Site Config

to here: tiki-admin.php

looks much nicer!

I edited the Planetfall entry in the Themes tracker, and when I clicked "Save and view", the page refreshed showing no items in the tracker. I tried to re-enter the information, and got an error (didn't write down the details). (:confused😊

I'll try to reinput the information and add other items. Trackers seem to work fairly reliably elsewhere so I'll try again maybe when files are updated.

The Theme-o-rama module was originally made by using the code for the "switch theme" module, and including a set list of theme choices rather than whatever is listed in the styles/ directory.

But due to a recent change in the switch-themes code, the old Theme-o-rama stopped working when I updated it to include the Tikipedia choice. I hope I'll be able to figure out a Theme-o-rama script that doesn't get stripped out of the module by Tiki. In the meantime, Theme-o-rama is a "fake module," actually a module-lookalike template file (Javascript OK), called from tiki.tpl.

This increases admin work, since every tiki.tpl file — default and theme-specific — has to be edited to include the file. And it's anti-Tiki in the sense that things that look like modules should be modules, configurable through Tiki's web interface. But modules' inability to contain things like onchange="this.form.submit();" makes this impossible, unless I'm missing something.

UPDATE: I made and uploaded a .php-and-.tpl module that contains the script, so it works, not having to go through the user modules processing.

-- Gary

The download counter spiked from 95 to 5800 for the Planetfall theme in only a few hours, so it looks like somebody's playing with a script or something. Kubrick jumped a while back by a couple of hundred, which I thought was strange but not totally impossible. Downloading files now requires the user to be Registered. I set the Planetfall total back to 95, where it was a few hours ago when I last checked.

I used content from a number of tw.o pages, putting together the howto pages here. See Tw_o_ThemePages for details. Today I edited some of these pages at tw.o to delete their content and point to themes.tw.o instead.

I assume the doc.tw.o pages related to themes/CSS, etc., will be deleted or pointed to this site also, but will confirm that.

Themes.tw.o is now listed on the tikiwiki.org portal page.

I was surprised to see the Kubrick theme file download total jump about 200 overnight. It was about even with Planetfall at 70 or 80, then jumped to 286 in a matter of hours. I don't have a clue why.

Was reading Web Design from Scratch and think we should take it to heart. His guidelines won't be appropriate for every Tiki site, but certainly there should be at least some Tiki themes that reflect his ideas. Also, Jim Borch has some interesting things to say about CMS design.

Structure for theme process

My idea was to use a wiki structure for a sequence of pages about making themes. These pages are being fleshed out with content adapted from tw.o pages. I'm still working on it, because the content doesn't exactly fit my outline, and because it needs to be updated at the same time. Also, I keep re-thinking the structure arrangement, trying to find out what is the easiest to follow. When everything is in place I'll look at it again and see if it seems to make sense to newcomers.

It was also necessary to have an example of a structure here, to see how a structure looks in the various themes. Good thing it got started, too; I'd overlooked a structure-navbox text-bgcolor contrast problem in Planetfall, and so updated its CSS file.

New Themes article topic image

I finally got around to doing a "New Themes" article image, so finally wrote the articles for Kubrick and Planetfall. Now, each new theme will have a news article announcement here.

Tw.o article

With the wiki pages added to and the news articles in place, I submitted a news article at tw.o. It's not on line yet, but I hope when it does, traffic will be increased to this site. It's still too echo-y around here. (:wink😊

Intertiki is turned on now, which makes this site a "slave" to the master, tikiwiki.org. That is, users registered at tw.o automatically have certain preferences and their group memberships when they log in here. This is a neat and powerful tool, and should continue to get fine-tuning.

This site is to showcase how the different Tiki features look and function in various themes, so the menu now lists more of these features. Content will be added at the end of those links as time permits.

I made a switch-theme module with three drop-down lists of themes — New, Legacy, and Tiki-bundled. This way it is easy to see the groups. I'll make the list labels links, so people can go directly to pages that explain and list the three types of themes.

I'd like to work out a theme-changing module that would first show a thumbnail preview, responding to a list-item selection, and then the user would click a "select" button to switch to that theme.

Getting fairly well caught up on existing-theme info. Next I want to focus on new themes, finishing the ones I have close to completion so they can be downloaded. And we have to get the theme-upload system worked out so others can share. Plus the promotion of the site.

(:exclaim😊 Most themes from http://mods.tikiwiki.org were installed here today. There will probably be a page or some pages to describe these themes and indicate any problems due to their age. Most work fine but a few need some small fixes. Probably not all current CSS selectors, etc. are supported, and probably not all template changes have been integrated. But people can see them in use and there'll be a download area for them.