1. AdvSearch
      1. AdvSearch.AdvSearch
        1. AdvSearch.AdvSearch.tpl
        2. AdvSearch.Advsearch.paging1Tpl
        3. AdvSearch.AdvSearch.paging0Tpl
        4. AdvSearch.AdvSearch.containerTpl
        5. Advsearch.AdvSearch.extractTpl
      2. AdvSearch.AdvSearchHelp
        1. AdvSearch.AdvSearchHelp.helplinkTpl
      3. AdvSearch.AdvSearchForm
        1. Advsearch.AdvSearchForm.tpl
    2. cookieJar
    3. getYoutube
    4. aliasid
    5. AddHeaderfiles
    6. AjaxUpload
    7. amazonSES mailing list
    8. Analytics
    9. Archivist
      1. Archivist.Archivist
        1. Archivist.Archivist.tpl
      2. Archivist.ArchivistGrouper
      3. Archivist.getArchives
        1. Archivist.getArchives.tpl
    10. Articles
      1. Articles.Theming Articles
      2. Articles.Roadmap
      3. Articles.Retrieving Articles Outside of Articles
      4. Articles.Creating a Blog
    11. Babel
      1. Babel.BabelLinks
      2. Babel.BabelTranslation
    12. BannerX
    13. BannerY
    14. Batcher
      1. Batcher.Roadmap
    15. bdListings
      1. bdListings.bdCategories
      2. bdListings.bdHookNewListing
      3. bdListings.bdListings
      4. bdListings.bdPriceGroups
      5. bdListings.bdRedirect
      6. bdListings.bdTargets
    16. boilerX
      1. bx-head-open
      2. bx-head-append
      3. bx-head-close
      4. bx-container-open
      5. bx-container-close
      6. bx-bottom-open
      7. bx-bottom-close
    17. BreadCrumb
      1. BreadCrumb.containerTpl
      2. BreadCrumb.currentCrumbTpl
      3. BreadCrumb.linkCrumbTpl
      4. BreadCrumb.maxCrumbTpl
      5. BreadCrumb.categoryCrumbTpl
      6. BreadCrumb.homeCrumbTpl
    18. Breadcrumbs
    19. BxrExtra
    20. cachebuster
    21. CamperManagement
      1. CamperManagement.Customizing the Component
      2. CamperManagement.Developing the front-end
        1. CamperManagement.cmCamperDetails Snippet
        2. CamperManagement.cmCampers Snippet
        3. CamperManagement.Placeholders you can use
      3. CamperManagement.Managing your vehicle
      4. CamperManagement.Module home
    22. Church Events Calendar
      1. ChurchEvents.MODX Manager functions
      2. ChurchEventsCalendar Snippet
        1. ChurchEvents.Managing events
      3. ChurchEventsList Snippet
      4. ChurchEventsRss Snippet
    23. Cliche
    24. ClientConfig
    25. CMPGenerator
      1. CMPGenerator.5 minute example
      2. CMPGenerator.Foreign Databases
    26. Collections
    27. ContextRouter
    28. CookieList
    29. CronManager
    30. cssSweet
      1. cssSweet.lighten
      2. cssSweet.modval
      3. cssSweet.prefix
    31. CustomUrls
    32. Databackup
    33. Discuss
      1. Discuss.ChunkMap
      2. Discuss.Contributing
      3. Discuss.Controllers
        1. Discuss.Controllers.board
          1. Discuss.Controllers.board.xml
        2. Discuss.Controllers.home
        3. Discuss.Controllers.login
        4. Discuss.Controllers.logout
        5. Discuss.Controllers.profile
        6. Discuss.Controllers.register
        7. Discuss.Controllers.search
        8. Discuss.Controllers.thread
      4. Discuss.Creating a Discuss Theme
      5. Discuss.Database Model
      6. Discuss.Features
      7. Discuss.Getting Started
      8. Discuss.Installation
        1. Discuss.Installation from Git
      9. Discuss.Roadmap
      10. Configuring Sphinx for Search
    34. DitsNews
    35. Eletters
      1. Eletters.API
      2. Eletters.FormIt
      3. Eletters.Import CSV
      4. Eletters.Templates
    36. EventManager
      1. EventManager.emListEvents
      2. EventManager.emNewReservationHook
