-
For the most part, themes created for Invision Community 4.3 should work without modification on Invision Community 4.4. However, for sites with more heavily customized themes, there may be some manual updates you will need to make to ensure compatibility.
The document below outlines the areas you should review. We'll update the document as and when we identify particular areas that may be causing upgrade problems.
Global
includeJS
If you ha
-
A theme in the IPS Community Suite allows for almost limitless visual customization of the software. They are primarily used to match the branding of your community to your main website, but communities will also commonly offer a selection of themes for users to choose from.
A theme is made up of the following:
Templates
Templates render the HTML for the views. They are a mixture of normal HTML, HTML logic, PHP variables and some special plugin tags.
CSS
Standard CSS file
-
The standard way of editing a theme is by using the template editing tools available in the AdminCP. They provide easy access to templates & CSS and don't require any special setup.
To begin editing a theme, navigate to Customization -> Themes in the AdminCP, and then click the code icon to the right of the theme you wish to edit.
Note: If the theme you wish to edit was originally created with the easy editor, the code icon will ins
-
While the standard template editor is useful for light template editing, for larger, more complex changes, editing with a real IDE is desirable. The IPS Community Suite facilitates this through something called Designer's Mode.
What is Designer's Mode?
Designer's Mode allows you to use a real IDE by exporting all of the templates and CSS files to disk as files, and then reimporting them to the suite when you have finished editing them.
With Designer's Mode enabled, the soft
-
Theme settings are a way to set up variables that your theme can use, and which offer an interface to be customized via the AdminCP. For example, the default IPS4 theme stores most of its color choices as theme settings, and it's this which facilitates the easy mode editor.
Theme settings are particularly useful when you plan to distribute your theme for others to use, but you may also find uses even if a theme is for your own use. For example, you might occasiona
-
A theme can have resources associated with it; these are usually images, but can be any kind of resource you need. Some examples:
Images
Web fonts
Video
Resources for a theme are managed by navigating to Customization -> Themes in the AdminCP, and selecting Manage Resources from the dropdown menu for the relevant theme.
You'll see a listing of al
-
While the theme system allows almost limitless customization possibilities, there are a few best practices that we recommend you follow. They will make things easier for both you and site admins who choose to use your theme.
Don't edit default CSS files
Whenever a default theme file is edited, it makes upgrading a site a little more difficult because the customizations have to be handled. This is an easy problem
-
The IPS Community Suite has built-in support for languages that use right-to-left text (including Arabic, Persian and others), and if you are creating a theme to share with others, you should ensure it is compatible with right-to-left display. Doing so is easy.
RTL-specific CSS
When RTL display is used, certain CSS properties need to be reversed; for example, if you position something left in LTR languages, when shown in RTL it would need to be positioned right instead.
The
-
When a new version of the software is released, there will inevitably be changes to the default templates in which would need to be replicated in your own custom themes. On an upgrade, only unedited templates would be upgraded automatically, and therefore this would be for yourself to upgrade any templates which cannot be upgraded.
There are a couple of tools available for you in order to achieve this. Each of which is explained below.
Theme differences
The theme differences tool
-
The invision community system sets up emails via the email template system. This gives you the ability to amend the email structures from within your ACP, without the need to edit any core files.
The following guide shows how the Email Template system works, and where you would be looking in order to change a particular email.
Email Structure
The email template structure is made up of 4 parts, in which you would need to be aware of to make changes to your emails.
Em