@julian, I've created a repo with my code:
https://github.com/sanpatricio/nodebb-theme-capitol

@julian - I do not, but I can make it available. Which bits do you need, the custom theme files? As soon as I get back from Pizza Express!

Thanks!

I'm having a near identical problem. I installed NodeBB a few weeks ago, started using Vanilla, then started customizing it via the admin custom HTML & CSS tools.

Then I started following the burnaftercompiling NodeBB theming guide to make my own theme. Everything was going well until I spun up NodeBB with my new theme. Everything looked very weird, like OP's image except my custom HTML/CSS and site-wide CSS files were loading.

I used ./nodebb dev and got similar errors about an inability to minify:
error: [meta/css] Could not minify LESS/CSS: variable @brand-primary is undefined

I recursively grepped from webroot and found @brand-primary defined in bootstrap/variables.less and set as "@brand-primary: darken(#428bca, 6.5%);"

This file is in the Vanilla theme directory, as it was imported inside theme.less, as per the instructions..

"./nodebb reset" threw an error, so I ran "./nodebb reset theme" and it re-set me to Vanilla from my custom theme.

Any thoughts? I'm burned out for the night. Also side note, what tags to I use to get the code format? Thanks.

@julian Ahh, yes! I deactivated it and magic!

Pro-tip to future self: Don't "install all the things" when you first deploy something new. Thanks, Julian.

Hi, sorry to dig up an older post.

I'm having this same problem after upgrading from 0.6.0 to 0.6.1. The categories are still there if I view profiles and see the account's recent posts or if I click on the "Forum" link, but when I first load up the page or use the $home link at the top-left nav bar, the categories don't show.

The upgrade was a bit bumpy with 3 conflicts that were resolved with a "git reset --hard $hash" and an out of date schema with "./nodebb upgrade".

I started it in ./nodebb dev mode and went to the $base_url/debug/cid/1 in my browser and see the json attributes of the category, but don't know where to go from here.