    37. eventsCalendar2
      1. eventsCalendar2.eventsCalendar2
      2. eventsCalendar2.Generating events
      3. eventsCalendar2.tplCalendar2
      4. eventsCalendar2.tplCell2
      5. eventsCalendar2.tplEvent2
      6. eventsCalendar2.tplHead2
    38. EventsX
      1. EventsX.Examples
    39. ExerPlan
    40. fastField
    41. FileDownload R
      1. FileDownload R.FileDownload
      2. FileDownload R.FileDownloadLink
      3. FileDownload R.Plugins
    42. FileLister
      1. FileLister.FileLister
        1. FileLister.FileLister.directoryTpl
        2. FileLister.FileLister.fileLinkTpl
        3. FileLister.FileLister.fileTpl
        4. FileLister.FileLister.pathTpl
      2. FileLister.Roadmap
    43. FirstChildRedirect
    44. Flexibility
    45. ForcedPasswdChange
    46. FormIt
      1. FormIt.FormItCountryOptions
      2. FormIt.FormItRetriever
      3. FormIt.FormItStateOptions
      4. FormIt.Hooks
        1. FormIt.Hooks.email
        2. FormIt.Hooks.FormItAutoResponder
        3. FormIt.Hooks.math
        4. FormIt.Hooks.recaptcha
        5. FormIt.Hooks.redirect
        6. FormIt.Hooks.spam
      5. FormIt.Roadmap
      6. FormIt.Tutorials and Examples
        1. FormIt.Examples.Custom Hook
        2. FormIt.Examples.Simple Contact Page
        3. FormIt.Handling Selects, Checkboxes and Radios
        4. FormIt.Using a Blank NoSpam Field
      7. FormIt.Validators
    47. FormIt2db
    48. FormitFastPack
      1. FormitFastPack.Tutorial
      2. FormitFastPack.fieldSetDefaults
      3. FormitFastPack.field
      4. FormitFastPack.fiGenerateReport
    49. FormSave
    50. FoundationX
      1. FoundationX.How to Use FoundationX
    51. FX2themebase
      1. FX2.How to Use FX2
        1. FX2.For Theme Authors
      2. FX2.Included Extras
    52. Gallery
      1. Gallery.Example1
      2. Gallery.Gallery
        1. Gallery.Gallery.containerTpl
        2. Gallery.Gallery.thumbTpl
      3. Gallery.GalleryAlbums
        1. Gallery.GalleryAlbums.rowTpl
        2. Gallery.GalleryAlbums.containerTpl
      4. Gallery.GalleryItem
        1. Gallery.GalleryItem.albumTpl
        2. Gallery.GalleryItem.GalleryItemPagination
        3. Gallery.GalleryItem.tagTpl
        4. Gallery.GalleryItem.tpl
      5. Gallery.Plugins
        1. Gallery.Plugins.Galleriffic
        2. Gallery.Plugins.Slimbox
      6. Gallery.Roadmap
      7. Gallery.Setting Up the GalleryItem TV
      8. Gallery.Setting Up Your Gallery
    53. GatewayManager
    54. gCal
    55. getDate
    56. getFeed
      1. getFeed.Adding a Twitter Feed
    57. getPage
    58. getRelated
    59. getResourceField
    60. getResources
      1. getResources.Examples
        1. getResources.Building a RSS feed
        2. getResources.Category Index Page with Thumbnails
        3. getResources.Google XML Sitemap
    61. getUrlParam
    62. getRTImages
    63. getVimeo
    64. GoogleSiteMap
      1. GoogleSiteMap.GoogleSiteMap
        1. GoogleSiteMap.GoogleSiteMap.containerTpl
        2. GoogleSiteMap.GoogleSiteMap.itemTpl
      2. GoogleSiteMap.Roadmap
    65. GridClassKey
    66. HandyMan
      1. HandyMan.Frequently Asked Questions
      2. HandyMan.Installation
      3. HandyMan.Roadmap
    67. Hits
    68. HitsPage
    69. HybridAuth
      1. HybridAuth.Integrating Facebook
      2. HybridAuth.Integrating Google
      3. HybridAuth.Integrating Twitter
      4. HybridAuth.Integrating VK.com
    70. If
    71. Image+
    72. imageHERE
    73. ImageStyles
    74. ImportX
    75. LexRating
    76. Lingua
    77. Login
      1. Login.ChangePassword
      2. Login.ConfirmRegister
