Custom themes and the npm registry

Henry Wright

Reading the Creating a new NodeBB theme article, it says all themes must be installed via npm:

npm install nodebb-theme-mytheme

Must my theme be in the npm registry or can I install it another way?

belstgut

you can have your theme as a folder or tarball aswell. just use npm install tarball or npm install folder you dont need to put it online

Henry Wright

@belstgut Thanks. If installing the folder, should I run that command from inside the folder? For example:

cd /path/to/nodebb/node_modules/folder
npm install folder

belstgut

to install the package, see here: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/install

Henry Wright

@belstgut brilliant, thanks for the link. V helpful.

pichalite

@henrywright you can just copy your theme folder to node_modules directory. you don't have to run any commands.

Henry Wright

@pichalite when I did that I found that my theme worked but was buggy (which probably indicates problems with my theme rather than the install process).

julian

@pichalite @henrywright Do what I do

Go to theme, npm link, go to forum, npm link nodebb-theme-mytheme

Might need sudo for the first command...

Henry Wright

@julian sorry for being dumb, does that mean these steps?

cd /path/to/nodebb-theme-mytheme
npm link
cd /path/to/nodebb
npm link nodebb-theme-mytheme