Developing a brand new theme changes won't show up unless button Rebuild & Restart is being fired

[paladin884]

Hi,

I've recently started using nodebb and I'm having issues understanding how the new theme development actually works.

1. I've created a new theme out of quickstart theme and copied it over inside /node_modules/.
2. Went inside the dashboard and set the theme to use my new theme
3. Whenever I make any changes unless I go and press the button Build & Restart in the dashboard I won't get to see the changes even-though I use ./nodebb build tpl && ./nodebb dev in the terminal

If I add some CSS or content changes I would like to be able to see the changes on page refresh if there's not such a thing of browser hot-reload.

Repeating the point 3. I find it extremely slow in developing what I'm actually planning and I'm sure I'm missing something here and other people might have a better way in doing that.

Please advice!

Thanks a lot!
Mihai Diaconita

[PitaJ]

We recommend you use grunt which will rebuild only the assets that changed and restart automatically.

https://community.nodebb.org/post/82007

You can also use your browser developer tools to apply new CSS styles or modify existing ones, though you'll still need to persist those changes into code manually.

[paladin884]

Yes! That's it, didn't realised grunt was setup in a way to pick-up custom themes. It's working like a charm!

Thanks a lot @PitaJ !