      3. Login.ForgotPassword
      4. Login.Login
      5. Login.Profile
      6. Login.Register
        1. Register.Example Form 1
      7. Login.ResetPassword
      8. Login.Roadmap
      9. Login.Tutorials
        1. Login.Basic Setup
        2. Login.Extended User Profiles
        3. Login.Request Membership
        4. Login.User Profiles
        5. Login.Using Custom Fields
        6. Login.Using Pre and Post Hooks
      10. Login.UpdateProfile
    78. Loginza
      1. Loginza.Loginza
      2. tpl.Loginza.login
      3. tpl.Loginza.logout
      4. tpl.Loginza.profile
    79. mChimpX
    80. MetaX
    81. mhPayPal
      1. mhPayPal.Snippet Usage
        1. mhPayPal.Snippet Usage.Hooks
        2. mhPayPal.Snippet Usage.Templating
    82. MIGX
      1. MIGX.Backend-Usage
      2. MIGX.Data-Entry
      3. MIGX.Frontend-Usage
      4. MIGX.Tutorials
        1. MIGX.Fancybox-images with seperate placeholders in Richtext-Content
        2. MIGX.Simple opening hours table
        3. Using resource-specific mediasource and multifile-uploader with MIGX
        4. MIGX.Varying layout-boxes
          1. MIGX.Varying layout-boxes.Configurator-Version
        5. Creating Selectable and Sortable lists for MIGX
        6. MIGX.sortable resourcelist
        7. Using resource-specific mediasource and multifile-uploader with MIGX
        8. MIGX.Using Grid Inline Editing
    83. MIGXdb
      1. MIGXdb.Configuration
      2. MIGXdb.Tutorials
        1. MIGXdb.Create a basic gallery-management from scratch with MIGXdb
        2. MIGXdb.Create doodles manager with help of MIGXdb
        3. MIGXdb.Manage Child-Resources in a grid-TV with help of MIGXdb
        4. MIGXdb.Manage Events-Resources in a CMP with help of MIGXdb
      3. MigxCalendars
    84. MinifyX
    85. miniShop
      1. miniShop.Screenshots
    86. modActiveDirectory
    87. ModDef
    88. modExtra
    89. modMobile
    90. modSwiftMailer
    91. mxCalendar
      1. mxCalendar.Examples
      2. mxCalendar.Placeholders
    92. mxExtendedMenu
    93. mxFormBuilder
      1. mxFormBuilder.Create Form
      2. mxFormBuilder.Hooks
      3. mxFormBuilder.Field Types
      4. mxFormBuilder.Create Form List in TV
      5. mxFormBuilder.Fields
    94. mxHasTvs
    95. MoneyBird
      1. MoneyBird.Contacts
      2. MoneyBird.Invoices
      3. MoneyBird.NrFormat
    96. ObfuscateEmail-Revo
    97. PackMan
      1. PackMan.Roadmap
    98. PageBreaker
      1. PageBreaker.PageBreaker
      2. tpl.PageBreaker.ajax
      3. tpl.PageBreaker.navigation
    99. Peoples
      1. Peoples.PeopleGroup
        1. Peoples.PeopleGroup.userTpl
      2. Peoples.PeopleGroups
        1. Peoples.PeopleGroups.tpl
      3. Peoples.Peoples
        1. Peoples.Peoples.tpl
      4. Peoples.Roadmap
    100. PHP Tidy (plugin)
    101. phpThumbOf
    102. Polls
      1. Polls.Polls
      2. Polls.PollsLatest
      3. Polls.PollsPrevious
      4. Polls.PollsResult
    103. POI Manager
    104. QuickCrumbs
      1. QuickCrumbs.Example
    105. Quip
      1. Quip.Quip
        1. Quip.Quip.tplComment
        2. Quip.Quip.tplCommentOptions
        3. Quip.Quip.tplComments
        4. Quip.Quip.tplReport
      2. Quip.QuipCount
      3. Quip.QuipLatestComments
      4. Quip.QuipReply
        1. Quip.QuipReply.tplAddComment
        2. Quip.QuipReply.tplLoginToComment
        3. Quip.QuipReply.tplPreview
      5. Quip.QuipRss
      6. Quip.Roadmap
      7. Quip.Upgrading
        1. Quip.Upgrading to 1.0.1
    106. Rampart
      1. Rampart.hook.RampartFormIt
      2. Rampart.hook.RampartQuip
      3. Rampart.preHook.RampartRegister
    107. Redirector
