_custom_state_descriptions.html.erb`: Descriptions of your new states, suitable for displaying to end users * `lib/views/general/_custom_state_transitions_complete.html.erb`: Descriptions for any new states that you might characterise as 'completion' states, for displaying on the categorisation form that we ask requestors to fill out * `lib/views/general/_custom_state_transitions_pending.html.erb`: As above, but for new states you might characterise as 'pending' states. You can see examples of these customisations in [this commit](https://github.com/sebbacon/informatazyrtare-theme/commit/2b240491237bd72415990399904361ce9bfa431d) for the Kosovan version of Alaveteli, Informata Zyrtare (ignore the file `lib/views/general/_custom_state_transitions.html.erb`, which is unused). # Adding new pages in the navigation `alavetelitheme/lib/config/custom-routes.rb` allows you to extend the base routes in Alaveteli. The example in `alavetelitheme` adds an extra help page. You can also use this to override the behaviour of specific pages if necessary. # Adding or overriding models and controllers If you need to extend the behaviour of Alaveteli at the controller or model level, see `alavetelitheme/lib/controller_patches.rb` and `alavetelitheme/lib/model_patches.rb` for examples.