1. CMS
  2. Themes

Introduction

Themes define the appearance of your website or web application built with October. October themes are completely file-based and can be managed with any version control system, for example, Git. This page gives you the high-level description of October themes. You will find more details about pages, partials, layouts and content files in the corresponding articles.

Themes are directories that reside in the /themes directory by default. Themes can contain the following objects:

Object Description
Pages represent the website pages.
Partials contain reusable chunks of HTML markup.
Layouts define the page scaffold.
Content files text, HTML, or Markdown blocks that can be edited separately from the page or layout.
Asset files are resource files like images, CSS and JavaScript files.

Directory structure

Below, you can see an example theme directory structure. Each October theme is represented with a separate directory and generally, one active theme is used for displaying the website. This example displays the "website" theme directory.

themes/
  website/           <=== Theme starts here
    pages/           <=== Pages directory
      home.htm
    layouts/         <=== Layouts directory
      default.htm
    partials/        <=== Partials directory
      sidebar.htm
    content/         <=== Content directory
      intro.htm
    assets/          <=== Assets directory
      css/
        my-styles.css
      js/
      images/

The active theme is set with the activeTheme parameter in the config/cms.php file or with the Theme Selector on the System > CMS > Front-end Theme backend page. The theme set with the Theme Selector overrides the value in the config/cms.php file.

Subdirectories

October supports single level subdirectories for pages, partials, layouts and content files, while the assets directory can have any structure. This simplifies the organization of large websites. In the example directory structure below, you can see that the pages and partials directories contain the blog subdirectory, and the content directory contains the home subdirectory.

themes/
  website/
    pages/
      home.htm
      blog/                  <=== Subdirectory
        archive.htm
        category.htm
    partials/
      sidebar.htm
      blog/                  <=== Subdirectory
        category-list.htm
    content/
      footer-contacts.txt
      home/                  <=== Subdirectory
        intro.htm
    ...

To refer to a partial or a content file from a subdirectory, specify the subdirectory's name before the template's name. Example of rendering a partial from a subdirectory:

{% partial "blog/category-list" %}

Note: The template paths are always absolute. If, in a partial, you render another partial from the same subdirectory, you still need to specify the subdirectory's name.

Template structure

Pages, partials and layout templates can include up to 3 sections: configuration, PHP code, and Twig markup. Sections are separated with the == sequence. For example:

url = "/blog"
layout = "default"
==
function onStart()
{
    $this['posts'] = ...;
}
==
<h3>Blog archive</h3>
{% for post in posts %}
    <h4>{{ post.title }}</h4>
    {{ post.content }}
{% endfor %}

Configuration section

The configuration section sets the template parameters. Supported configuration parameters are specific for different CMS templates and described in their corresponding documentation articles. The configuration section uses the simple INI format, where string parameter values are enclosed within quotes. Example configuration section for a page template:

url = "/blog"
layout = "default"

[component]
parameter = "value"

PHP code section

The code in the PHP section executes every time before the template is rendered. The PHP section is optional for all CMS templates and its contents depend on the template type where it is defined. The PHP code section can contain optional open and close PHP tags to enable syntax highlighting in text editors. The open and close tags should always be specified on a different line to the section separator ==.

url = "/blog"
layout = "default"
==
<?
function onStart()
{
    $this['posts'] = ...;
}
?>
==
<h3>Blog archive</h3>
{% for post in posts %}
    <h4>{{ post.title }}</h4>
    {{ post.content }}
{% endfor %}

In the PHP section, you can only define functions and refer to namespaces with the PHP use keyword. No other PHP code is allowed in the PHP section. This is because the PHP section is converted to a PHP class when the page is parsed. Example of using a namespace reference:

url = "/blog"
layout = "default"
==
<?
use Acme\Blog\Classes\Post;

function onStart()
{
    $this['posts'] = Post::get();
}
?>
==

As a general way of setting variables, you should use the array access method on $this, although for simplicity you can use object access as read-only, for example:

// Write via array
$this['foo'] = 'bar';

// Read via array
echo $this['foo'];

// Read-only via object
echo $this->foo;

Twig markup section

The Twig section defines the markup to be rendered by the template. In the Twig section, you can use functions, tags, and filters provided by October, all the native Twig features, or those provided by plugins. The content of the Twig section depends on the template type (page, layout, or partial). You can find more information about specific Twig objects further in the documentation.

More information can be found in the Markup guide.

Theme Logging

OctoberCMS comes with a very useful feature, disabled by default, called Theme Logging.

Since layouts and pages store most of the data in flat files, it's possible for you or your clients to accidentally lose content. For example, switching the layout of a page will modify the scaffold of the page, and, as such, will result in data loss.

To enable Theme Logging, simply go to Settings -> Log settings and enable Log theme changes. All changes are now logged.

The theme changelog can be viewed at Settings -> Theme log. Each change has an overview of what has been added/removed, along with a copy of the changed file before and after. You can use this information to decide the appropriate action, to aid the reversion of these changes, if necessary.

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