    108. renderResources
    109. ResourceWatcher
    110. RezImgCrop
    111. Rowboat
      1. Rowboat.Rowboat
    112. sekFancyBox
      1. sekFancyBox & Gallery
    113. sekFormTools
      1. sekFormTools.input.autocomplete
      2. sekFormTools.input.combobox
      3. sekFormTools.input.datepicker
      4. sekFormTools.input.helper
      5. sekFormTools.input.textfield
      6. sekFormTools Advanced Examples
    114. sekSiteTools
      1. sekSiteTools.easytabs
      2. sekSiteTools.google.analytics
      3. sekSiteTools.printdiv
    115. sekUserGalleries
      1. sekUserGalleries.album.items.helper
      2. sekUserGalleries.album.items.manage
      3. sekUserGalleries.album.manage
      4. sekUserGalleries.album.view
      5. sekUserGalleries.browse.galleries
      6. sekUserGalleries.directory
      7. sekUserGalleries.image.information
      8. sekUserGalleries.search
      9. sekUserGalleries.users.gallery.manage
      10. sekUserGalleries.users.gallery.view
    116. selfLink
    117. Shopkeeper
    118. siblingNav
    119. SimpleSearch
      1. SimpleSearch.Roadmap
      2. SimpleSearch.SimpleSearch
        1. SimpleSearch.Faceted Search Through PostHooks
        2. SimpleSearch.SimpleSearch.containerTpl
        3. SimpleSearch.SimpleSearch.currentPageTpl
        4. SimpleSearch.SimpleSearch.pageTpl
        5. SimpleSearch.SimpleSearch.tpl
      3. SimpleSearch.SimpleSearchForm
        1. SimpleSearch.SimpleSearchForm.tpl
      4. SimpleSearch.Solr
    120. SiteEditor
    121. sitemapFriend
    122. Slideshow Manager
      1. jgSlideshow Snippet
      2. Slideshow Manager CMP
    123. sLink
    124. SmartOptimizer
    125. SmartTag
    126. StatCache
    127. SocialLogin
    128. SocialSuite
      1. SocialSuite.getFacebookPhotos
      2. SocialSuite.getFacebookProfile
      3. SocialSuite.getFacebookShares
      4. SocialSuite.getGooglePlusShares
      5. SocialSuite.getTwitterProfile
      6. SocialSuite.prettyNumbers
    129. spieFeed
    130. StaticSaver
    131. StoreLocator
    132. SubscribeMe
      1. SubscribeMe.Configuring API Credentials, IPN and going Live
      2. SubscribeMe.Setting up the Payment Flow
        1. SubscribeMe - Listing the Products
        2. SubscribeMe - Setting up the Payment Methods
        3. SubscribeMe - Subscription Confirmation Page
      3. SubscribeMe.User Account Management
    133. SyntaxChecker
    134. Tagger
    135. TaggingAtoZ
    136. tagLister
      1. tagLister.getResourcesTag
      2. tagLister.tagLister
        1. tagLister.tagLister.all
        2. tagLister.tagLister.tpl
      3. tagLister.tolinks
        1. tagLister.tolinks.tpl
    137. TinyMCE
      1. TinyMCE.Spellchecker
      2. TinyMCE.Table controls
      3. TinyMCE.Template
    138. Upload to Users CMP
    139. VersionX
      1. VersionX.Roadmap
    140. virtuNewsletter
    141. VisionCart
      1. VisionCart.Back-end
        1. VisionCart.Category management
        2. VisionCart.Module management
        3. VisionCart.Option management
        4. VisionCart.Order management
        5. VisionCart.Product management
        6. VisionCart.Shop management
      2. VisionCart.Front-end
        1. VisionCart.vcGetCategories
          1. VisionCart.vcGetCategories.tpl
        2. VisionCart.vcGetProducts
          1. VisionCart.vcGetProducts.tpl
        3. VisionCart.vcWayfinder
      3. VisionCart.General
        1. VisionCart.Templating
        2. VisionCart.UserManagement
      4. VisionCart.vcGetProductImages
      5. VisionCart.vcGetProductOptions
    142. Wayfinder
      1. Wayfinder Introductory Examples
    143. xFPC

