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.

Setting up a development environment for designing themes

@arya you can use grunt. Getting started - Grunt: The JavaScript Task Runner ...

NodeBB Community (community.nodebb.org)

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 !