Customising/Themes

A Mahara theme is a set of Smarty templates, css stylesheets, images, and a very simple configuration file.  Each theme is installed in a subdirectory under htdocs/theme, but because of Mahara's plugin architecture, some template files for a theme may also be found inside plugin directories rather than under htdocs/theme.

Mahara themes support inheritance from "parent" themes.  If a theme specifies a parent, then it only needs to override things that are not defined by the parent theme. This means that you can often create a theme just by writing a new CSS file, and maybe overriding some images. Copying all of the templates is not required.

Mahara's element classes, default themes, and the procedure for creating and modifying themes are very different in Mahara 1.1 and 1.2.

• Mahara 1.8 Theming guide
• Mahara 1.8 Icons guide
• Mahara Themes - 1.10 and up
• Mahara Themes - 1.2 and up
• Mahara 1.1 Themes
• Migrating themes from 1.1 to 1.2
• Mahara 1.3 Themes for Institutions

Subpages

• Theming Mahara 1.1
• Theming Mahara 1.2 - 1.7
• Differences between Smarty and Dwoo
• Mahara 1.3 Themes for Institutions
• Migrating themes from 1.1 to 1.2