Discuss.Creating a Discuss Theme

Last edited by Susan Ottwell on Aug 23, 2013.
This is a user-contributed Extra. If you find issues or would like more info or help, please contact the author.

This document will walk you through the basics of creating a Discuss Theme. We will first discuss the basics, and follow up with more in depth instructions on how to theme and what you should keep in mind using a git powered workflow.

Understanding the File Structure

Discuss themes consist of 2 parts: the theme assets (css, javascript and images) and the templates (basically, the chunks used by Discuss). These are located in their respective directories:

  • assets: assets/components/discuss/themes/THEME_NAME/
  • templates: core/components/discuss/templates/THEME_NAME/

Both THEME_NAME's should obviously be the same, and that name is also what needs to be defined in the discuss.theme setting to use the theme.
The default theme included in Discuss is loosely based on the official MODX Forums theme and as a result it also uses SASS to generate the CSS. You can find the SASS source files in assets/components/discuss/themes/default/sass/, with the compiled css in the /css/ directory. You can learn more about SASS here.

Basic Theming Considerations

Just like any other MODX Extra, Discuss gives you infinite markup freedom. This does mean there's a lot of different templates in use for various bits of the template. To give you an idea, here's a visual view of the forum home breakdown.

Luckily, there's an easy way for you to figure out what markup is coming from what template file. Simply enable the discuss.debug_templates system setting, and every referenced chunk template will be pre- and suffixed with a HTML comment indicating what chunk (and its filename) was referenced. Example:

<!-- Start: board/disBoardLi from file: themes/default/chunks/board/disboardli.chunk.tpl -->
 <div class="Depth2 row dis-category h-group dis-category-1 dis-unread">
    <a href="http://localhost/modx-stable2/forums/board/1/blue-sky" class="h-group">
        <div class="f1-f7">
            <div class="wrap">
                <span class="folder">35</span>
                <strong>Blue Sky</strong>
                <p class="dis-board-description">Thoughts and peer-to-peer discussions for Partners only</p>
            </div>
        </div>
        <div class="f8-f10">
            <span class="clickable" data-link="http://localhost/modx-stable2/forums/thread/74739/this-is-a-test/#dis-post-414487">This is a test</span>
        </div>
        <div class="f11 l-txtcenter">418</div>
        <div class="f12 l-txtcenter">37</div>
    </a>
    <div class="h-group f-all"><p class="dis-board-subs dis-unread">
<!-- Start: board/disSubForumLink from file: themes/default/chunks/board/dissubforumlink.chunk.tpl -->
 <a href="forums/board/?board=277">New Board</a>

<!-- /End: board/disSubForumLink -->
</p></div>
</div>

<!-- /End: board/disBoardLi -->

The entire page is wrapped by pages/wrapper.tpl with the controller specific page template placed in the [[+content]] placeholder.

