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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 `<railshome>/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.
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