--- layout: page title: Themes --- # Alaveteli's themes

Alaveteli uses themes to make the site look and run differently from the default. Simple changes like colour and logo are relatively easy, but themes can also control more complex things like how the site behaves.

When you customise your Alaveteli site, there is a lot you can change just by editing the [config settings]({{ site.baseurl }}docs/customising/config/). But if you want to change the way the site looks, or add more specific behaviour, you'll need to make a **theme**. You don't need to be a programmer in order to make simple changes, but you will need to be confident enough to copy and change some files. If you're not sure about this, [ask for help](/community/)!
A theme is the way you tell Alaveteli which parts of your site look and behave differently from the core site. These differences are implemented as a collection of files (separate from the core Alaveteli source code), which Alaveteli uses to override its default code.
When you customise Alaveteli, you should always use this theme mechanism instead of editing the core Alaveteli files. If you do not — that is, if you make custom changes to the main Alaveteli source code — you may not be able to update your site with newer Alaveteli code (new features and occassional bugfixes).
## Your theme is a separate repo We use git to manage Alaveteli's source code, and Alaveteli expects your theme to be in a git repository of its own. Although you *can* start customising your site on your development server by playing with the `alavetelitheme` theme that Alaveteli ships with, we recommend you make it into your own repo as soon as you can. If you're seriously customising — and certainly before you can deploy to a production server — you must do this. Make sure you choose a unique name for your theme (and hence its repo). If your site is `abcexample.com`, we suggest you call your theme `abcexample-theme`. Alaveteli's `themes:install` rake task, which installs themes, works by getting the git repo from the URL specified in the config setting [`THEME_URLS`]({{ site.baseurl }}docs/customising/config/#theme_urls). This is why your theme must be in its own git repo. One way to create your own theme is to fork the `alavetelitheme` theme from [https://github.com/mysociety/alavetelitheme](https://github.com/mysociety/alavetelitheme) (giving it your own theme name), edit it or add files, and deploy it with `themes:install`.
Here's an example of a complex theme in action: see the theme repo at https://github.com/mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme. This is the theme for UK's Alaveteli instance WhatDoTheyKnow. You can see it deployed on the WhatDoTheyKnow website. This happens because the WhatDoTheyKnow server has this setting in config/general.yml: 

THEME_URLS:
  - 'git://github.com/mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme.git'
## What you might want to change The most common requirement is to brand the site: at a minimum, [inserting your own logo](#changing-the-logo) and [colour scheme](#changing-the-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](https://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 what you need. 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]({{ site.baseurl }}docs/customising/config/) (e.g., the name of your site, the available languages, and so on — all in `config/general.yml`) * Data (e.g. the public bodies to whom requests should be addressed) * A theme, installed in `lib/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`]({{ site.baseurl }}docs/customising/config/#theme_urls) in `general.yml` for an explanation. You can also install the sample theme by hand, by running: bundle exec rake themes:install 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 `lib/themes/alavetelitheme/lib/views/help/about.html.erb` will appear instead of the core "about us" file. ### Changing the logo Alaveteli uses Rails' [asset pipeline](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html) to convert and compress stylesheets written in Sass, the css extension language, to minified concatenated css. Assets are stored in core Alaveteli under `app/assets` - in `fonts`, `images`, `javascripts` and `stylesheets`. The default theme has corresponding asset directories in `alavetelitheme/assets` Asset files placed in these directories will override those in the core directories. As with templates, a file at `lib/themes/alavetelitheme/assets/images/logo.png` will appear on the site instead of the logo from `app/assets/images/logo.png`. ### Changing the colour scheme Alaveteli uses a set of basic Sass modules to define the layout for the site on different device sizes, and some basic styling. These modules are in `app/assets/stylesheets/responsive`. The colours and fonts are added in the theme - alavetelitheme defines them in `lib/themes/alavetelitheme/assets/stylesheets/responsive/custom.scss`. Colours used in the theme are defined as variables at the top of this file and you can edit them here. ### Changing other styling To change other styling, you can add to or edit the styles in `lib/themes/alavetelitheme/assets/stylesheets/responsive/custom.scss`. Styles defined here will override those in the sass modules in `app/assets/stylesheets/responsive` as they will be imported last by `app/assets/stylesheets/responsive/all.scss`. However, if you want to substantially change the way a particular part of the site is laid out, you may want to override one of the core sass modules. You could override the layout of the front page, for example, by copying `app/assets/stylesheets/responsive/_frontpage_layout.scss` to `lib/themes/alavetelitheme/assets/stylesheets/responsive/_frontpage_layout.scss` and editing it. You can load extra stylesheets and javascript files by adding them to `lib/themes/alavetelitheme/lib/views/general/_before_head_end.html.erb` ## Adding your own categories for public bodies You should add categories for the authorities on your site -- Alaveteli will display the authorities grouped by categories if you have set any up. Alaveteli uses tags to assign authorities to the right categories, but you should add tags anyway because they are also used by the site's search facility. Together, categories and tags help your users find the right authority for their request. You can set all this up using the admin interface. See [more about categories and tags]({{ site.baseurl }}docs/running/categories_and_tags/) for details. ## Customising the request states As mentioned above, if you can possibly live with the [default Alaveteli request statuses]({{ site.baseurl }}docs/customising/states/), it would be good to do so. Note that you can set how many days counts as "overdue" in the main site config file — see [`REPLY_LATE_AFTER_DAYS`]({{ site.baseurl }}docs/customising/config/#reply_late_after_days). 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. ## Working with themes You can use [`script/switch-theme.rb`](https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli/blob/master/script/switch-theme.rb) to set the current theme if you are working with multiple themes. This might be useful for switching between the default `alavetelitheme` and your own fork.