The controller specific page template is by default the file in the /pages/ directory with the same name as the controller (and to some extent the URL). For example the home controller uses the pages/home.tpl template, while viewing the recent thread posts uses pages/thread/recent.tpl.

However, different themes allow reusing templates across controllers through a manifest option. 

Let's look at the manifest item for the thread/reply controller.

    'thread/reply' => array(
        'js' => array(
            'footer' => array(
                'dis.thread.js',
            ),
        ),
        'options' => array(
            'pageTpl' => 'common/thread-with-form',
        ),
        /* ...*/
    ),

Besides registering a javascript file to the footer (located in assets/components/discuss/themes/THEME_NAME/js/), we are passing it an option of pageTpl, pointing it to common/thread-with-form. This means that instead of using the pages/thread/reply.tpl template, it will actually use the pages/common/thread-with-form.tpl template for this controller. This allows you to reuse markup across similar controllers without having to repeat yourself.

With this information you can start basic theming, using primarily CSS customization hooking into the many available classes. But if you want to go further...

Using the Manifest to further Customise your Theme

The manifest, which we briefly referred to above, is a powerful tool allowing you to go beyond basic CSS customisations and making some changes to the template files. It allows you to configure a number of options per controllers, change templates and add something called modules. You'll find we've applied a bunch of these in the default template and you may not need to do this yourself, but it's great to know how it works in case you want to change it for your specific needs.

The manifest is a big php array located in the themes' templates directory called "manifest.php". It is several levels deep.

  1. The first level is the controller's name or the special "global" which is applied everywhere.
  2. The second level can be either of the following:
    1. "js": allows you to define javascript to load on specific controllers. This option has a third level, which is one of the following: "header", "footer" or "inline". This third level then contains an array of files to load from assets/components/discuss/theme_name/js/.
    2. "css": allows you to define stylesheets to load on specific controllers. This third level then contains an array of files to load from assets/components/discuss/theme_name/css/.
    3. "options": defines controller specific options to configure the behaviour of the controller. The options vary from controller to controller, and you can find them all in the Controllers documentation.

If you're scared by the thought of PHP or PHP Arrays, have a look through these resources. What we're doing is called a multidimensional associative array.

Git-powered Theme workflow

To get started creating a Discuss theme in a git-powered workflow, kick it off by creating a fork of the main Discuss repository at https://github.com/modxcms/Discuss. Then, clone your fork to a local directory and add the original repository as an upstream remote.

$ git clone git@github.com:Your_Username/Discuss.git
$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/modxcms/Discuss.git

Next, check out the current release branch which contains the most up to date version. At time of writing that is release-1.1, but check the Discuss Contributors Guidelines for latest instructions.

$ cd Discuss
$ git checkout release-1.1

Once you did that, we're going to create a different theme branch, which will help make collaboration easier in case you want to contribute back to Discuss *cough*. If you want to fix stuff in the default branch, you would instead create a fix branch, eg fix-colorsbug.

$ git checkout -b theme-name_of_theme

Once you did all this, you'll need to connect this Discuss codebase with a MODX installation. The easiest way to do that is to install the Discuss package (that sets up all the required bits within MODX), and to adjust the namespace (via System > Namespaces) to point to the git-versioned core/components/discuss/ directory and creating a discuss.core_path setting with the same path as the value and discuss.assets_url with an absolute url to the git-versioned assets/components/discuss/ directory. 

Depending on your setup you will also need to set the session_cookie_path setting to / (yes, just a single slash) and to avoid session-clashes if you have multiple local MODX installs, you may want to change the session_name setting to something unique. Next, we'll also need a config.core.php file in the root of our discuss project pointing to our MODX installation. You can copy this from the root of your MODX install, or custom craft it yourself using the template below.

<?php
define('MODX_CORE_PATH', '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/modx/core/');
define('MODX_CONFIG_KEY', 'config');

You should have a functional Discuss install now, or at least be ready to follow the Installation instructions and get theming :)

Suggest an edit to this page on GitHub (Requires GitHub account. Opens a new window/tab).