Need some advice on theme creation
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So, I'm looking to create a new theme and have a few questions. Firstly, please bear with me while I expand on the way I intend to use nodebb.
I will be using nodebb on an existing site (in development) and not as a stabd-alone application. Our own application has things like alerts, profile images, private messaging etc. so these will need to be stripped out of nodebb and replaced with our integrated solutions. We are currently working on this and are hopeful that it won't be overly difficult to accomplish.
Ideally, what we need after stripping out everything is just 2 templates:
- Category Index
- Topic Listings
- Post Page
Our site will be designed using the bootstrap framework so how hard would it be to get a seamless fit of nodebb into our site?
A rough idea of where and how we'd like it to sit and blend in:
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And if push comes to shove and we aren't able to pull this design integration off on our own, is there anyone on the forum that takes on custom theme design work?
Regards and thank you for reading and any suggestions offered.
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First of all, this looks like the beginning of a cool theme, pretty excited to see what happens here.
Stripping out features out of NodeBB
- Doesn't sound like it would be too much of a problem, stuff like alerts can be disabled in
public/src/app.js, also have a look atpublic/src/modules/
Integrating NodeBB with your application
- So, the general way of doing this is via SSO. What's the framework that you're using for the site? For example, if it's Wordpress, then we have a WP SSO plugin which is being worked on here. It allows you to register/login with your current site, and then it will share information with NodeBB. This way you can continue to use your own system for notifications, alerts, etc, while still allowing your user to post and navigate on NodeBB.
- If you're using your own custom engine and not WP, you'd have to build your own - use this as your skeleton
- There would be two ways of having NodeBB sit on your site:
- I would probably put NodeBB in an iFrame and sit that on your page, easiest thing to do really
- For a client once we actually ripped his entire CSS/HTML (because it was built in Bootstrap already) and stuck it on the header/footer of NodeBB. Took a day or two of work to get it to look right, but in the end, the NodeBB pages seamlessly integrated with the rest of his site
is there anyone on the forum that takes on custom theme design work?
If you're interested in having us integrate this for you, give us a shout at [email protected]
If you're looking for someone to design a theme from the ground up, personally I'd have to recommend @trevor, he's done some good work with his site, http://convoe.com - Doesn't sound like it would be too much of a problem, stuff like alerts can be disabled in
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@psychobunny with regards to your suggestions on stripping out features, I'll have the devs take a look at the disabling options you pointed out.
Integrating with my application:
- We have integrated to some degree using the SSO plugin and hopefully it will continue to be as problem free. We are integrating this with a custom Laravel application.
- I am really not keen on using iFrames and would prefer a proper theme integration but if push comes to shove, I guess I'll have to settle for an iFrame integration.
At this stage, we're doing development in-house but of course if we run into issues I will shoot you guys an email. As for the theme design, I will definitely keep @trevor in mind. I have looked at his work and it does in fact looks very nice.
I really appreciate you taking the time to reply to me and give me your advice on where to start looking; it is very appreciated.
Regards