Themes for diaspora* interface

I like current style diaspora*, but what do, if potentially user have problems with eyes or just love other colours…I want support user themes, that may be nice idea…


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We’ve had discussions about this in the past. While editing your pod’s stylesheet is definitely doable, doing a completely custom layout would be somewhat difficult. Libertree allows users to enter their own custom CSS into a setting in the user panel, but only the stylesheet is being changed, not the templates or the views.

When people say that they want user themes, they typically think of theming in the way that it works for Wordpress: there’s a directory for JS, one for CSS, and one for templates. Diaspora has a lot of templates for all of the different views it provides to the user.

Effectively, you’d have to take all of Diaspora’s interface elements, views, and javascript bits, turn them into templates, and put them into a folder. You’d then have to tell the app to look for a theme within a specific directory.

The problem with such an implementation is that it goes against some of the default conventions of Ruby on Rails. The second problem is that it’s also a lot of difficult work.

Please tell me where I can read some of Ruby on Rails conventions.

Juan, I’m guessing this would be a good place to start: http://rubyonrails.org/documentation/

Hi Alex, and welcome to Diaspora.

It’s a good idea to search for previous discussions on a topic before starting a new one. One this (and related) topics, there are:

Hope those discussions provide the answers you’re looking for.

Here’s a useful introduction to using Loomio for discussions and proposals: https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Discussion_and_voting#Using_Loomio

Best wishes,
Goob

+1

updating even just css would be grand. i’d love to be able to change colors and fonts and don’t really need to dive into restructuring everything.

diaspora has themes since 0.6.0.0 now, you can select them in the settings. When you run your own pod, you can create your own css-themes for your users. If you are only a user, and the available themes are not enough, then you can use userstyles in your browser to modify/overwrite the css.

i access diaspora through multiple browsers on multiple operating systems, mobile and desktop. browser settings won’t do.

I would say one could also create a new design and send it to the podmin and/or to the whole project.

I’d guess these are the files one needs to provide!?

I have no idea how complicated it is to a podmin to install a new theme, I’d think it isn’t enough just to copy those three files.

and so clutter up an entire pod’s selection of premade themes just because i want to see a set of fonts and colors of my choosing? if everyone on a pod did this it’d 1) depend on a receptive podmin 2) create additional workload for the podmin 3) clutter the menu of every user on a pod 4) add a lot of unnecessary work for a single user between making and deploying a theme for their own personal use.

Ah I see, you mean something similar to mediawiki (and I think libertree has such too).
Well yes, I was a fan of those too a few years ago when I joint diaspora* and I also think it would be nice and it would be even more nice if you can share it between users.

But to be honest: I don’t think many users would create themes, so I guess it’s a good compromise to be able to install your own styles locally on your mashine(s) using stylr or greasemonkey. Or if you do it more professional (so keep developing when things change etc.) give it to all the users.

users have been creating their own themes on every social media network that has ever allowed it, extensively, whether it was invisible to every other user as in irc or a marker of identity like myspace.